The last week leading up to my wedding was the most hectic and stressed week in me and my family's life's. It wasn't at all fun or romantic and when the tent leaked heavily and looked like it was going to lift up into air a couple of days before our wedding day I felt like cancelling the whole thing. I couldn't imagine how it could ever be the beautiful day my husband and I imagined it to be.
In desperation we took off to the hardware store to find something to seal up the tent with. We found a large roll of thick plastic (6 feet wide) of the sort that is used for covereing up carpets etc. when renovating.
It took us half a day to cover the tent ceiling from end to end with the thick plastic. We then dried the floor and waited for the next big shower. To our surprise the tent held dry! All we needed now was to turn our (far from pretty!) plastic covered tent into a romantic wedding tent again. Weeks earlier I had bought some beautiful white fabric which were to hang down from the middle of the tent ceiling to both sides of the tent like big beautiful curtains. The lovely fabric covered the ugly plastic beautifully and no one ever noticed our "renovation job".
Although the tent was now dry, it was still very windy and cold and we were really worried that our guests would be freezing. Luckily we managed to rent 2 small (but very effective) gas heaters the day before the wedding. The total cost (including the gas to run them) was about $150 for the entire day and night and all our guests were beautifully warm and very comfortable. It was like sitting indoors - the heaters really saved the day and the last guests didn't leave before the early morning hours.
The catering company which provided the food was brilliant at keeping everything beautifully warm and the delicious spit roast and the red wine sauce was wonderfully hot despite the challenging weather conditions.
I can honestly say that our garden wedding was absolutely wonderful and when my father walked me down the garden path to my gorgeous husband-to-be I forgot all about the rainy weather, the plastic and the heaters! At that moment it was only the excitement about the wedding ceremony and our future life together that mattered.
A rainy wedding can indeed be a dream wedding - mine truely was!
