What a day today at the Hawkesyard Estate in Rugeley. Let’s just say that im so traumatised by todays events, I will NEVER do another outdoor wedding set up EVER AGAIN! And the wind is no longer my friend.
So it started out a nice gentle day, had a drive over to Hawkesyard fully loaded with stuff. Set about setting up the aisle décor as the previous days wedding guests were still having breakfast in the reception hall. And it went downhill from there.
Decided to up the 8ft flower heart first, which wasn’t too bad, although a bit windy, I had brought sand bags with me. So used sandbags to weight the heart down. As the wind was blowing a bit, I decided to go set up in the reception hall and leave the rest of the aisle décor closer to the ceremony time of 4pm.
So I set up the reception with five of my beautiful 50cm white & ivory flower balls, and three 25cm flower balls with respective gold frames. I also set up the light up letters G&G for Gemma & Gary’s big day. Thought nothing more about it, and went off to lunch about 12:00. Thinking it would be an easy afternoon to finish the aisle décor off.
We returned about 2pm to finish off and noticed the 8ft flower heart had blown over, or so I thought. Upon trying to lift the heart back up it became quite apparent that it hadn’t blown over, the bars themselves which were holding it up had bent and snapped off. Shock, horror, panic and an over whelming sense of dread, not just for me, but for the bride!. Aarrggh.
So with less than 2hrs to go until the ceremony was due to start, I had to make a quick decision, and promptly packed the broken heart away, jumped in the van and raced back to my storage unit in Bloxwich to swap it out for a set of white & ivory half arches.
I had to save the day somehow, the heart was totally knackered!. Upon arrival back at the Hawkesyard Estate I had about 30 minutes to set the aisle décor up including the half arches. All the wedding guests were arriving and wondering what was going on.
So I put the half arches together and stood them in situ, no sooner had I turned my back to do the carpet runner one of the arches blew over.. omg no, this can’t be happening, but it was ! Like a scene out of a recurring horror film, the half arches just couldn’t stand up against the might of the wind. Not only that, the 5ft white & ivory blossom couldn’t stand even. No matter what I tried they just wouldn’t stand up against the wind.
With 5 minutes to spare before the lovely bride Gemma came walking down the aisle, I had the genius idea to use cable ties to tie the half arches off against a set of metal frames that were positioned behind the arches. Then in search of something to weigh the blossom trees down I stumbled across two perfectly sized planters, that just about had enough weight to hold the trees down in place. With a minute to spare, I jumped in my van and parked out of sight, with the aisle décor complete, all guests in place and me sweating and praying from the side lines.
Thankfully, no more mishaps occurred, no more blowing over of props and no more breakage of props. Today has not been a fun day, it’s been quite traumatic and I’ve vowed to NEVER do another outdoor wedding set up again – ever!. The weather is just to unpredictable, to much of an obstacle to overcome and far to traumatic to deal with.. lol.
So if you want an outdoor wedding, as lovely as they are – it’s a no from me!
