How To Keep Guests Cool During Hot Wedding Ceremonies

In case you don’t know, we also do invitations here at Significant Events. We’ve been doing those for 10 years now and have made many amazing, beautiful save the dates invitations, branding pieces, and of course, lots of day of paper pieces for our clients and other clients who aren’t doing events with us necessarily.

And today we’re going to talk about how that paper pertains to when you have to have your ceremony outside on a very hot day. Let’s face it, nobody wants to have a wedding ceremony outside when it’s 90°, least of all the bride and groom. But if you live in a hot state like I do, it’s going to happen inevitably sometimes. And it’s one of the places where you really can worry about how it’s going to go for your guests. I can tell you in 15 years of doing this, nothing will kill the vibe of your event more than the heat. But over the years, I’ve also learned that there are three key things that you can do to keep your guests the most comfortable for an outdoor ceremony.

#1 (and most importantly). = Water. Water. Water.

You want your guests to stay hydrated, and just the act of offering them water as they go into ceremony goes a long way. It’s a huge gesture. Get yourself a galvanized and ice down some small bottles of water. It’s so cute when you can do water bottles with the couple’s branding on them. This is not expensive to do, and there are companies that will do it and adhere the water bottle labels to filled bottles of water. Please don’t try to do this yourself. Don’t go buy a bunch of Ozark bottles, peel off those labels, get what you think might be waterproof labels, but probably aren’t, only to dump them into a tub of ice and ink is bleeding everywhere. It’s a mess. Plenty of companies do custom logo brand bottles of water and it really is about a $1.50 a bottle. But truly even bottles of Ozarka or Costco water will save the day.

#2. Keep Guests Inside/In the Shade as Long as Possible

The biggest mistake I see people make is forcing their guests to sit outside in the ceremony space for the entire 30 minutes before the ceremony starts when the guests are arriving. Why? If you have an area that’s shaded or if you have an indoor area, keep your guests inside as long as possible and say this to them. If you have a great event planning team, they can manage this for you. Another reason to hire a wedding planner! We say to the guests, “I know it’s really hot outside, but the bride and groom really want to keep you cool as long as possible. So, we’re going to leave you in here and we’ll move you outside about 10 minutes before ceremony.” You to see relief rush across their faces because they’re so glad they’re not going to have to sit outside in the sun baking for 20 minutes, even 10 minutes, before the ceremony starts. It makes a huge difference.

#3. Utilize Your Ceremony Programs as Fans

Ceremony programs can actually be super helpful on a hot day. I don’t think programs are necessary. We have a lot of weddings that don’t do them, but we do have when we do them, we often recommend just to do one per couple because honestly, men especially don’t really care about the programs. But on a hot day, every person should have a program. Lots of different styles of programs. You can do booklet programs or even just single-page, double-sided programs. This is our most popular style. We even did a newspaper once for people. Even had a word search! How cute was that? And then, of course, we can do programs that double as fans. We just attach the stick-handle to them, make them double-sided, and you’ve got a fan for your hot ceremony and it has the wedding party information on it. Super helpful, efficient, and keeps your guests cool!