If you’re going for an outdoor, glamping wedding you need to think beyond the bell tent village and main marquee/tipi. The thing with outdoor weddings is… you’ve usually got a lot of space to fill! We’ve compiled our favourite ideas for outdoor wedding décor, in keeping with the glamping/festival vibe of course.
Hanging décor for glamping weddings
Trees are your friends! Their branches are just saying “come on, let’s make this place beautiful”. They’re the equivalent to beams in a barn. Get creative and hang stuff from them. Perhaps collect chintzy lampshades and hang them from the trees with invisible fishing wire. Modern bright colours if it goes with the mood, or perhaps clashing vintage florals. Colourful ribbon garlands look great in the trees too, as do Chinese paper lanterns and dream catchers.
Lighting up your festival wedding
Following on from hanging décor, festoon lighting and fairy lights look beautiful hung in the trees, strung between trees above your bell tent village, or strung from tall crooks above a walkway. See our recent blog post for more information and guidance re outdoor lighting.
Festival-style wedding ceremony set-ups
If you’re having an outdoor blessing, the ceremony area is an obvious area to dress. Lovely ideas for ceremony backdrops include metal moon arches dressed with flowers, a copper pipe stand fitted with intricate boho macramé or how about a ‘naked’ tipi? A naked tipi is a rustic boho-style structure created using long lengths of wood and dressed with flowers and props such as antlers. See below for seating ideas for an outdoor ceremony set-up. In terms of the aisle, layered Persian rugs are great for the boho/festival vibe. You can make a feature of the aisle ends with milk churns, flowers/ribbons hanging from chairs or lanterns on low crooks.
Seating/tables for outdoor, glamping weddings
For ceremony seating, rows of hay bales covered in hessian, blankets and other beautiful fabrics work well for barn/farm weddings (maybe consider higher seating for elderly relatives). We love mismatched seating for an eclectic look and Purple Door Props specialise in brightly coloured mismatch chairs. Hay bales can also form sofas/lounge areas or look at companies like Hire Love and Locate to Create who offer outdoor lounge packages including sofas, rugs, trunks, peacock chairs etc. In terms of additional seating, deck chairs are a great shout for nostalgic British vibes and they look great outside our bell tents. Stick of rock anyone?
Tables suitable for outdoor weddings
Upturned cable reels dotted around offer a good solution as occasional tables. We also like tall tables with long twinkly sequin table cloths for sassy Ibiza-esque festival vibes (isn’t it great that bell tent hire lends itself to everything from humble farm weddings to hedonistic festivities?!).
Feature stations for glamping weddings
We love the idea of setting up a DIY flower crown station. Buy buckets of locally grown flowers (see recent post re ethical blooms), forage for foliage and search on YouTube for guidance on creating the base structure. Food and drink ‘pimp’ stations work well i.e. pimp your prosecco with edible flowers, cordials etc or perhaps a DIY bruschetta station in place of canapes. You can make a real focal point of these stations with décor, signage and beautiful rustic dispensers/serveware. You can create a photo area by hanging a large guilt frame from the trees, laying down some rugs and providing a trunk of fun props. Or flower walls work well as photo backdrops. We love things that are decorative and practical, they work so well with bell tent hire.
Cake dresser as outdoor decor
It’s popular to display your cake on a rustic dresser dressed with flowers. Wedding cakes cost an arm and a leg so it’s only fair to make a feature of them and get some good photos (with our bell tents in the background if poss!)
Festival flags around your bell tent village
Glasto-stylie! Colourful flags blowing in the breeze give your guests a taste of things to come when they arrive and they look great in photos. Use them to mark out the entrance, the bar, the entrance to the main tent and the entrance to the bell tent glamping area.
Handy signage around your festival wedding site
Wooden festival signs, neutral or in bright colours are decorative and practical. Neon signs and light up letters work well for the bar, chalk boards and brush lettering on rustic window panes, or pallets work well to explain the order of the day.
Bar areas for glamping weddings
Why not make a feature of your outdoor bar by booking a spectacle mobile set up like The Three Cockerels (pictured). Or for a more DIY approach consider a bike bar set-up or a barrel bar.
We hope you like our ideas… now you’ve got us on the subject we can’t stop thinking of great décor solutions for glamping weddings! We also like the idea of beautiful flower heads floating in an enamel rub. A few floating candles too? Magical. Flowers in wellies is an oldy but goody as is an elaborate floral display in the basket of a traditional butcher’s bike.
And don’t forget our bell tent villages are practical and decorative, with their colourful bunting and fairy lights. Visit our weddings page and contact us if we can help make your outdoor glamping wedding complete.
by WillWEB