Outdoor vs Indoor weddings: Pros and cons

Wedding planning requires you to make a lot of decisions, ranging from minor to major. Without a doubt, one of the biggest decisions you’ll have to make is whether you want your wedding to take place indoors or outdoors. In fact, this is one of the first choices you’ll need to make before you can book the venue and start planning other details. Everything from your decorations to the date of your wedding depends on whether your event will be outside or inside. Here are the pros and cons to consider before you make this big decision.

Pros and cons of outdoor weddings

Outdoor weddings are popular for a reason. They’re typically in gorgeous settings, such as at the beach or in the mountains. Add a pretty sunset and you’ll quickly see you can’t duplicate that kind of beauty at an indoor event. You might even save money on decorations since you don’t need to dress up nature to get a beautiful look. As an added bonus, the great outdoors is much larger than any indoor venue. That means if you want a wedding with hundreds of people, an outdoor event is ideal. Plus, you have extra space to allow children to run around and even play lawn games, ensuring they’re kept busy during the wedding reception.

Of course, nature isn’t always perfect. The setting might be breathtaking, but it won’t feel like it if it’s rainy, windy, cold or hot on the day of the wedding. That’s why you need to check the weather forecast or at least have a backup plan if you want to host your wedding outdoors. And in some areas, you can expect hot or freezing cold weather for months at a time during certain seasons, which means outdoor weddings are only a good idea during some parts of the year. Finally, the logistics can be difficult outside, as nature doesn’t have electrical outlets or nice bathrooms for your guests. You have to make arrangements for these instead.

Pros and cons of indoor weddings

If some of the drawbacks of an outdoor wedding seem to be outweighing the benefits, you might be drawn to the idea of an indoor event. After all, when you have your wedding at an indoor venue, you don’t have to worry about the weather on your special day. This means you can choose any day you want, without having to avoid entire seasons due to bad weather. You also don’t need to figure out where your vendors will get the power for their electronics because there should be outlets on every wall.

Granted, indoor events have their own drawbacks. You may be more limited on how many guests you can have at your wedding, since most indoor venues have a limit, and it’s usually pretty close to 200. So that dream wedding with several hundred guests may need to take place outside unless you’re willing to spend time hunting down an unusually large indoor space. In addition, indoor lighting is typically dimmer than sunlight, requiring flash photography during the event. Speaking of photography, your photographers will have less room to roam as they take pictures of your big day. And whoever decorates your indoor wedding will have to put in a little more work than for an outdoor event, where nature is pretty enough to leave bare.