9 Summer Beach Wedding Tips

White beach wedding with burlap and dark bamboo arbor

9 Summer Beach Wedding Tips

June has arrived and as we are heading closer to the official start of summer (June 21st), the team at SOHO Events and Weddings were talking about summer beach weddings, and how we plan and prepare for the big day. With a lot of our clients (Friends of SOHO:) hosting events in Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, and Pensacola Beach we thought should share these wedding tips. If you have wedding tips or beach tips that we should add to this list, please mention in comments - Thanks!

9. Provide program fans

With the heat and humidity in Orange Beach on a summer day, a fan in the chair is always a welcome surprise for your guests. Another wedding tip that we have seen is printing the program on the fan. Local tip: you could also contact Southern Calligraphy about getting custom fans made with calligraphy. Here's an example of a place card from Southern Calligraphy.

8. Water Spritzing Stations

Wedding place cards from Southern Calligraphy

Water misters can help reduce the temperature at your wedding by as much as 35 degrees. We have misting fan rental available and we can also install custom temporary misting to a deck or porch for your wedding. Another option is providing a small spray bottle filled with water that your wedding guests can use to spritz themselves. According to The Weather Channel, a Gulf Shores wedding in July or August have average high temperatures in the 90's.

7. Beat the Heat

There are various ways to beat the heat in Gulf Shores during the summer. You could rent a tent for your reception, you could also rent fans to help cool down the area, we also have sun shades available to cool down your wedding venue or reception venue. Renting a tent in Gulf Shores also has the added benefit of providing relief if/when #6 on our list of summer beach wedding tips arrives - RAIN.

6. Rain

Orange Beach, Al Temperature and Rain from OBA.US.COM

The Gulf Coast, especially from Mobile to Pensacola is known for its afternoon shower. We get so much rain, according to Weatherunderground.com, Mobile, Al is the #5 wettest city in America with 65 inches of annual rainfall - and the wettest months of the year are July & August. So how do you beat our afternoon showers? For starters we recommend first that you have a wedding back up plan, which could be reserving a local venue. Another option is you could rent a tent to help get you through the shower, this would also help with the heat.

5. Frozen Treats

Once you've teamed up with your caterer & wedding planner and selected the perfect menu for your wedding reception, now its time to add some fun to the event. Consider adding a light frozen treat to help lower core body temperature. You could rent a snow cone machine, set up an ice cream bar, or use our custom ice cream freezer and stock it with your favorite frozen treat bars.

4. Sunscreen

You will be spending a lot time outdoors at your beach wedding, it is wise to apply sunscreen liberally this day. You also want to have plenty on hand to offer to your guests. It is nice to offer a wide variety as you will probably have children, babies and sensitive skin in the audience. Don't forget to double up on those shoulders as they receive the most sunlight.

3. Stay Hydrated

After you have selected your custom wedding cocktail, and stocked your bar, don't forget to supply extra bottles of water and other hydrating beverages to help keep you and guests in top shape for your beach wedding. Dehydration is serious and you don't want you or a guest spending time at South Baldwin Hospital from lack of hydration.

2. Choose Wedding Makeup Carefully

After you've decided who is going to help with your hair and makeup, and ya'll have collaborated on your colors and look - don't forget to consider the heat and stay away from liquid eyeliners, foundations or blushes. Consider applying a primer to keep things in place, and using powdered or crayon versions. Finally finish your look with waterproof mascara. To take the stress out of all of this, you could contact a local makeup artist, such as Makeup & Hair by Chaney in Fairhope, Al.

1. Traffic

Each year 5 million people travel to Gulf Shores and Orange Beach for their summer vacation, Pensacola Beach sees about 4 million vehicles each year, and Destin has about 4.5 million visitors each year. With these large number of visitors it is no wonder that traffic slows down during the summer at the beach. When you are planning your beach wedding you want to take the traffic into consideration for everything vendor arrivals, last minute trips to the store for forgotten items, travel time to your beach venue, making reservations, etc.

We hope these 9 summer beach wedding tips help you plan your beach wedding and maybe even provided some wedding inspiration. We will continue adding to this list so if you have any local beach tips that you would like to share, please add in comments, send us an email, or send us a message on Facebook. 

3 Steps to Dance Floor Rental. What size dance floor do I need?

Dance Floor Rental set up for a wedding at Rock Creek.

What size dance floor do I need?

When you do wedding rentals in Mobile and Pensacola areas, you get a lot of questions regarding wedding planning. This is to be expected as most people don't normally plan elaborate events every day.

One of the first questions that we ask our clients is if they have a local wedding planner or event planner that they are already working with. While this is not a necessity it certainly helps to have a partner in this process to help you navigate the wedding and event process. Your wedding planner has established relationships with local vendors, florists, venues etc and with their expertise can usually save you money in the end. One of the areas they can help with is dance floor calculations.

If you are still with us and need a pick me up here is a little Justin Timberlake singing a wedding reception song, push play and enjoy:

Music video by Justin Timberlake Featuring Timbaland performing SexyBack (Director's Cut). (C) 2006 Zomba Recording, LLC

Would any discussion about dance floor rentals be complete without a little Justin Timberlake?

Ok on to the math, yes MATH, How much dance floor do I need for a wedding? Well to begin with, there are a few questions that you must answer:

1. How many guests are going to attend your event?
2. Where is the Dance Floor going to be located? (Indoors or Outdoors)
3. Are there any space constraints at your venue for a Dance Floor?

Once you determine how many guests are going to attend and any space constraints, calculating your dance floor size gets a lot easier. Now if your event is going to be outdoors and you want to setup the dance floor on the grass you will need to get a sub floor to help keep the dance floor level, and stable so that it doesn't sink into the grass.

Dance floor rental sections usually come in 3 x 3' sections and we lock these together  to build your dance floor. Generally speaking about 1/3 of your attendees will be on the dance floor at any given time, then multiply this number by 4.5 to get an approximate amount of dance floor rental you will need in square feet. (You could then divide this number by 9, to figure out how many dance floor rental sections you would need)

Here's the math:

1. If you expect to have 200 guests and there are no space constraints
2. To get the number of dancers it would be 200 * 33% = 66 dancers
3. 66 dancers * 4.5 sq ft = 297 sq ft needed for your rental dance floor

We have also loaded the quick dance floor calculator on our tools page here.

Please contact us if there are any further questions that we can help you solve with your dance floor or any other setup or rental questions. Please provide any feedback in our comments section below and we are social, click the links below to join the party.

25 Wedding Tips from Newlyweds

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We are always looking for good tips for our clients and we recently found an article of wedding tips from newlyweds which we think can provide good insight.

#1 on the list - Take your time

"Matt and I planned our wedding for sixteen months, and it really helped to keep stress levels down. We got tons of stuff done early and had time to save for the things we really wanted. You only get to plan your wedding once, so make sure it is a fun time, not a stressful one!" —Claire and Matt

This is great advice, and we encourage clients to do the same. This is a very special time for the couple and you want to make sure it is fun and enjoyable.

 Follow this link to Bridal Guide for more of the great tips from newlyweds, or you can call or send us a message on our contact page and we can give you advice for local wedding planners, local photographers,local florists, weather, etc. We primarily work in Daphne, Fairhope, Gulf Shores, and Orange Beach, but our work also takes us to Mobile, and Pensacola often.