Ceremony Change Up

So this past weekend, Keegan and I drove the 8+ hours up to Missouri to see my middle sister graduate from high school and to get some wedding things done.

I'll post later on our caterer and other wedding things we did over the weekend, but right now I want to talk about our ceremony space.

We're having our ceremony at Stephens Park and our reception at the Riechmann Pavilion on the park grounds.

When we first booked the park for our wedding, the park staff had just started a pretty big project revamping some of the grounds including three semi-circular rock spaces.This project was also supposed to include flower gardens and other landscaping.

In January, we looked at the space and decided to have our ceremony in one of the semi-circle rock areas providing they were done in August.

Fast forward to this past weekend, and the areas haven't really changed.

The space nearest to the pavilion has a bench in the middle which we though we'd stand in front of while our guests stand around us, filling the circle. Unfortunately, there is only a gravel path leading up to the space and the landscaping isn't the greatest. 

We by-passed the second space because it was worse than the other two and walked down to the last space which was the farthest down the path. This would be a long trek for me with my dress and heels, but we were considering it.

This space had one path that was full of random, large rocks (a perfect place for me to twist my ankle,) but the other path was paved. The "flower gardens" that we were told about were currently over grown with weeds and other plants. It looked like no one had been around since January. Also, after a few calculations by Keegan, we found out that to fit 150 people in this semi-circle, each people would only have about 2.5 feet of space. I know that our families and guests like each other, but I don't think they're that friendly. 

We pretty much decided right then and there that these rock gardens wouldn't work for our wedding. We didn't want to chance them not getting finished in the next 2.5 months and having to scramble the day of our wedding to find a suitable space.

So, we came up with Plan B, the large lawn directly outside of the pavilion.

Our friends got married in this space (a few feet to the right) almost 3 years ago now, and we remembered it working well.

Originally, when we were still having the ceremony in the rock garden, we were going to have all of our guests stand for our 15ish minute ceremony and have just a few chairs for our flower girls and grandparents to sit in. However, after seeing all the space we have to work with now, we've started re-thinking things.

I've always loved the idea of laying out blankets on the ground and letting our guests sit on them during the ceremony. I love the laid-back feel of it, but when I brought up the idea, Keegan shot it down pretty quickly.

(Please excuse my poor Photoshopping in these next few photos)

Keegan was worried about where we'd find enough blankets to seat everyone. I figure that they don't need to match, so if we ask both of our moms, a few aunts and friends, we could come up with enough. 

Option two was to get hay bales and use them as seats. While driving home last night (don't worry, Keegan was driving,) I did a quick search for hay bales in our area. Many farmers around Columbia are selling hay bales on Craigslist for $2-$5 each. This seemed like the best idea until we really thought of the logistics of using hay bales. First of all, if we fit 3 people per bale, we'd need over 60 bales. Now the cost of 60 bales at $2 each isn't that bad, but we have no way of transporting them. Neither Keegan or I have a truck, and I can't think of any of our friends or family that has one. Even if we did have a few friends with trucks, they'd have to make multiple trips to transport the bales. Second, what do we do with 60 bales of hay after the wedding? We thought of asking our friend who owns a deer farm if he could use them, but that involves transporting them to Jeff City the night of the wedding which I'm sure no one will volunteer for.

 

We thought for a split second about compromising and putting quilts on hay bales, but that just mixes the problems of each idea together. What would we do with 60+ quilts and hay bales after the wedding?

Another option would be to rent chairs for everyone. A rental place close to our ceremony space sells white folding chairs which would work. They don't have their prices online so I'm not sure how expensive this would be, but I'm sure it's not cheap. I'm sure there would also be a delivery fee or we'd have to figure out how to transport the chairs.

Our last option? Just have people stand like we originally thought we would. We're only have a 15ish minute ceremony so people can stand that long, right? While it's not "traditional" and we'd have to figure out how to designate an aisle for us to walk down, but besides that, this would be the cheapest and easiest option.

So unless I have an epiphany, those are our options. Anyone have any opinions? Do you think our guests could stand for 15 minutes? Is it rude not to offer some sort of seating?