A Guide to Backyard Weddings

Backyard weddings are cute AF and wildly underrated.

Just some of the reasons I love them so much— backyard weddings can be low cost (if you want them to be), more personal and fun to decorate, as traditional or non-traditional as you’d like, easy for older family members to attend, you don’t have to go anywhere if it’s your backyard!! And you can have dogs.. DOGS !! You can have dogs attend your wedding. I’ve found every single one I’ve attended and photographed to be charming and feel like a scene from an unnamed indie film. Here’s a couple of links to some examples of backyard weddings that I’ve had the honor of photographing and are pictured throughout this post.

Liana and Josh’s NJ Summer backyard wedding.

And Josie and Rae’s New York backyard wedding.

How do you decorate a yard for a wedding?

You can DIY it if you want! There’s also companies out there that will do it for you or send you a kit to decorate with. Companies like Lushra will send balloon kits, exactly like the one pictured below and will transform your space into something colorful and fun.

You can set up your own backdrops or other companies will come and set it up for you. A lot of them can provide you with neon lights, disco balls, string lights, balloon bridges, etc and will transform the wedding space into something magical. One of my personal favorite ways to decorate a backyard is by highlighting a garden if there is one. Using what’s already in the backyard as a center piece for the day— flowers, produce, something over grown, trees, etc.

You can also get tents set up with a dance floor if rain is a concern. The photo below is from a wedding in October and it was a rainy weekend, so they rented a tent for the reception and had their ceremony out in the open air.

What food should you have at a backyard wedding reception?

Depending on how much you want to put towards food, there are an endless amount of caterers out there including your personal favorite restaurants. I’ve seen couple’s rent food trucks and have them park in front of their house or in their driveways for dinner and offer light snacks throughout the evening like cheese, fruit, breads. Some have even ordered from their favorite pizza places! Nothing like a pizza party. Also, ahem, TacoBell has party packs if that’s more of your vibe! For real, do whatever you want! Have the food at your wedding that makes you happy. And if you have TacoBell cater, please invite me.

You don’t need to choose your own yard either. You can rent, ask a family member or a close friend to borrow theirs. If you have a lake house or a dock, this is a perfect opportunity to use that! I look at these weddings as the perfect moment to be creative and have more control over what your wedding day looks like and more control over who will be there. It’s also kind of like an introverts dream.