First Impressions
When guests arrive at your wedding ceremony venue, they’ll be taken by the beauty of the site, and a celebratory tone is set immediately by the smiling, friendly greeters standing at the entrance. It’s a new trend to ask close relatives or friends to serve as your official welcome party, greeting the guests and pointing them toward the inside or garden wedding location. They may hand out your wedding programs and also let guests know where champagne is being served – in the case of a garden wedding taking place on-site – or even where small children may be taken for sitter service during the ceremony.
The immediate recognition of greeters puts guests at ease, eliminating the ‘where do we go?’ concerns that some guests may have when they arrive at a sprawling wedding location. With the guidance of your greeters, guests enter the wedding site ready to enjoy themselves, soon met inside by banquet site staff members bearing drinks for their refreshment.
How to Select Your Greeters
Choose at least three special friends or relatives, ideally from your and your groom’s sides so that someone at the wedding venue entrance can recognize arriving guests. If you have an extremely large guest list, choose four greeters to eliminate a line forming at the door.
Choose guests who are naturally friendly, upbeat and good conversationalists who have no anxieties about talking to strangers.
Instructions for Greeters
Ask greeters to stand just outside of the wedding venue entrance, on the steps or at the base of steps, so that they’re immediately seen by arriving guests. At an outdoor wedding, they might stand at a point where the pathway leading to the ceremony begins.
Make it a firm rule that greeters are not to text, check their iPhones, or be distracted by their dates. Their full focus must be on their greeting tasks.
Ask guests to dress in accordance with the wedding’s formality. Since these are representatives of your wedding, it is perfectly okay to set a dress code, such as cocktail-length dress or suit.
Let greeters know how many wedding programs to give out, such as one program per couple, or one program per guest. If your wedding budget is limited, or if you’re having a green wedding, this top wedding idea eliminates waste.
If you expect guests who do not speak English, it’s smart to choose a greeter who speaks, for instance, Spanish or Italian for a welcome greeting guests appreciate.
Give greeters full information on where essentials are, such as the coat check, restrooms, handicap access to the ceremony site, so that they may instruct guests who request these locations.
Remember to give greeters information on directions to the reception site, if it is different from the ceremony location. Having a stack of printed driving directions is always a smart wedding idea, even if guests decide to just program the reception address into their GPS or smartphone as they exit your ceremony location.
Wedding greeters should remain at the entrance to your wedding venue until the last possible minute before your wedding ceremony or reception begin, so that late-arriving guests are welcomed and directed.
Michael Mahle, Director of Communications, Pleasantdale Chateau
Outdoor Wedding Ceremony
Outdoor wedding ceremonies are so romantic, and many of our brides and grooms say that among their top wedding ideas is having an outdoor ceremony so that they and their wedding guests can enjoy a beautifully-bloomed garden wedding venue as they take their vows.
We’ve hosted thousands of outdoor weddings here at our Northern New Jersey wedding venue, and we offer you the top tips for planning a spectacular outdoor wedding ceremony:
Wedding planners advise providing plenty of space between rows of chairs, so that guests can walk more comfortably between rows to take their seats.
Add in the decorative style of an aisle runner, making sure to choose an aisle runner that has a non-slip underside for your and your guests’ safe use. Thin-fabric, inexpensive aisle runners tend to bunch up and blow in the breeze, and your wedding is too important to allow for any careless details such as those!
Set up a speaker system at your outdoor wedding venue, so that guests can hear you both speaking your vows, and listen to the officiant’s readings and other ceremony elements. When you’re outdoors, sound can be carried away even on the gentlest of breezes, and a speaker will save your outdoor wedding ceremony from being virtually unheard by all.
Provide shade for guests on a hot day. Some outdoor wedding couples marrying in a unique wedding venue will arrange for fabric draping in the trees surrounding their ceremony sites, and others hand out colorful umbrellas for guests to shade themselves with. Always provide for your guests’ comfort, especially on a warm day.
Coordinate your ceremony décor flowers to match the flowers and plants that exist at your outdoor wedding site, for lovely décor and savings on your wedding budget. When you incorporate the same colors of roses, peonies, tulips or other flowers planted at your site, it only takes a few budget-friendly floral décor additions to make it look like you decorated the entire scene.
Maintain a relaxed atmosphere. Outdoor wedding locations may be deemed formal, but it’s become a trend for guests to seat themselves, rather than having ushers seat each guest.
Ask your photographer to take a series of panoramic shots of your outdoor wedding venue’s scenery, to capture the beauty of the setting.
An important wedding planning consideration: Choose weightier décor items, such as a heavier pedestal for your unity candle and a sturdy floral container. If your wedding day is breezy, you don’t want the wind to tip over any of your wedding ceremony décor pieces.
Have greeters hand your wedding programs to your guests. Don’t place them on guest seats, or they may blow around in the breeze.
Choose florals that hold up in warmer, sunnier, outdoor weather. Always tell your floral designer that you’re having an outdoor wedding, so that he or she can advise you on which blooms hold up best when displayed at an outdoor wedding venue.
Michael Mahle, Director of Communications, Pleasantdale Chateau
Your wedding favors make the stylish ‘last impression’ on your wedding guests, so be sure to choose lovely favors, and create a wedding favor display that’s pleasing to the eye as well. When you take time to creatively display even the most modest of favors, your efforts create an effect that makes it seem like the favors are more expensive, more upscale and more of a treat. At our New Jersey wedding venue, we’ve seen some of the loveliest wedding favor display trends:
- Place one wedding favor at each guests’ place setting, in front of their plates.
- Create a wedding favors table by your gifts table, and set on it large, elegant silver platters that hold organized, even rows of your packaged favors. We use the same presentation style for our petit fours and other small desserts, so your favor treats will share the same elegant styling.
- Accent your wedding favors table with a floral centerpiece matching those on the guest tables, or place an 8”x10” framed photo of the two of you, paired with a framed, printed thank –you note from the two of you, in the center of the table, surrounded by your favors.
- Arrange your wedding favors on three-tier serving pedestals, just like our banquet managers and pastry chefs use with our dessert offerings, for an elegant look that matches the serving-style the guests have admired all throughout your reception and dessert hour.
- You can also use these three-tier serving pedestals as favor presentations that our servers can bring to each of your guest tables, creating an upscale presentation at the end of your reception.
- Our servers can also present each table’s favors on an elevated serving platter or on a small silver platter, with the platter garnished with additional chocolates, mints, or – a favorite at our New Jersey weddings – pastel-colored Jordan almonds.
- If you’ll make a donation to charity in lieu of traditional favors, display a framed printed announcement of your charity choice, and place next to it a basket of packaged cookies, chocolates or mints for guests to enjoy as they depart.
- Arrange one of the hottest current favor presentations – the favor bar. At this long table, guests use tongs or scoops to select their own choices of chocolates, truffles, brownie bites, colorful candies or other favor choices from glass bowls and platters. They package their own edible favor choices in either clear Lucite boxes or cellophane bags that they can tie with a ribbon. You can serve just truffles, or you can mix up your favor bar offerings to include bite-sized brownies, fudge squares, petit fours and an array of dessert indulgences.
Edible favors are the top choice at our Southern New Jersey wedding venue, but we’re also seeing single long-stemmed roses packaged in cellophane and ribbon, displayed in a tall, beautiful vase, ready for guests to choose their own take-home wedding flower.
All the best,
Caitlyn Bradley, Director of Private Dining, Ram’s Head Inn
Some of our favorite wedding ceremonies that we’ve hosted here at the Pleasantdale Chateau in West Orange, New Jersey have been masterpieces of wedding ceremony décor that truly took our breath away. Our wedding gardens and ballroom have been home to some of the top NJ floral designers’ works of art, including the following top wedding ceremony décor ideas:
Altar Décor:
- Trellises and chuppahs bursting with colorful flowers and greenery, including garlands, ivy and light-reflecting crystals.
- Flower petals scattered on the altar area ground, for the bride and groom to stand on.
- Decorative pedestals on either side of the ceremony altar, featuring large, lush floral arrangements.
- The bride and groom’s birthmonth flowers incorporated into the altar floral décor.
- Crystal bowls and vases filled with roses and other flowers, or colorful flower petals.
Aisle Décor:
- Traditional white aisle runner with crystals embedded into the fabric.
- Colorful aisle runners with the couple’s names and monogram printed at the start of the runner.
- Floral nosegays or pomanders attached to the ends of each row of seats.
- Each seat covered with a fabric chair cover, tied with a colorful ribbon.
- Each seat covered with a fabric chair cover, accented on the back with a tiny floral nosegay.
- Instead of an aisle runner, colorful flower petals are lined on either side of the aisle.
Wedding Garden Décor:
- Flowers strung from invisible wires ‘raining’ down from the trees.
- Large, dramatic crystals on invisible wires ‘raining’ down from the trees.
- Trees encircled with floral wraps or garlands.
- Lanterns suspended from the trees for evening ceremony décor accents.
- Floating candles in water features.
- Our garden lighting accents transforming the evening scene with colors and highlighting our manicured wedding garden landscaping.
We invite our brides and grooms to share their most wished-for wedding ceremony décor ideas with our banquet manager team, and we will help you create your beautiful wedding décor scene.
Have a great day!
Laura Madden, Senior Sales Manager, Pleasantdale Chateau
