Ep 12 • Planning a Home or Tented Wedding? Here’s What You Need to Know with Janice Carnevale

Alex: [00:00:00] Welcome to Weddings Unscripted. I’m your host, Alex, here with your co-host Ali, with over 19 years of planning weddings in the Washington DC area. We’ve seen it all, the heartfelt moments, the intricate designs, and of course the totally and completely unexpected situation that no one could have seen coming.

And that’s why we’re here to share our real stories, expert advice and insider tips to help you plan your big day with confidence. After all, there is no do-over for your wedding day. Every Tuesday we’ll dive into the lessons we’ve learned. Chat with our favorite vendor partners. And give you the unfiltered truth about wedding planning.

So whether you’re newly engaged, deep in the planning process, work in the industry, or just love weddings, grab a coffee or a glass of champagne and join us every week for weddings Unscripted.

Alex: Thanks for joining us, everyone today on another episode of [00:01:00]  Weddings Unscripted. We have a very special guest for you today, our friend and fellow event planner, Janice Carnavale from Bellwether Events. Janice is here today to talk to us about home weddings, tented weddings, and she’s also a published author and has an ebook for sale. So we want her to tell us a little bit about that. Janice, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into our crazy world and a little bit about your book as well.

Janice: Awesome. Thanks so much, Alex. It’s so fun to be here with you and Ali. You all have been doing such a great job with the podcast. I’ve really been enjoying all the episodes so far. I started in the wedding industry in DC right after college. In 2002, I was in restaurant sales and I was in charge of the wedding segment.

And then I left that job after a couple of years and moved to off-premise catering, and that’s where I really. Cut my teeth with learning about weddings, especially the logistics of weddings, the back of house side of weddings but [00:02:00] got to dabble a little bit in design elements of it as well. I founded Bellwether events in 2006.

We had our first wedding in 2007, and we’ve had about 250 weddings since then. I wrote the elegant at home wedding and released it in 2013, and I realized, you know, recently that it had been a decade and I had a dozen or so more home weddings with experience to add to it. So I recently launched a new edition and I hope that people find it helpful because that’s really why I do this, is to help people just like the two of you.

Alex: Absolutely. We love just the educational aspect of it. Just because there’s so much that goes into it, especially tented weddings. And we’ll get into all of things you need to know and questions and diagrams and permits and all that kind of stuff a little bit later. But we thought it’d be fun to jump into a little bit of some of your tented weddings.

Even you.

Ali, like what your favorite tented weddings are or. Some of the more interesting [00:03:00] ones where things didn’t go quite as planned. What was one of your favorite ones, Janice?

Janice: Recently I had a really lovely wedding out in. Boys Virginia, and it was a COVID postponement. So we waited an extra year and had another year of excitement and anticipation to make it happen. It’s kind of a small detail, but we buried the bourbon, which if you don’t know what that means, you buried a sealed bottle, bourbon upside down at the site of your wedding ceremony exactly 30 days before your wedding.

And it’s supposed to bring you good luck with the weather. And we did that. We buried the bourbon and we dug it up. I usually send the groom and groomsmen out to dig it up and they all share a shot, and it’s a good photo op. We did have excellent weather that day, and I’m not kidding when I tell you at midnight the skies opened up and it poured.

I was like, well, it’s not the wedding day anymore. The lucky bourbon doesn’t count anymore.

Alison: It’s crazy ’cause we [00:04:00] had someone do that tradition at the spy museum in dc, which also has a rooftop terrace where they have like this garden. And I was shocked. This also was a COVID wedding and. The couple asked the venue, Hey, can we bury a bourbon up on your rooftop? And the spy was like, yeah, no problem.

So I don’t know if they’re still doing that. They might have since been like, well, we’re not gonna do this anymore. ’cause so many people are asking, or no one has asked. I don’t know. Maybe my couple was the first. But yeah, it’s a fun little tradition. And that same wedding, Janice actually. Alex, you worked it for me because it was COVID when everyone was trying to postpone in crazy times.

So it was like we had two clients postpone onto the same date and it was just not possible to change anything else from there. Because all their vendors were open except for me personally. So Alex stepped in and I remember coming over after my wedding was over. Because we had a [00:05:00] band outside on the rooftop, and if it rained, it would’ve been really bad and it started raining as I was driving home when the wedding was loading out.

So, yeah, maybe the, this bourbon thing has a good trick.

Alex: It must because the amount of equipment we set up without a tent on that wedding was a lot, and everybody was like, looking at Doppler. I’m like, we think we’re good. Think we’re good. You But let’s just let’s just think it was the bourbon that saved the day for everyone.

Alison: Thank you bourbon brought to you. This episode is brought to you by Bourbon in general and Janice’s ebook.

Janice: Aw, so kind. So kind. Yeah. I think that the moral, the story is even if you’re not getting married at home, ask your venue if you’re allowed to bury the bourbon there because they might let you.

Alison: But that is the perk of having a home wedding. You could bury 15 bottles bourbon all over the place if you wanted to.

Janice: Yes, there are a lot of upsides to home weddings. But [00:06:00] the downside can be that if, for one example is I recently had a dad who was working so hard to. Do all kinds of things to get the property ready for the wedding day. He actually threw out his back the morning of the wedding and he was in so much pain.

He could barely walk his daughter down the aisle he sat when he gave his toast, which you know, I’m sure was very disappointing for him. And he eventually didn’t make it for the entirety of the event, and he went back inside his home and rested. And, that’s something you wanna really think about, not to overexert yourself and to make sure that you are bringing on professional help and just extra help so that you can fully enjoy your day.

Alex: Yeah, I think some people think it’s a great idea. They may have a big piece of property, but thinking things through, it’s a very intense time. It’s a wonderful time, but having lots of guests come into town everybody congregating [00:07:00] at your home. And then thinking about just logistic little things like

parking, restrooms, weather plan, things like that. So,

Janice: Yeah, the weather plan is really important to consider and yes, it can definitely drive up your costs to have an appropriate weather plan and it will definitely drive up your costs to have to enact a weather plan. So what I tell folks is if you’re gonna stress out about the weather for the next 8, 9, 12, 14 months while you’re engaged, let’s just do an indoor venue.

It’s not worth your sanity.

Alison: I mean, I am in this industry and I stressed about my tented wedding, like the month of, and I just kept looking at the weather unrealistically, knowing that it was going to change 15 million times. And it’s just one of those things you can’t control sometimes. But having a good solid plan in place and not just a bottle of bourbon.

Like it can totally make or break your event, whether you’re at a venue where you have to completely [00:08:00] build from scratch. ’cause there are a few in the DC area but especially at a home wedding. So I’m actually curious, what all was this dad doing?

When he threw out his back? Like what? He’s like moving trees or something.

Janice: we did not have to move any trees for this wedding. I know, Ali, that you have had clients that considered pulling down trees for their home weddings. We did not have to move trees for this wedding. I think he was just. Stuff that he could have outsourced to a handyman or a gardener landscaper, stuff like that.

He just put on his own plate and, you know, thought, oh I’ve, taken care of this farm for 15 years. I can do all of this. And that’s pressure that I don’t think you always need to put on yourself. I don’t know. I did not ask like, what the specific, final like.

Incident was where he, hurt himself. I think it might have been just weeks and weeks of pushing himself a little bit too hard when, you know, maybe just throw a couple thousand bucks at a landscaper and, [00:09:00] and have them come in and call it a day.

Alison: Have all the young cousins come in and help or something you can’t do it all by yourself. And I think that’s the joke you see online usually is like, or a meme or a reel that shows like you’re prepping.

House for a party that you’re about to host. So you’re like cleaning the bathrooms and the countertops, and you’re making sure every nook and cranny of the house is clean. And then where’s the guy? He’s outside like mowing the lawn or trimming. You’re like no. The party’s inside. Why are you outside doing that?

So this dad was like, I need to make sure everything is perfectly manicured and amazing. So it definitely is a lot of work.

Janice: It is. And I think that, you’re right. You can absolutely call on the cousins, call on the friends, call on your family. And if that is the approach that you wanna take to your home wedding, Go for it. There’s no judgment from me. Everyone has their own budget and everyone has their own financial comfort zone.

That is not the type of home wedding that I [00:10:00] work with necessarily, and that is not what my ebook is geared towards. My ebook and my services are geared towards people who are, who want to offer the hospitality to their guests. That they would receive at a more traditional venue, and they want to offer the graciousness of, you know, welcoming someone to the home with a very elevated experience and not asking folks to come in and do a lot of, manual labor in the days and hours and weeks leading up to the wedding.

But no judgment against those who do. Everyone has their own budget and. You know, my budget was certainly much smaller when I got married all those years ago than what my clients spend.

Alison: Yeah, we’ve seen both, like I did a wedding out deep deep in Virginia, and they also owned a family farm, and we had to come up with so many different rain plans because we also were in hurricane season. So, I’ll tell a little bit more on that in a second. But the [00:11:00] family was prepping for months, like.

Manicuring the lawn and stuff like that. And that’s just something that they did. Like, they were the caretakers of the land. And so it worked perfectly for those people to do that. But then of course, like other weddings where you wanna hire like a gardener landscaper. So do you offer, since you’ve done so many home weddings and stuff like that, do you have services that you recommend to people for stuff like that?

Janice: Most of the folks that I have worked with have been in their properties for well over a decade, and they have their own teams and they have their own staff, and so I don’t try to interfere with that. I have done meetings with, handymen who like participate with. The site survey. And so we know, okay this field needs to be mowed, this field doesn’t need to be mowed, that kind of thing.

And I’ve had floral designers come in and consult with landscapers so that everyone’s on the same page in terms of who is doing what the color palettes are, and what is [00:12:00] the flow of the guests in order to best invest those dollars with your gardener, as well as with your floral designer.

Alison: Yeah, I think that all sounds perfect to create that like cohesive feel with your vendor partners and with your clients. So it looks like you’re covering all of your bases. So if they’re like, oh, we have a team, we’re good. But then you can be like, Hey, we can make it better. Like just elevates that so much for them.

Janice: Yeah, I mean, if if everyone’s working from the same design deck, if everyone has all the same information, then you’re just gonna have that much better of, of a result in the end, both aesthetically and also with the warmth that you’re offering your guests and, and the community that you’re building with everyone who’s in attendance.

Alison: And going back to that hurricane season that I was just mentoring. It was a couple years ago, I had a wedding, like I said, out deep in Virginia and it was months of prepping all of the possible options for rain plan. And I think we had like [00:13:00] three or four different scenarios of like,

if this happens, we can do this. Or what if it rains before the ceremony? What if it rains during load-in? What if it rains during the reception? So you have to try to kind of think of that because with a tented wedding or at a home wedding, you are stuck outside or under a tent the entire time.

And if you picture having your ceremony out in the open, then what happens if it rains or cocktail hour is supposed to be outside? What are you supposed to do? You have to come up with all of those plans, and I imagine. Most people that are using their home, there are some houses that I used to do catering gigs at in St.

Michael’s where if it rained, we could all fit inside perfectly easily. But most of the time people don’t want all those people, and that’s why they’re bringing the tent in the bathroom trailers so that you don’t overwhelm your septic system and stuff like that. But it poured. Stormed everywhere.

Like DC got hit so hard. But we were in this perfect little bubble where it rained during [00:14:00] the load-in, but then was perfect the rest of the day. So I’m looking at reels and talking to other planters, and they’re all like, it’s raining cats and dogs outside. But then we’re in this like. Bubble where I’m like, I can see the moon in the stars right now, and everyone else is talking about flooding in their tents and stuff.

I was like, so my couple must have done something right to, to get this amazing weather. But I know Janice, you were talking about or might have a crazy story about like rain.

Janice: Well, in June of 2012, DC had a recho, which is a very uncommon weather phenomenon. For the East coast, it happens. Almost never. And so most people when I bring this up, if they didn’t live through it, are like, what’s a derecho? I was talking to somebody from the Pacific Northwest the other day. He had also never heard of this term.

A derecho is a thunderstorm with like tornado winds. [00:15:00] And you mostly see them in the plains. And this was back when Facebook was, you know, really like the source of a lot of breaking news in terms of what existed on social media. And so somebody, I think it was capital weather gang, around four o’clock in the afternoon.

This was a Friday. I already had two tents up for this home wedding, A frame tent and a pull 10. And the frame tent was just on the grass and the pole tent was on a leveled floor. And capital weather gang posted on Facebook that there was a chance of a recho. And my friend, you all might also know her too, Mary Kate McKenna, she’s a photographer who lives in Frederick.

She reposted it. She’s from Indiana. And she’s like, oh my gosh, I’ve never seen a direction outside of, Indiana, a plain state. And I said, what’s a. And she explained it. And so then I called my tent company. And at the time we were using a company based in Charlottesville because at the time they were the best and they had inventory that you could not [00:16:00] get closer in Charlottesville being about two and a half hour drive from where Ali, Alex and I are.

so I called them. They were also of the, what is a derecho mindset. They said, well, just keep us posted. And that’s what we did. My husband and I sat in our condo and basically just waited for this storm to come. And when it was over the homeowner, the father of the bride called me and said the circle tent, that which was the pole tent is down, This was about 11. And so Larry and I gave it another hour, and then we drove I live in Falls Church and we drove out to Fairfax. It should be like a 20 minute drive. It took us close to an hour and because just traffic and trees were down and detours and flooding and all that kind of stuff, we get over there.

I, you know, would do a quick survey of the property. And call the tent company. My sales rep had stayed in the office. She was sleeping at her desk and was waiting to hear from me to see what they needed to send. And so they packed a new [00:17:00] truck. They sent a new tent. All of the decor that had been in the pole tent was obviously destroyed.

Like pole fans can lights, string lights, and then the frame tent held up. Frame tents are. Sturdier. So if you are concerned about wind, you want to go with a frame or a navi track. But all the decor, we had string lights and we had draping swags in the ceiling. Not a full liner, but we had draping swags in the ceiling of the frame tent.

All of that was down as well. So they had to pack a new truck and I think the truck left Charlottesville around five and got to us around eight. And thankfully they had a couple of generators. We already had one ‘ cause we had planned, you know, to have a generator.

But they brought a couple of extra and that helped us alleviate because the DC area lost power for nearly a week. Like many of us were out of power that week from at least four to six days. So it was nice to have a little bit of extra power available to us that we could plug things [00:18:00] into and charge cell phones and things of that nature.

Yeah, that was a wild one for sure. I learned a lot about myself that day. I learned a lot about other people that day. and yeah, don’t wanna, do that again. And Ali, to your point, when you build a venue, which is what you’re doing at a home wedding, you are building a venue.

Even if it’s temporary, you are now responsible for the safety of all those people. If you don’t have a place to evacuate, and I don’t mean evacuate to the tent because you cannot be in a tent. In a thunderstorm, you have to be somewhere else in a thunderstorm. So if you don’t have a place to evacuate your 200 guests if there’s a thunderstorm at your home wedding, then that’s their election of duty.

That’s not a good plan of care for your 200 favorite people.

Alison: So, Janice, it’s funny you say that because I was doing a wedding last year. And I asked the tent company, I go, what are the actual [00:19:00] rules of if a thunderstorm or crazy winds happen? Like what can this tent like withstand and stuff like that?

Because it was fully out outdoor venue and we have nowhere to go and sometimes there is nowhere to go and. We did have buses for this wedding. So like if something did happen, we could like load people on buses, but it wouldn’t hold everyone. And he literally looked at me and he was like, I don’t know.

And I was like, what? How do you not know? Like, that seems like an issue to me that we should know what we should do. because the tent was a sailcloth so like technically no metal because it’s giant wooden beams and stuff like that. So, but still we’re under a cloth in a thunderstorm.

Lightning can strike anywhere.

Alex: It almost talking about these. Risks make you think, like, how do we ever decide to do a tented wedding? You know what I mean? Like, it can be [00:20:00] so extreme and most of the time it all works out. It’s great. But when you think about certain things like that, like evacuation there’s usually nowhere to go.

Janice: and like, you know, I know I sound like a Debbie Downer, but this is the reality. When you are turning your own property into the host property these are the things you have to think about, and that is why you hire a professional, like one of the three of us, because we are gonna think of these things and we are going to help you not only keep your guests happy and entertained and well fed, but we’re gonna also help you keep your guests safe.

Alex: Absolutely. And we would just never not mention some of these logistical things in the hopes that everything works out. We don’t wanna get stuck at a point where they said, I didn’t know this, I didn’t know that. So it is sort of our responsibility to let them know all of the risk involved. I’m sure people are studying their Farmers Almanac as well.

They’re like, oh, it’s gonna be fine on that day. It’ll be fine. [00:21:00]

Janice: Well, it’s it’s funny that Ali mentioned hurricane season because I think most people would not consider DC or the general Mid-Atlantic having to have a hurricane season, but it has steadily gotten worse in the 20 years I’ve been doing this. The after effects the add-on effects of hurricanes that are. Really doing major damage in the south. They still get up here and they’re doing real damage up here as well.

Alison: So that’s where you might see like smaller little tornadoes. I think we just literally last week, didn’t we have like a small tornado in Baltimore or something like that from a windstorm. And that’s like even seasons I feel like have changed. So everyone’s always like, and I was just telling someone about this the other day, April showers bring May flowers and I want to change that saying now to April and May.

Showers bring just flowers in general because May has been so rainy the last couple of [00:22:00] years, I think the last 10 years. ‘Cause obviously we’re watching weather all the time for our clients, especially if it’s an outdoor or has some sort of semi outdoor element, we still have to watch the weather and.

It changes throughout the week immensely, but anyone that wants like an April or May wedding now and wants to do tented, I’m just like, it’s gonna rain. We have to plan for it to rain because look at May this year. It’s already rained like a ton this week, and then I think it’s supposed to rain all next week.

Alex: Yeah, it’s a lot to deal with.

Janice: there was definitely a year where it rained every Saturday in May. And by chance, I had no weddings that may, I had a ton in April and a ton in June, but I had zero weddings that year and I just felt so terribly for those folks. And also, I think, you know, November is getting more popular because the mildness of October is now.

Leaking into early to mid-November. The leaves are not changing as early, [00:23:00] so I think eventually the first half of November will kind of be October 2.0, at least in this area.

Alex: I agree with you and I think we’ve already started seeing it because I almost think that September is a continuation of summer ’cause it can be so hot. People think of November as winter, but it’s really been very mild and lovely on some nights.

Alison: We even look at like December, the past couple of years, I feel like I’m in like a t-shirt and jeans just like going to Christmas or something like that. ’cause it’s so warm.

Alex: yeah, hop on the boat, little boat ride at Christmas. It’d be great.

Alison: We will start seeing venues ’cause I think like, tented weddings obviously if you’re at your home, I’m sure like most tent companies be like, sure do a tented event in December, January. But like us, we’re like, no, don’t do that. That sounds terrible. But there is a season for most. Venues that have tents.

So they’ll have their tents up usually between April and maybe like end of [00:24:00] October, sometimes November, maybe especially since it’s been a, a little bit nicer lately. But I think people also forget that it can still snow in March. Early April with one of our past podcasts that we talked about with one of my first weddings.

That was April 8th, and I always remember that date because it snowed for that wedding.

Alex: For that tented wedding. That’s great. Janice, why don’t we switch tunes a little bit and just talk about just some of the things that clients They see pictures of this gorgeous tented wedding. floral entry, perfect weather, absolutely gorgeous. What are the real things they need to think about.

Give us a little run in, if you will.

Janice: If you decide to host a tinted wedding at home, your first many decisions and vendor contracts are going to be the unsexy, unglamorous infrastructure things. Before you get to move on to fun things like catering [00:25:00] and florals and hiring a fantastic photographer, we talked a little bit about this earlier, but having a tent floor is basically like having an insurance policy.

I should say a well installed and well draining tent floor. Is basically an insurance policy against poor weather, particularly earlier in the week, but also on the wedding day. Flooring is very expensive. It is thousands and thousands of dollars, but no one ever regretted having a floor.

But plenty of people have regretted not having a floor. So if you have a Generally, level, piece of land. Then you can probably get away with like dura track, which is like the interlocking plastic pieces, which have a little bit of give to be on something that’s not laser level flat and then that gets covered.

Or if you have a big grade I’ve had a four foot grade, I’ve had a 14 foot grade, which means that if there was a laser level at [00:26:00] one point, that would be four to 14 feet off the ground. Then that’s a leveled floor and they’re basically installing scaffolding under your tent to hold up the floor and to accommodate for the grade in the land.

And that is, things that you’ll have to consider and things that you should invest in. And that is, like I said, a big. Chunk of the budget, but you will be thrilled that you invested in it because it will keep your guests feet dry. And people with dry feet are happy people and there’s a bunch of different options as the two of you know, to cover that floor.

You can do turf. You can do vinyl, you can do carpet, and you can also do wood plank floor, and that all is like an aesthetic choice that also impacts the budget as those four things are vastly different in price.

Alison: Yes we did a wedding where there was a floor and their options were. This weird carpet, and this was a long time [00:27:00] ago, but it was weird carpet or it was turf and the couple was like, this is it. There’s no more options outside of this. So that’s where you have to find a tent company that really can bring all of these things to you.

And there are smaller tent companies where. All you can get maybe is green or black AstroTurf, which is kind of like that plastic. I kind of equate it to like Easter egg plastic that you would put at the bottom of a basket. And that is now on the floor

Janice: I have no problem with turf. Like I think a beige turf is totally fine. 10 years ago I had a wedding and they pretty much didn’t have a budget. Like they pretty much did whatever they wanted. The only thing they balked at was the cost of turf versus the cost of the wood plank was a difference of three x.

And they were like, no, this is where we draw the line. We’re drawing the line at, you know, $30,000 or whatever it was at [00:28:00] the time, 10 years ago. Those wedding photos are still in my portfolio today. I use them all the time. The beige turf is totally fine with me.

I think carpet is weird because the minute it gets wet or muddy you’re done. It’s done.

Alex: I could see DEI turf being totally fine ’cause it kind of disappears. Like we had some green turf. And

Alison: But that’s the only option they had. It was green or black turf. There was no beautiful cream or anything. I.

Alex: And it was like, but we’re at an outdoor tented wedding. Why? Like, why? But it was still a beautiful wedding. It just, in some of the pictures I.

was like, wait, what was that?

Alison: But that also was a venue where that was the only tent company you were allowed to work with. And so you only had to work with what their options are. So if you have a at home wedding you really do get to do the research with your planner to look through the different options to make sure you get everything that you want and that you don’t book someone and then run into the issue of like, oh, I only can have green AstroTurf.

And [00:29:00] that might work for some people, but it might not work for everyone.

Alex: Janice, what about permits and like noise ordinances? Because then you get into working with like city officials and that just feels like a headache. So talk to us about your experience with that a little bit.

Janice: Well, you’re not wrong. You know, there’s a couple of schools of thought here. You can, I. Oftentimes you can pay a fee to your tent company and they will get your permits for you. That is a choice that you can make to spend that money or you can do it yourself if you decide to do it yourself.

I always say you are really going to be introduced to the lowest levels of government bureaucracy when you’re working on your tent permit because the regulations, the locality regulations around tents. They were never considering weddings when they wrote these rules. So the rules make no sense with regards to weddings, these rules are about festivals and street food fairs and carnivals, like they [00:30:00] have nothing to do with weddings.

Alison: one example of that, just so people know what we’re talking about here, is I had a wedding in Virginia and I think that in most. States, you have to go county by county for the tent permitting and the different rules from county to county. So when we were doing the tent permit for that, the tent company took care of it, but then on site, an inspector had to come and look at everything and approve everything during the load-in the day before the event to be able to say, Hey, I approve of this.

And so we’re walking around with the inspector, the tent company, and myself, and they were like, oh. You don’t have the orange caps on all of the stakes. And the tent company was even like, we’ve never had to do that in the past here before. And they’re like, oh, it’s a new thing you have.

So I literally drove 45 minutes to the nearest store. ’cause again, we were very far out Virginia and bought orange spray paint. I asked them if that would [00:31:00] work and I spray painted the top of all of the steaks. And it was just something that the tent company took over ’cause they were like, what are you doing?

I was like, yeah, that makes sense for you to do it. But sometimes I’m a little too crazy with wedding planning, but we spray painted the tops and sorry to that county, but the spray paint actually faded. So then it. Worked out, I guess, for us that it wasn’t orange, neon, orange, bright tops, and no one tripped over the stakes.

It was fine. Like people can see the stakes, but it’s just one of those things where that probably makes sense for like a very large crowd where it’s not an intimate wedding. And it was just an extra step that we weren’t prepared for. Even the tent company that filled out the permit and read everything was like, no, this wasn’t in there.

But they wouldn’t approve our tent unless we had it on there. So we actually had to have the inspector come back to approve that. We did the orange, but I’ll let Janice go back into it. But that we just wanted to share like how things might not [00:32:00] relate in general. I.

Janice: That is a fantastic story. I love that. I will tell. People, that story on your behalf. I think it’s so good. So as Ali is right, it’s on, a county by county level, and i’ve even called a particular county in this area and they tried to tell me that, that, home address was not in their county.

And I’m like, well, they send you property tax, And I got put on hold and okay, oh yeah, this is in our county. I’m like, yeah, I know. I know this is in your county. So like I said, truly the lowest level of government bureaucracy. So if you do decide to do this on your own, I recommend taking very.

Diligent notes with every phone call, always having the name of the person you spoke with, and then like Ali, said, yes, there is going to be, usually it’s a fire marshal to come out and inspect the tent. They’re going to compare the floor plan that you submitted in advance. To what it actually looks like.

They’re going to require the fire resistant documentation from the tent company, which if you ask your tent company, they should just give that to you. [00:33:00] They’re also going to make sure that you have fire extinguishers and exit signs, even if all of the walls on your beautiful tent are wide open, they still want an exit sign in that tent as well as a fire extinguisher.

so, Like I said, you could oftentimes pay your tent company to get this permit for you, or you can do it yourself if you are on very large piece of land and you have good relationships with all your neighbors. I am not saying you don’t have to, I am just saying you can consider it, but the flip side of that is if you and your neighbors are at odds on a regular basis, you have to go out and get every permit that you could possibly think of.

Do you need a permit for your generator? Do you need a permit for your restroom trailer? Your a tent permit? if you have a contentious neighbor. Then you need to protect yourself, protect your investment in this home wedding, and you need to have all of that documentation so that if they try to fight you on it, you have all of your ducks in a [00:34:00] row.

Alison: And if you don’t think someone will call the police on you, you have another thing coming because it happens at regular venues. And this is constant in venues that are in neighborhoods that are constantly battling their neighbors. And I get it, like if the music is super loud or you constantly have buses coming down your street and stuff like that.

But sometimes this is just fun for people. I was working at a venue in Virginia where it was like a pavilion, so kind of like a tent. And we were having a great time and the police showed up and the venue and I went to go talk to him and they were like, we were just here. As a courtesy.

The neighbor always calls, we have to come out. And then they sat at the end of the road and watched people leave, which is smart, looking for drunk drivers and stuff like that. But jokes on them. Everyone had a bus ride, so we were set. But we also don’t want drunk drivers ever. So please be responsible when you come to weddings because that is another crazy [00:35:00] story that I could tell about finding, and that was a tented wedding too.

It wasn’t a at home wedding, but it was a tented wedding where I was loading out. There was a car parked behind my car and I was like, huh, that’s weird. The door is open. And so I’m loading my car, loading my car. So then the car’s still there with the car door open. So I like walk over to it and there is a woman hanging down with her seatbelt holding her in place as she’s leaning outside of the car door.

And I’m like, oh my gosh, I’ve been loading my car for 20 minutes. I did not know that there was a person in here. So I like. Go right into my first aid stuff. I’m trying to wake her up. She wakes up and she’s like mumbling stuff and her key was in the ignition. And so I was like, I’m just gonna take this.

Then I like was by myself. So I took the keys and made sure she was okay. She was breathing, she was looking at me, and then I just start sprinting around the venue going, who knows this woman? Is anyone here? [00:36:00] But we had already sent all the buses because we usually run around to check if like anyone is at the venue.

Are they in the bathrooms? Are they in a bush or something? Like we run around, but this car wasn’t initially parked behind me. So this. Person put the key in the ignition, went to go drive, maybe realized she couldn’t, and then ended up parking behind my car. And luckily we did find someone that was left that did know her, that didn’t need the bus and was sober.

And so we organized that they did know her and we got her to safety. But that’s like with venues that we are very far out. Even with home weddings, if you’re out in the middle of Maryland or Virginia where you’re not super close to the nearest hotel, you also have to think about buses and can that bus pull onto your property?

And thinking about police being called at your event with the permitting process. So protect yourselves at all [00:37:00] points, especially with insurance and stuff like that, because if someone hurts themselves with alcohol at your event, you want those protections.

Janice: Yeah, and Alex is right. Every place has a noise ordinance. Like every locality has some kind of noise restriction. Often it’s 11:00 PM I do think that some niche neighborhoods are 10:00 PM so no matter what kind of wedding you’re planning, you wanna find out when the music has to stop.

Some venues. You both know this, really don’t want you to hire a band. They’d really prefer that you hire a DJ because it’s much easier to walk up to a DJ and say, turn the music down a little bit. A band is kind of what a band is. They have drums, and the drums are as loud as drums are, and they have to match everything to the drums, as we both know.

We all know so. Yeah, I think that, you know, a lot of this is protecting your investment in the overall wedding. So, you know, getting [00:38:00] an insurance policy, getting the proper permits, and if you have an insurance policy but you didn’t get the proper permits, do and something goes awry?

Do you think the insurance company is going to use that as a reason to not like, pay out your claim? Like Probably so. You know, getting on a floor, like having a proper inclement weather plan, like all these things are investments to protect the overall investment of hosting your friends and family at your at home wedding.

Alison: That’s where something that I had mentioned before, which is not overloading your septic system and thinking that you’re gonna have, you know, a hundred plus people at your house and then think that they’re gonna use your restroom. You don’t want that to back up and flood your yard. So when you’re thinking about stuff like that, like automatically bathroom trailer, like Janice said, how many generators do you need on your property?

’cause you also don’t wanna do a huge power drain and pull from your house. ’cause you could think that your outlets are strong enough, but if you don’t [00:39:00] have the proper amount of power, I have heard other vendors talk about electricity going out because a fuse or circuit was blown. And Janice and Alex, I’m sure you have weirdly heard this but when I tell people they’re like confused by it or don’t believe me, but what is the number one hugest power pull at a wedding If it was tented, and you won’t believe me, but it is the coffee, when the coffee things get plugged in to start brewing.

It can shut down an entire event if you don’t have things plugged into spider boxes, distribution boxes, all of those things. But none of this even explains if you’re having an at-home wedding. Janice, I’m sure you’ve had to deal with this before outside of spacing and where the catering tent is gonna go, but also what is underground for you to stake or barrel.

Janice: Yeah, [00:40:00] so, you can call Miss Utility or you don’t even call Miss Utility anymore. You go to the Miss Utility website and you put in your address and you put what kind of, what lines you want them to come mark for, and they usually need like eight days notice. And that’s eight days before your tent installation begins.

Not eight days before your wedding, because your tent installation is probably going in. Two to five days before your wedding for an at-home wedding. And yeah, so you bring out missed utility and you mark the lines. Now you also need to talk to the homeowner because they would know about personal irrigation lines.

If it is a private septic system versus like a public utility, like they, the homeowner will know where those things are as well. And you need to mark for all of that before you start staking into the ground. A pole tent. We mentioned this a little bit earlier. The pole tent has those center poles and it kinda looks like a circus tent.

It’s got those big swooping tops. They require more stakes. Versus a frame tent, which often requires fewer stakes or a frame tent can be held down [00:41:00] with water barrels or concrete blocks. I have seen most stakes are three feet long. I have seen foot and a half stakes when we are concerned about a underground line.

But when you have foot and a half stakes, you need twice as many stakes and twice as many lines from the tent in order to make sure that it’s secure and then obviously you can’t stake if there’s hardscaping. You know, if there’s. Stone, you know, or concrete or asphalt you can’t stake into that obviously. So that might also impact what type of tent you decide or are able to install on your property. And I completely agree, Alex.

More than one occasion, I’ve seen a commercial coffee pot pop a circuit at least five times in my life. They draw a lot of power. You cannot rely on the home. You have to have generators. The bathroom trailer I would put on its own generator. Everything else probably can survive on one large generator.

Ali mentioned spider boxes. People probably don’t know what that is. So it’s [00:42:00] basically a miniature distribution center from the generator. So your generator can only be in one place, but it’s gotta cover the catering tent and it’s gotta cover the reception tent. It might be also covering like a tech tent for your vendors.

So we have these little distribution centers that run out from the generator, and then the plugs, the actual plugs that the band is using, that your lighting is plugged into, that the coffee pots are getting plugged into. That extends from the spider boxes so that only have to run one cord 50 feet and then run a second cord, 20 feet versus running 17 cords 125 feet.

Alison: So extension cords are extremely important, and your tent company should be bringing 15 million feet of extension cords just in case. And that goes to the staking at a home wedding. You know, you could run into issues where, this is where I wanted the tent, but then [00:43:00] there was a massive boulder underneath or something you didn’t plan for, and you’ve had to shift the tent like a foot or something like that, just so that they could stake.

So you have to be. A little bit open to flexibility to be able to get most of what you want with a home wedding. And that’s where we try to plan as much as possible. And until they give us little pocket lidar detectors where we can see under the ground, we don’t currently have that technology. So we just have to plan for everything.

And if we didn’t plan for it, then that’s where we have learned and we note it for next time./

So one final thing, as we’re talking about power in all of the things that go into just the general logistics of things that we have to plan for will be. US planners are working with the tent company and with you, but with the tent company nonstop to plan for all of these things.

But we also have to plan out the power drops. So where do all these spider boxes go? [00:44:00] Especially I’ve had tents where we’ve had to suspend. Power down a, certain like tent pole or something like that to connect to fans or where the DJ’s gonna be located so that they can hook up really easy. And sometimes they’re sneaking that around the ridge of the tent.

So we have to pre-plan for that. And I learned that earlier in my career when I did a. A tent wedding. And they were like, all right, where do you want your power drops? And I was like, oh, that is a thing that we have to think about. Noted. And now for every wedding, I am putting like little red Xs on putting it on the floor plan so that the tent company and I are in the same. Mindset, but then also the other vendors can see where their power’s going to be and then they can then say, Hey, I do need an outlet here. And then we talk about adding that power drop or something.

Alex: There is a lot to think about, obviously, if you’re having a tented wedding, especially at your own home. [00:45:00] But that being said, we do love to do them. Like what are the benefits? Like they’re typically gorgeous. It’s wonderful to eat outside and the garden style sort of beautiful tented situation.

Janice, why do you love working on these kinds of weddings?

Janice: I love an at home wedding because. It is a complete challenge and it is something that will only ever be done once. And I think that we are in particular in an industry where one of a kind personalized, unique events or features of events is. The most highly sought after thing you can achieve. And so what is more one of a kind than, you know, getting married at home?

And I think that’s why I love it, and I think that’s why people wanna do it. They want something that no one else has ever seen.

Alex: And I think that it just means a lot like. Especially if whoever’s getting married, that was their childhood [00:46:00] home and their family home and they’ve had lots of celebrations there. It really just means so much to have like a personal wedding there. So.

Janice: Nostalgia is. Nostalgia sells and not to be, I know that sounds crass, but people are into nostalgia all the time forever and ever. They’re into nostalgia and what could be more hospitable and more warm than bringing people to your home? I think that there’s no greater compliment than inviting someone to your home.

Alex: I love it. All right, So Janice, will you just tell us a little bit about your ebook? Where can we find it? And then a little bit how people can find you as well. Your website, your Instagram.

Janice: Thank you so much, Alex. Thank you so much, Ali. This has been so fun. I could do this for hours and hours. Maybe I should start a podcast and you’ve been so generous to have me on to talk and to promote my ebook a little bit. The best way, the easiest way is probably to go to yourweddingathome.com and then click the link that says Download now, and [00:47:00] that will take you to my Shopify site. It is a download, it is 64 pages from the first edition that came out 12 years ago. I added 4,000 words and a, decade’s worth of experience and new things that we learned along the way. And I really hope that people find it helpful if they’re trying to plan an elevated home wedding.

Alison: And the ebook should not ever replace Janice’s amazing home wedding planning services that she offers or any planner in that case. But it will be helpful for you to understand that it is no easy feat to have a tented wedding in general, but to do it at your own home where you want to protect your property and your guests.

And I think we’ve hit the nail on the head a few times there.

Janice: If you wanna just, uh, find me directly. My Instagram is @bellwetherevent singular because a long time ago, Twitter only let you have so many characters as your handle. And so I went with [00:48:00] the singular bellwether event and that has carried on since 2009. Thank you. Bellwether Events. Thank you so much.

Alex: Absolutely. It’s been. A pleasure having you on and we hope some people check out your ebook. Thank you for sharing your expertise in this department. Gosh, there’s so many weddings in the Washington DC area and surrounding verbs that, you know, it’s just great to have good relationships with other planners.

So we appreciate you and all the good work you do. And that’s it for another episode of Weddings Unscripted. We will see you all next week. Thanks so much everybody.

That’s a wrap on this episode of Weddings Unscripted. Thanks so much for tuning in. We love having you here. And don’t forget we drop new episodes every Tuesday, so hit that subscribe button and leave us a review if you’re loving all the tips and stories we share. Want more details from today’s episode?

Go ahead and check out the show notes for links and extra information, and we’d love to hear from [00:49:00] you. Have a wedding planning question or topic you’d like us to cover. Send us a message weddingsunscripted.com or DM us on Instagram at @weddingsunscripted. Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next Tuesday.