My wedding is scheduled for Nov 7th, 2020. We never wanted to postpone. We are in California. Our original plan was outdoor ceremony (which will be like 15 minutes max) with indoor reception. Plan was to start ceremony at 4pm and reception goes until 10pm.
The problem is the venue has been restricted to 10 people indoors since about June. With the governor's recent changes in our reopening guidelines, it has made the county where the venue is located look worse despite them having significantly less overall cases and so, to me, it seems that since there is a 3 week wait before you can move to the next level, I have little hope that anything indoors is going to be able to happen by Nov.
The venue, however, has been holding outdoor events - easy now since it is still very warm. So, it seems like the best compromise without postponing is to have the wedding completely outdoors. They have a deck next to the lake that has overhead tent and a tent along one side where the sun tends to hit, but it is open air on the other side. They also have space heaters - I do think those are at additional cost. The location's average high at this time in Nov would be mid to upper 60s and lows can get to about 30 as it is up a bit in elevation. Rain isn't super likely.
I am wondering if anyone has insight into the best ideas for timing, etc. I will be speaking with the venue and photographer next week hopefully to also get their opinions, but thought I'd see if anyone has any input about what they did and whether it made a big difference. Sunset is at 4:54 pm. So, the obvious choice for guest comfort would be to move the wedding up much earlier and do the reception in the afternoon, to conclude around 5-5:30pm when the sun goes down as it seems likely that it will just be too cold at that time to have anything go later in the tent once the temp drops with the loss of the sun.
So, my conundrum is then, what to do about pictures? "Solar noon" is 11:42 am and it seems like we would be doing the ceremony, if the full timing is kept intact, right at the harshest light of the day? We are not doing a first look and I don't want to change on that. Am I just overthinking that the light is gonna make the pictures a lot less beautiful if our ceremony and post ceremony pics are at basically noon? Do I move it later like 1 or 2pm and do a shorter reception or play the reception by ear depending on the weather? Do I move it earlier and try to do more pics at 'late morning' light? Do we steal away and do extra pics at the golden hour during the reception even though hair/make up might be a bit worn by then? There are trees on one side of the ceremony site which I think is the east side.
I'm sorry this is so long. I know I shouldn't be stressing this much about such a minor thing! Any advice is appreciated. Picture of ceremony site below. 
