Outdoor reception, table set up/lay out

We had an outdoor cocktail hour and dinner but we moved indoors for dancing. We didn’t have any decor besides centerpieces and string lights for that and we had a mix of round and long tables.

We had a beach wedding and an outdoor reception. I worked with my venue coordinator and she sketched everything out (in a computer system) for the setup so I would know exactly where everything was going in advance. We then moved things around so I liked it. It’s important to be able to know how it’s going to look so I would ask them to do that. As far as your decor you can maybe do a single table example at home so you feel good about it. We went for a simple look and string lights since it was outside. Good luck

I am also having an outdoor(tented) wedding in October 2019. I will attach my setup inspiration pics. I want the dance floor in the middle of the area with the head table and DJ on opposite sides surrounded by guest tables. I love the idea of everyone being around the dance floor to see our first dance and other events of the night. Our bar will be in a corner and our buffet will either be in the opposite corner or in a separate tent just outside the main one. Lots of greenery, string lights, and light neutral colors to go with our burgundy main color. The bottom photo is what I drew up for our tent.

I would contact your venue and ask if they have sample floor plans. Ours is outdoor but on a covered pavilion and our event coordinator emailed me a mock floor plan based on our requests and guest count. We're going to look at it and decide if it works for us and if not, we'll make some suggestions and change what needs to be changed.

View Quoted Comment Lol thank you i finally have done of the saved as my inspiration too. I like your layout though. This is the layout i had come up with. I also like the tables around the dancefloor. But ive edited it about 15 times. Its obviously not to scale but just something to give me an idea. Thanks for sharing!

View Quoted Comment Were getting married at his parents house so unfortunately that's not an option.
They have a beautiful historic home withplenty of land near the water.

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That looks great! We are having a fairly large wedding so putting the dance floor in the middle for us felt like it included everyone more.

View Quoted Comment Ah. Gotcha. And I love what you've come up with above. It looks like a beautiful place!

View Quoted Comment It really is, plus its sentimental, and one day he will own that land, so i liked all of that about it as well. Thank you!

View Quoted Comment Our wedding will probably end up being 50-80 people, so not huge, but i definitely think regardless of size the dance floor helps tie things together.
And thank you, maybe i just needed an outsiders opinion.

View Quoted Comment Glad I could help! Hope your day is perfect!!

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I think this looks really nice, is there a part of it you are not convinced about, a part in particular you keep changing?

We had a tent so I was able to map out a floor plan of that space using AllSeated. Fortunately we had good weather, so, only the reception was under the tent — ceremony was down on the beach and cocktail hour was in the lower yard between the house and beach. Kept the tent closest to the house for ease of electricity access for lights and dj. Under the tent were the tables, dj, dance floor, and buffet (2 buffets set up basically mirroring eachother on opposite sides of the tent). And the bar was back “behind” the tent (a separate bar had been set up for cocktail
hour, and also in the cocktail hour area was : escort cards set up, and guestbook table, and then a round table in the middle of the area with a stationary chip-and-dip display). We arranged the dining tables in a “U” around the dance floor in such a way that everyone had a view of the water I’d they looked out past the dance floor (which also allowed our DJ to use his same set up for cocktail hour, simply facing the speakers out towards the lower yard away from the tent). The buffet set ups then in the back “corners” of the tent so they were out of the way and not blocking view of dance floor or water, and closest to the kitchen. We ended up doing a sweetheart table for ourselves and stuck ourselves at the back which I know is a bit out of the ordinary but we had a few reasons: we had no desire to be “on display” the whole night, and didn’t do any of the speech formalities (where everyone would’ve wanted to have eyes on us), and we really didn’t expect to spend very
much time there at all (which was very much true! We were seated exactly as much time as it took us to eat!), so we centrally located ourselves more or less directly in front of the bar figuring everyone would pass that way eventually inevitably so it’d be a good opportunity to say hi to people 🤣

pics for reference: view from house over tent looking out on cocktail hour [can see the buffet table on the edge there], then reverse view, from ceremony up to tent [taken during set up haha]; layout from allseated , and, actual set up