LONG story short we postponed our Spring wedding to Winter so now our outdoor ceremony/cocktail hour will need to be moved indoors.
The above photo is a layout of our wedding space. The room highlighted in brown is where our ceremony will now take place. The large room across the hall will be the reception space. The original plan was to have our cocktail hour on the veranda that surrounds the reception room with our guests entering the reception via the small rounded room on the far right. They would enter from the veranda, pick up escort card, sign guestbook, drop off cards, etc in that smaller rounded room and then enter the reception room via the double doors leading into that space from the small rounded room. The Bridal party will enter from the large set of double doors on the far left (basically directly across the hall from the ceremony room). The DJ will be set up along these double doors as well for acoustics and to keep his equipment out of all of our photo's.
Here is my question. Our venue explained we could have our cocktail hour at the back of the ceremony room as an alternative to the veranda as it might be chilly in December, we could still have it outdoors as well but we would need to rent heaters, which is not an issue. The issue is the string trio we have selected for our ceremony and cocktail hour music will not perform in any weather outside that is less than 60 Degree's, the average for the area that time of year is 55, so there is a chance we could have the cocktail hour 100% outdoors still. However, I do not think all of our guests would enjoy being outside if it's somewhat chilly. We are thinking of having our cocktail hour basically in two locations, there would obviously be signs directing guests. We were going to have two bars and multiple food stations anyway. We are thinking of setting up one bar and food station at the back of the ceremony room as well as keeping the band in that location and then setting up another "cocktail station" on the veranda with heaters, bar and food station for those guests who would like to enjoy the scenery/weather. We are hoping to still file guests through the smaller room into the reception room so this outdoor cocktail area would be a natural flow into the reception space still.
What do y'all think? We would have our Master of Ceremonies announce the locations and there would be several signs as well. If you are looking at the map, the guests would take a left out of the ceremony room and go out via the double doors are the far left, this also takes them by the restrooms which would be good to know the location of as well.
Thanks in advance!! Postponing hasn't been awful as we have amazing vendors but then stuff like this sneaks up and you're like....ahhhhhhh now what?
