When Home Is the Rite Place

A home wedding can be an intimate affair, but it will require some careful planning and sprucing up.

It’s supposed to be one of those big moments in life. Your daughter and her boyfriend have shown up with the happy news that they’re getting married.

Then after the handshakes and hugs comes the announcement that you’re not so happy about--they want to be married at your house.

Joy fades to panic as you consider all the big and little home improvement projects you’ve been putting off. You have only months, or maybe just weeks, to get your house ready for a wedding. Is it too late to paint? What about new carpeting? Can those big brown splotches on the front lawn be fixed in time?

The allure of a home wedding is obvious. It’s an intimate setting,

ideal for a relatively small number of guests. There may be a sentimental attachment to the house, and a home wedding can (but not always) be cheaper than a traditional church-synagogue-hall wedding and reception.

But on the downside, most houses aren’t designed to host big gatherings with 50 to 100 or more guests, and you may find the day after the wedding that you’ve lost your baby but you’ve gained 20 new stains on the carpet, trampled begonias in the backyard and a plate of leftover meatballs under the couch.

Obviously, the more time you have to get the house ready, the better. Your first priority?

“Safety,” said Reg Roberts, a general contractor in Alhambra. “You’re going to be having a bunch of people who aren’t familiar with your house come over for a few hours.

“You don’t want to have to announce to all the guests that the second step up to the porch is loose and make sure they hold the railing.”

Safety must be a special concern if some of the guests will be very old or young. Keep the floors clear of any obstructions that could be tripped on, get rid of that pile of stuff by the porch and fill in those holes Rover dug in the backyard.

After making the obvious repairs, it’s time to focus on the logistics of managing a home wedding and reception and answering the next important question--where do you have it?

Because of the layout of most homes and the local climate, the answer is usually outside.

“Unless your home has a very big room that can comfortably hold a large number of people, you’re better off having the wedding outdoors,” said Tom Neumann, owner of Weddings at Home, a Sumner, Wash., company that specializes in home wedding consulting. “In a backyard or frontyard, you have more options and more room.”

A beautifully lit swimming pool can look great for a party, but it can also be a hazard and there often isn’t much yard left.

But if you really want to use that swimming pool space, there is a solution. “You can, in effect, build a temporary wood deck over the pool,” said Jim Gorman of Rancho Lumber in Westminster, who hosted his daughter’s wedding at his home nine years ago.

“You’ll be able to use that space, then after the wedding you can disassemble the wood and use it for some other project on the house.”

Creating the guest list can be one of the most stressful parts of wedding planning, but it’s especially critical for a home wedding.

Your home and backyard have only so much space, and if too many guests show up, you may have to erect chairs on the roof.

“The general rule of thumb is that you allow about four square feet per person,” Neumann said. “Of course, that all depends on the layout of the property, the type of ceremony, etc.”

Fixing up the house for the big day can be considered part of the wedding cost, but since most of the improvements are still there after the wedding, they have an added benefit.

“I’ve known people who’ve taken out home equity loans to help pay for their children’s wedding and make capital improvements to their property,” Neumann said.

Take the list of home improvement projects you’ve assembled and begin paring it down. First, eliminate those jobs that can’t be completed over a couple of weekends.

“A month before the wedding isn’t the time to remodel your kitchen,” Roberts said.

“Give yourself plenty of leeway for mistakes and, if you’re working with a contractor, be upfront. ‘We’ve got to have it all done by the 5th, can you do it?’ Most good contractors will give you an honest time frame.”

Fresh Coat of Paint

Painting inside or out is an excellent way to spruce up the old place. Just try to finish the job at least two weeks before the event so that the paint has time to cure and the odors have faded.

Replacing the carpeting is a question mark. Is it smart to change carpeting just before an army of people trample through the house? Or should you replace it and enjoy it, since new carpeting generally has an excellent resistance to stains?

You can always rent plastic runners for the heavily trafficked areas of the house and also try to control stains through the food that’s served--no tomato sauces, mustards or red wines.

Cultivating a carpet-like spread of lawn for the wedding may take some work. If you have at least two months before the guests arrive, you could fill in brown or worn areas with seed and fertilizer, getting the lawn a healthy green just in time.

On shorter notice you can fill in small areas with sod, and if it’s real short notice, many party rental outlets have rolls of Astroturf, at about 30 cents a square foot.

Finding a good neighborhood party rental store can help ease the strain of putting a home wedding together.

“You’ll be able to find things like a white trellis to hide some unattractive part of your yard,” said Vicki Giannone, owner of Creative Weddings in Burbank.

“In an area like Southern California, you can usually find just about anything for rent.”

One essential is probably a tent or large umbrellas to shield guests from the sun or the rain.

A simple 7-foot-diameter umbrella with a base can be found for as little as $20 a day, and a few of these may be all you need for an intimate reception dinner.

If you have the space and the guest list to require it, you could rent a 50- by 100-foot tent, capable of shielding 400 people, but expect to pay at least $1,500 for a covering this size.

A smaller tent, 40 by 40 feet, rents for around $700, while a 10- by 20-foot tent can be had for about $300.

Be aware that in some cities, you may need a permit before erecting a large tent in your yard. In Los Angeles, any tent bigger than 20 by 20 feet requires a permit, which can cost as much as $350, depending on the size.

“You can also rent lighting and patio heaters for nighttime events,” Giannone said, “and most rental services will deliver.”

Since you’re likely to have the wedding and reception outside, you may choose to keep guests out of the house.

“We often recommend that the family keep the house itself special, a private place for them to be before the wedding, as a place to change, that sort of thing,” Neumann said.

“That way you don’t have to deal with all the confusion of a lot of people going in and out of the house all the time.”

However, you could also opt for the “open house” policy. “Our house is very casual, very ‘lived in,’ and we wanted to let it be open to all the guests,” said Carolyn Moore of Ojai, who in July 1997 hosted her stepdaughter’s wedding at her home with her husband, Ted.

“I’ve been to home weddings where the house was reserved for the family, and they were nice, but we just wanted a different atmosphere.”

Should you decide to make the house “open,” it’s probably best to make it as party-friendly as possible.

“We’ll often take one or two rooms and move most of the furniture into them to make more space,” Neumann said.

“Also, remember that with a large wedding, you’re going to have lots of people you don’t know roaming through your house. It’s not a bad idea to lock any valuables away.”

One issue that people often don’t think about until it’s too late is the bathroom conundrum.

“If you’re going to have 100 wedding guests and your house only has two bathrooms, you may have some pretty unhappy customers,” Roberts said.

“This can especially be a problem when you have easy access to just one bathroom, and you’ve got to guide your guests through halls and bedrooms to get to the other bathrooms,” Neumann said.

The obvious solution is to rent a portable toilet. The basic portable rents for around $90 a day; however, you might want to pay more (about $140) for a deluxe model.

“When people are dressed up for a wedding, they usually don’t like to use those small portables you see at construction sites,” Giannone said. “You can rent larger vanities that have sinks, hot water, mirrors and more room.”

When setting up a buffet on a bright, sunny day, make sure the food is out of direct sunlight for safety reasons, and also be aware that some creatures other than your guests may be interested in what you’re serving as well.

“It’s not a bad idea to have your yard sprayed before the wedding to make sure you’re not overrun by ants or other pests,” Giannone said.

Also be aware of the little things you normally take for granted, like automatic lawn sprinklers. “Turn them off the morning of the wedding. You don’t want to send anyone home soaked,” Roberts said.

If there’s some part of your house that’s interesting, you may want to feature it.

“We have chickens in our backyard, and before the wedding we cleaned up their areas and painted and put up signs and a white wood fence around them,” Moore said.

“It became a kind of conversation piece; a lot of the guests wanted to see them.”

For small children who will probably be bored by the typical ceremony and reception, you could hire a child’s party organizer ($60 and up) who will provide games and entertainment.

Let the Street Know

Even though you may not be inviting the whole neighborhood, it’s not a bad idea to let others on the street know about your plans.

“We talked to all of our neighbors to let them know what we were doing,” said Gorman’s wife, Gretchen. “That’s essential since they have to deal with all the cars and noise from the party.”

Finally, it might be prudent to rub the lucky rabbit’s foot as the big day gets closer. “We had a water line that broke outside just a week before the wedding,” Moore said. “It created a 3-foot sinkhole right where the guests were going to be for the ceremony. But it was fixed very quickly, and we got through it without anyone falling through the earth.

“My advice: Never panic and enjoy the day.”