ceremony at an open to public spot

[sheisaeval]

Is anyone planning or have attended a wedding at a open-to-public spot, whether it be a public (local, state, or national) park, public gardens, historical buildings, scenic streets, public viewpoints, etc when the place is OPEN to the public?
(aka, having your ceremony at the park during visiting hours, NOT after the opening hours where you can have the park to yourself)



If so, were the other guests of the location distracting, such as when you had your ceremony and/or taking wedding pictures? How did you deal with it? What was your experience and opinions about it, what are the pros and cons?


Any other tips or opinions?

[The Proper Wedding]

i haven't had mine yet, but we are planning to have ours at a state park during hours. i'm not sure if we're going to have any trouble or not. the ceremony site is almost hidden actually. it's by a pavilion, so it's a "picnic area" (except we're using the land not the pavilion). but you have to sort of drive down in to really see it. i just worry that since it's on labor day weekend, people will be out and about trying to find places to go and might happen upon the wedding. but from what i understand, not many people know about this picnic area at the park. they know about the other one which is bigger and more out in the open, it's right across the street from the park office and has a little park next to it (lol too many uses of the word park, i mean like swing set and slides, etc) another thing i really worry about is the train. we know the train that carries passengers will go through at a certain time, so we know we will miss that for sure. there happens to be a train station at the park. i believe it leaves the park at 1 or 2 something and we're planning the wedding for 4. but we have no way to know about any freight trains that may be using the same tracks, they sort of just go as they need to. but that's out of anyone's control.

from what we hear from the park ranger, they can't keep anyone from being there, since it's public. but they do patrol the area to make sure things are running smoothly, so i'm sure if there's any commotion, they would step in to help us move things right along. So really there's nothing we can do w/ someone who drove down to take a walk on the paths down there and just happens to be standing there watching, which is ok with us, but if they are causing some sort of commotion the park rangers will probably step in. i would talk to whoever is in charger where you plan on having your wedding and see if they could at least do that, just patrol the area to make sure the "public" is causing disturbances.

i wish i could have been more help, i still have 9 months to go before we find out how it's going to turn out! lol

good luck with your search! :)

[dodgercpkl]

That was something I had to really take into consideration when I was looking at locations. Of my top 2 choices at the moment, one of them is semi public (it's on the grounds of a church conference center so while there could be a guest or 2 wandering, it didn't feel like it would be any kind of an issue) and the other is public except when there are events there (so if I had my ceremony there it would be closed to the public).

My biggest worry (and why I ruled out public parks and beaches) was having people stop right next to the ceremony to either watch the ceremony or the view and sit there smoking and have the smoke blow in my face (or my family). I'm allergic to smoke and so are my mom and brother and maybe a few other people, so for me that's a dealbreaker kind of thing. I'm not going to spend all that money to have my hair and makeup done only to have a smoker's smoke make me all splotched, puffy, sneezy, and coughy. lol

[RosieAngel]

I've been to weddings in public parks many, many times, and everyone around was very respectful, and either steered clear of the wedding or watched in the distance.

At my wedding (outdoors at a historic country club), there were apparently a few elderly golfers who stopped to look at the bride - I didn't even notice them until one of the bridesmaids pointed them out in the photos (they wee about the size of ants, seriously) and complained about it afterwards, LOL! Trust me when I say that on your wedding day, you're not going to notice anyone except your man!

So I wouldn't worry about it.

[dearmissie]

My Mom had her wedding at public rose garden 3 months ago. It was kinda hard at rehersal because there were a lot of kids running around the garden and a lot of studets go there from the university to take photographs for class. The day of the wedding there weren't any huge problems. There were a few kids running around near by and some stranger watched from a good enough distance. However I will state this rose garden is on tiers so the guest stood on each tier, no chairs because there was no room for the chairs on each ledge/tier which made it a bit difficult to tell (for me) who the guest were and who the strangers were (I didn't know all their guests). And after the wedding for photos after h ceremony there were a lot of strangers walking everywhere once the ceremony was over. No biggie!! They were kind enough to stay out the way for 20 minutes for the ceremony so that was good. Don't think you'll have any big problems.

It's a public place so remember you can't stop stangers from crashing your wedding, but remember most strangers are kind enough to give you your space for your ceremony (which is very kind).

Good luck!!

[MarkAse]

My wife and I had our wedding at a church, but before heading over to the reception we shot pictures at a public park in San Diego with tons of people around. It was actually quite a lot of fun, we got a round of applause as we walked past a restaurant. We saw another couple(also their wedding day) doing the same thing and the brides took a photo together.

My favorite picture of the whole wedding is from that time as it has us in our wedding clothes, but everything else around us(picture is taken from a distance) looks to be a normal day.

In my experience people are typically overly nice to you on your wedding day.

[allielaurent]

I was a bridesmaid in a relative's wedding a few years back. The wedding was in a park on the outskirts of New York City. There were a few people there when we first arrived, but they all cleared out once they realized we were having a wedding there. Everyone was really respectful and such.

[Harleyquinn5780]

Wish I has lurked earlier. I thought about having our ceremony at the Japanese Tea Gardens here. After making a visit we decided against it because there were so many people around. That and they were doing construction. We had no idea there would be renovations until March of next year so it's something to consider if you are planning far ahead.

[The Proper Wedding]

We ran into a construction problem too. Originally we were going to have our Ceremony at Drake's Well (I'm from Titusville, PA home of the first oil well EVER lol little historical fun fact). Oil Creek runs right through Drake's Well, so we were going to have it in the picnic area by the river there. But it turns out they were planning on doing renovations to the museum, which meant trucks everywhere, no place for our guests to park. So we decided to change our location to further along the same river. We were disappointed at first, but once we found our new location, we immediately fell in love with it. WAY better than the first!!!! And NO construction!! :) Now our only worry is a train going by on the other side of the river. But we found out, unless an emergency train to do repairs NEEDS to be out, we should be clear for the time we chose for our ceremony!

Back to the point, definitely ask whoever is in charge of the area if there is any construction being planned that they know of, and see about surrounding areas if necessary! That would definitely be worse than onlookers I think! Besides, from what most everyone has said who have already had theirs, onlookers are generally respectful once they see what's going on! :)