Yay! Welcome to this extra special blog series!  Today I'm talking about our wedding, and how we created the best day ever to be full of adventure by planning it all around our favorite place to be: outside.  Part I of this three-part series will focus on the planning, decision-making, and details that went into our outdoor, camping wedding. 

*Before I begin down this wedding road, I must acknowledge the craziness that is the wedding industry.  The craziness I'm talking about is the amazing amount of money that anything related to brides, weddings, etc. can cost you.  The other part of the craziness surrounding weddings is the toxic pressure applied (by the self, by society... Really it's everywhere) to an engaged couple to throw the best party ever and make it the most beautiful thing anyone has ever seen. If you get sucked into playing the comparison game and pin your wedding plans against those you see on blogs, in magazines and on Instagram, it's easy to get into a space where you think your celebration will be less than.  But! It won't be! It couldn't be! It's yours! My advice to you if you're in wedding planning mode is do you, 100%. Simple.  Whether that means hosting a lavish affair or running away to Vegas. Our strategy to avoid this pressure and sidestep the crazy was to remember why we were doing this thing in the first place. Love. That's it. Love, every kind, is beautiful without the addition of sparkles, sequins, flowers, diamonds, or large sums of money attached.  I'm not immune to these self-loveless feelings and we intentionally reminded ourselves to stay in a space focused on our life & love and not just on the "Day." 

Our wedding involved a ton of planning (we did it all ourselves and then had AMAZING help the day-of) and a perfect weekend.  PSA: this wedding did NOT have a planner, florist, DJ, traditional caterer, or seating charts. Ours was a three-day affair, kicking off with a campfire, s'mores and live music (thanks to Kevin's band from college) on Friday night, yoga in camp and surfing before our ceremony & reception on Saturday, and finally a relaxed breakfast and clean-up on Sunday morning.  It was SO. MUCH. FUN!

The 10 Basic Elements of Our (& Your!) Self-Planned, Outdoor Camping Wedding

1. Do all the normal wedding things (I found some wisdom in the "wedding checklists" you can find online) like establish your max budget, create a guest list, think about how you'll invite everyone (save-the-dates, google forms, etc.) decide generally where you want to get married, and what your priorities are. Also, decide what things on the wedding checklists are bullshit and/or not relevant to you.
2. Create a backup plan for your outdoor dream wedding. Things like wet weather and NOT being able to book the group campsite you want totally happen.  We had a restaurant (to be used for our reception) in Half Moon Bay on hold until we knew we had the group campsite on lock. 
3. Book a group campsite to accommodate your guests. In CA you would most likely be limited to ~100 guests. Do what you need to do to get it & recruit help! Kevin and I both had our laptops open before 7am on January 1st 2016, ready to click the "reserve" button on reservecalifornia.com.  Competition is steep to get awesome sites in the Bay Area! We were super lucky to get our venue!
4. Create a relationship with the governing authority of your campsite- ours was CA State Parks. You'll want these folks on your side!
5. Purchase special event insurance. Usually you'll need a policy that will cover you up to one million dollars. Also, pay for your special event permit with your vendor (at CA State Parks this was a necessity). 
6. Familiarize yourself with the rules, regulations and policies of your venue (we were concerned with following rules about things like campfires, # of guests staying at the site, and amplified sound), and figure out how to extend those expectations to your guests.
7. Think about your communication plan to your guests- large outdoor events have a ton of logistics.  We spearheaded our guest communication on our wedding website through The Knot. We provided this packing list to our guests, as well.
8. Make a detailed plan- this is as much for you as it is for your helpers, to stay on schedule and on the same page, as well as to track all of the "little" details. Check out my plan & feel free to borrow the template if you find it helpful. Pre-brainstorm solutions for things like: your flowers wilting in the sun or petals blowing away in the wind, cake icing melting or bugs getting into the food, if you need an extra long extension cord for access to electricity, wind blowing your table cloths away, and ice storage for beverages all night long. Consider your environmental impact by limiting disposable products like cups, paper towels, etc.  The list doesn't stop there.
9. Do a big ol' shop- once you're at your campground, you likely won't want to leave.  In addition to your wedding decor, you'll need camping basics. We bought marshmallow roasting sticks, extra flashlights, batteries in all sizes, extra trash bags and toilet paper, a staple gun, fire wood, you get the picture. An unexpected & necessary purchase for our site was wasp traps.  There's always something!
10. Confirm your day-of help. You'll need it, I promise. I once had delusions that we could handle it all ourselves.  I would have regretted not reaching out for help, big time.  I hired on one of my amazing students from Stanford's outdoor program (shoutout to Caitlin for being the bomb.com in all the ways!!) to set up the reception, meet the food truck, etc. Best decision (and best helper) ever.
11. Ok so I have 11 things. Have FUN! That's what it's all about.  If you get feel the stress creeping in, take a step back, reach out for some help, and remember that you're here for the love, friend!

Easy, right? Turns out, it is. Here's a look at our wedding decision making process.

Where to Wed How do you decide where to do the thing? For us, this was a tough decision. We are from opposite sides of the country (Kevin is from Oregon and I'm from Rhode Island), so we knew that our guests would have to travel no matter where we decided to marry.  We looked into 30+ options before deciding on a local venue.  At first, we thought Kauai or Maui would be a great choice- beautiful mountains, beaches & activities, but also an expensive option for our family and friends to travel to and stay there.  We considered Rhode Island, but again, every option we found in the Ocean State was cost prohibitive for the kind of affair we wanted to throw.  No traditional wedding venue had the elements we were looking for, so we decided that a camping wedding, close to our home in the Bay, would be the way to go.  Camping is inexpensive, California has a ton of (VERY hard to get... more on that later) group campsites that can host ~100 people, and most importantly, it's FUN.  We settled on the Sweetwood Group Camp in Half Moon Bay, CA, a very special place we would visit at least once a month to paddle board, hike, and eat at Pasta Moon.  Also, it's gorgeous.

Guests- Who to Invite? Ah, another toughy. Kevin and I have so many loved ones in our lives.  We could have, and wanted to, invite hundreds of family members and friends to celebrate with us.  My understanding is that this is truly challenging piece of the wedding puzzle for many couples.  We were limited to 80 guests by our ceremony venue, and limited to a certain number of parking spots at our campsite, so we had to go through several iterations of the guest list to get it down to an appropriate number.  This was hard.  We ended up inviting way more than 80 people expecting that many folks wouldn't be able to join us. Thankfully (kinda), we guessed right!  At the end of the day we had 83 guests and our group was the perfect size.  Here's a better how-to on how to create your guest list via The Knot.

When to Wed Easy answer- whenever you want! But, if you're planning a camping wedding, take a few things into consideration: 

• Your guests! Not all of your guests are likely to be as comfortable in the outdoors as you are.  Planning your celebrations during warmer months is nice for guests, vendors, and your own comfort.
• Weather! Summer is an obvious option for outdoor affairs, but you can't rely on sunshine in the summer.  The weekend before our July wedding was gray and gloomy, and the weekend after was rainy and cold. We were incredibly lucky to have sunshine and golden light on our wedding day. You just never know!  I have to confess, though- we did not have a contingency plan in the event of a rainy day.  We had to release our backup location (a local restaurant) thirty days before our wedding date in order to not to be charged for it.  Kevin promised me he'd figure it out if the weather took a turn for the worse, so we let our backup venue go and moved forward with prayers, hope and faith.  We got lucky with a perfect day, but this was definitely a source of stress for me.
• Don't forget to make sure your vendors (photographer, food truck, caterer, etc.) are available on your chosen weekend.  We booked our vendors before we booked our campsite- but I don't think there's a right order of operations in this situation.

How to Organize We used our experiences from planning, organizing, and implementing large-scale outdoor events for work and created a similar system for our wedding plan! Take a few things into consideration:

• Transition time for a large group people- groups generally take a lot of time to physically move from point A to point B.
• Assign a responsible "lead" to each task.  You'll feel good knowing exactly who is taking on what, and you'll make your family feel good! They want to help!
• Schedule an event itinerary review for your close friends and family, and anyone helping you out.

The Budget Each couple's budget will be different.  We tried to keep ours as low as possible while not sacrificing on our priorities (priorities for us included my dream dress, photography, and tasty food).  We ended up spending, with help from our parents, a total of $15,000. That includes literally everything- I tracked our expenses closely- from renting the campsite for a total of four nights, to minister fees, to the yoga instructor on Saturday morning, to our save the dates and invitations, to extra batteries, to my wedding dress, to the mason jars and even our marriage license.  A quick google search tells me that the average wedding cost is somewhere around $35,000 right now, so compared to that, I think we did relatively well.  Something you can't figure into the budget is the amount of help we received to make our wedding amazing- my friend and co-worker Lisa did my makeup, our friend Chris brought a keg of Deschutes beer from Bend, OR and family friends, the Androy's, set up and provided all of the fixings for our bar and served our guests all night (yes, they are incredible), and friends helped both set up and take down the whole thing.  Our wedding was a community affair and I know that in addition to making the day that much more full of love, their help allowed us to save money.  Oh, and our guests didn't need to pay for lodging if they chose to camp, which was an added bonus of booking the campsite for our reception!

Stay tuned for Part II and III, where I'll focus on the actual day, lessons learned, and keeping the adventure alive well past the honeymoon phase.

Photos were taken by Pearl Walker Photography at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, just north of Half Moon Bay, CA.  All of the featured shots were from our pre-wedding engagement shoot.