What a wet-weather plan looks like here

Roughly half our couples marry under the oak. About one in six of those ends up inside. That is a better ratio than people expect, and it only works because the plan B is set up before anyone needs it.

1. The barn is always dressed

Whatever happens outside, the Long Barn is laid for the ceremony on the morning of the wedding. Chairs in, aisle set, registrar’s table at the end. If the weather turns we are not building a room, we are opening a door.

That costs us an hour of labour on every outdoor ceremony that goes ahead as planned. We have never minded paying it.

2. The call is ours, and it is made at ten

We look at the forecast at ten in the morning with one of you, and we make a recommendation. Not at midday, not when guests are arriving. Ten gives the florist time to move an arch and gives your photographer time to rethink where the group shots go.

If it is borderline we will say so plainly. Couples almost always want the honest odds rather than the comforting answer.

3. What we hold for the in-between days

Two hundred golf umbrellas in the porch, a rack of wellingtons in sizes nobody thinks to ask for, and a tractor that has pulled more than one caterer’s van off the grass in February. The courtyard drains and the meadow does not, so on a wet September we keep drinks on the stone and nobody notices.

4. The part nobody plans

Rain during the ceremony is manageable. Rain for the three days before it, which softens the ground under 120 chairs, is the one that actually moves things indoors. We watch the week, not the day.