Design Ideas for a Traditional Marquee Wedding

4th January 2024

Wedding days are such exciting affairs; your friends and family coming together to celebrate love in the most beautiful fashion – and all of the design is up to you! Marquees are a classic part of outdoor weddings as they’re a practical way to keep your options open. Decorate them in whatever style you like, open the sides on a warm day or close them if there’s a strong breeze.

Whatever the weather, you can have your dream wedding with a marquee. But how should you decorate it? You need to book venues months, if not years in advance these days, so you’ve got plenty of time to get everything organised so you can have a spectacular setting for your wedding.

Here are a few of our design ideas for your perfect wedding marquee.

Traditional

outdoor wedding marquee

Traditional marquees are perfect for the classic and timeless wedding venue. With wooden poles around the outside and standing strong through the middle, there’s plenty of opportunity for decoration in whatever way you wish, although it lends itself well to vintage decor.

Fill the space with Rustic trestle tables with your favourite coloured small bouquets in the middle and wrap strings of fairy lights around the inner poles to create a charming atmosphere that will delight your guests without breaking the bank.

Traditional marquees can range significantly in size, so you can keep it classic with just chairs and tables inside for your wedding dinner, or have separate spaces with a dancefloor and DJ at one end, and dinner tables for your wedding guests at the other.

Pretty

Many young girls dream of the perfect wedding and one of the key words that comes up when describing their ideal wedding marquee is “pretty”! Well, fortunately, most marquees are a blank canvas for your own design ideas so you can decorate them with as many flowers and lights as you please!

Choose a marquee with an inner lining so you can trail flowers and foliage around the inside of your venue, filling up every corner with elegance and femininity. The inner lining itself can be adjusted so the billowing cloth will make you feel like you’re in a dream. You can even add star cloth to your ceiling so as the night draws in, your guests can still feel as though they’re dancing under the stars while keeping warm inside.

Rustic

When designing a rustic wedding, wood will be your best friend. Wooden tables and wooden chairs are a given, but how about having a wood block for your cake to stand on? Or wooden candle holders on the dining tables? As well as having wooden items decorating your marquee – which will look excellent with the wooden poles and straps of a traditional marquee design – upcycling items will also give your wedding a rustic look.

If your wedding is located in the countryside, milk jugs can make wonderful vases for bouquets of wildflowers and stunning white feather pampas grass, while empty bottles can make beautiful table decorations when filled with tiny strings of fairy lights or candles.

Wine barrels can also make for great tables dotted around your marquee for standing guests to perch by before heading to their seats; there are plenty of ways to reuse old items to have a stylish rustic wedding.

Cosy

If you’re having an intimate wedding with only close friends and family there to celebrate with you, you don’t want to rent a huge marquee that will end up feeling empty and desolate. So for smaller gatherings, the Chinese Hat, or Pergola Marquees, are a great choice!

The round marquees with pointed roofs can still accommodate plenty of people but in a more intimate and cosy atmosphere. Material can be used majestically to drape around poles and over items located around the marquee to give it a relaxed and snuggly feel so your guests feel right at home. Plus, comfortable chairs and warm, yellow lighting are an absolute must for a cosy wedding.

If you’re having a large wedding but still want it to feel cosy, especially if you’re having it in the wintertime and want everybody to feel warm and comfortable, you can make use of clear span frame marquees as they have removable sides which can protect your guests front he cold or open up to enjoy the sunshine. You can then have a Chinese Hat marquee nearby so there’s a cosy comfortable place for guests to wander off to. Perhaps put some games inside or an inviting backdrop to a comfy chair for photo opportunities.

Luxury

The key to a luxury wedding is simplicity. You may want to have very extravagant decorations, but too much can appear tacky rather than classy. The essentials for a luxury wedding include:

Fantastic views
Fine food and drink
Stylish decor
Elegant lighting
A great band
A professional and experienced luxury wedding photographer

With each of these, you’re sure to have a luxurious wedding that your guests will find remarkable and memorable. But what about the decor itself?

You’ll want to consider making even the smallest of things fit with your design style to keep your wedding classy, so things like signs and large decorations are a great idea to hide any cables or other eyesores – just make sure they’re not in any way a safety hazard.

A Chinese Hat marquee as your entrance to a countryside wedding can make a big impression as guests come through a beautifully decorated area where they can pick up a glass of champagne and get a small glimpse into your wedding style, before heading to the main marquee, perhaps a large clear span frame marquee to accommodate plenty of guests for dining.

You can make it look extra special on the inside as there is plenty of hanging space in marquees; consider having a floral display hanging from the ceiling at various points, or large balloon-like lighting of your chosen colour to fit the theme of your wedding. There are plenty of opportunities for decoration in a large marquee.

You can even have a few smaller Chine Hat marquees around, one containing games for guests, while another houses a dance floor or bar. Luxury weddings don’t have to all be the same, think up how you would like you and your guests to be entertained on your wedding day and try to keep everything on theme.

Considerations to Make for Your Marquee Design

Although naturally, you’ll want to get straight into the design of your wedding marquee, after all, that’s the exciting bit, you should consider a number of factors before making any design decisions so that it will all come together well on the day.

Some factors to consider are:

How many guests will you have?
What time of year is your wedding day?
What colour scheme will you have?
What atmosphere do you want?
What’s your budget?

You can give each of these factors over to a wedding planner along with some adjectives describing your ideal wedding and they’re sure to do a fine job. But if you’re designing your wedding yourself or want to make it unique and personal to you and your partner, you should think about all of these factors in great detail before deciding on anything permanent – especially your budget.

Finding Your Own Style

The marquee you choose for your wedding can also help you come up with your own wedding style, as some allow for more decoration than others. Traditional marquees have poles through the middle which look great for traditional weddings and rustic decor, while clear span frame marquees are a clear space, ready for whatever kind of decoration you want to add.

Hire Your Marquee from Carron Marquees

Carron Marquees has a number of different marquees in different sizes available for you to hire for your wedding day. With over four decades of experience, they’ve helped accommodate plenty of wedding guests and know even the smallest touches can make a wedding venue spectacular.

Plus, Carron Marquees also has several extras that can be safely installed in each type of marquee to add a splash of fun or luxury to your wedding, from light-up bars to dancefloors, lighting, toilets and furniture. Whatever you need to make your wedding great, Carron Marquees is there to help you have the best wedding day.