You're listening to the Bridechilla podcast, helping Bridechillas and groomchillas plan their wedding minus the bullshit.

One podcast at a time with your host, Alicia McCormack.

Well, good day to you. That is me. I am Alicia, the founder of Bridechiller, the author of the Bridechiller guides and the host of this year podcast.

And today, I will be sharing an interview that I recorded recently with Heather Rufay.

And Heather is an expert in all things wedding rentals.

Heather is the director of sales and partner at Atlas Event Rentals. And what this interview really made

me realize is all of the logistics that goes into hiring all the stuff you need to make a wedding

happen. Heather has had over 15 years in the wedding and event planning industry. And as you will hear, Heather is a real

wealth of knowledge when it comes to thinking about the guest experience, thinking about the

logistics behind planning an event. And whether you have a wedding planner and coordinator,

or whether you are going at DIY, you're doing it yourself. I know you will learn a bunch

from Heather and her suggestions, especially looking at your wedding budget and how much you should

be allocating to rentals. And when we say rentals, she's talking about chairs. She's talking about

bins, trash cans. She's talking about waiters trays, all of the little things that

actually you need. But when you're planning a wedding, you're like, oh, I want to get a lovely

tablecloth. No one talks like that. Or, oh, I'm thinking about the flowers and I'm thinking about

the photographer. But when it comes to the party, all of these little details are actually really important,

especially if you are planning your wedding on your own. We also touch on backyard weddings,

and we air quote backyard weddings because that also just includes venues that aren't necessarily

set up as a wedding venue or a professional sort of catered venue where you need

to think about bringing in a kitchen and you need to think about maybe a dance floor or where are you

going to set up the bar? What is the bar going to be made of? Well, that's where people like Heather come in

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