A New Service Guarantees a Rain-Free Wedding Day For $100K

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By: Simone Hill

 

It’s true, there’s actually a service that can guarantee it will not rain on your wedding day — if you have a spare $100,000 in your wedding budget. A company called Oliver’s Travels recently started offering couples who get married at their wedding venue in France this expensive service. What they’re doing is called “cloud seeding,” and it involves releasing (via airplane) a chemical compound called silver iodide into the clouds to get them to quickly create rain and then disappear.
But we’re not convinced having a rain-free wedding day is such a good idea, or worth the price tag. Here’s why:

There are much less expensive ways to protect your wedding from the rain.
A tent is the first option comes to mind. Having an indoor Plan B is another. Or, if you really want a bright and sunny wedding why not throw a destination wedding somewhere where it rarely ever rains. You can also use historic weather reports (for free!)  to help you choose a wedding location and date that’s less likely to have rain.

There could be (harmful) unintended consequences.
Oliver’s Travels says what they’re doing doesn’t hurt the environment, but this is the first time (that we know of) cloud seeding will be used for weddings. Even if cloud seeding hasn’t been harmful when used for other purposes it’s possible there could be unintended consequences when used in this new way. That’s why we’re hesitant to jump on board when there are great alternatives.

A little bit of imperfection is okay, and can actually make your day more memorable.
Romantic rain photos, a rainbow backdrop, a sudden rain shower that ends up cooling off a hot day — there are actually a lot of great, unexpected outcomes that can come from the rain. And no matter how big your budget you can never guarantee that every single thing will go exactly as planned. That’s okay, because those aren’t the things that really matter when you’re standing at the altar saying your vows.

There is a chance it isn’t actually going to rain (but you’d still have to pay).  
It takes three weeks to set up the process to prevent rain because they have to hire a crew and an airplane to be on-call the week of your wedding. And the cloud bursting process is done a day in advance. That means you can’t make a quick decision the day-of if clouds start rolling in or get your money back if it turns out to be a sunny day.