There’s something wonderfully English about a beautifully decorated marquee, especially on a wonderful summer day, although with super-efficient heaters marquees are also used for winter weddings.

Marquee companies specialising in weddings offer a total decoration service, often with gorgeous extras like mirror walls, specialist lighting, chandeliers and decorative star cloth. Yes, you can have stars inside your marquee if you choose.

Anyone with a large garden or small field can have their reception in a marquee at home. Among the advantages are the total freedom to decorate it how you will and to party way into the night and even the next morning. Some marquee companies supply the whole package, including flooring, tables, chairs, portaloos, decoration, catering, etc. It’s up to you how much or how little you ask them to do: if you’ve only got a small number of guests you might be planning catering à la mum, or you might want to use a specialist outside caterer, with many extra hands.

If you want to go it alone, in a decorative sense, a marquee is a blank canvas giving you the opportunity to give full rein to your creativity, either with or without the help of a professional florist.

A marquee reception does require some contingency plans for bad weather, such as a bucket of umbrellas and a covered walkway to the house if it’s close by. If you ask your guests to park in a field and it rains heavily you could need the services of a tractor to help get them out, so a chat with a local farmer’s a good idea.

And if you do plan to party on until dawn and beyond, either invite the neighbours so that they’re part of the fun, or grovel and apologise accordingly beforehand for any noise.