@Alexandra316 I completely agree with your no candle rule. We don’t allow open flames of any kind either. The problem is, our forest cottage has a romantic air about it, so people immediately want to add to the mood with candles.
We found a way to stop this entirely, to the point where the question never even comes up anymore about candles... I’ll explain.
We decided it would be equally romantic to have secret fine white fairy lights turn on automatically when the sun went down. We found a website called Ali Express where we ordered strings of solar powered fairy lights that wee 500 meters long.
Then we went nuts with them. First we wound lights around the sitting area, then the garden, then the trees outside... then on a very plain outside wall, I made a replica of the Doors of Durin (Mines or Moria). I used all white lighting, which creates an eerie moonlight glow as opposed to making the place daylight. It’s something we don’t photograph on our listing at all, because we like to hear the squeals of surprise after the sun goes down. People go nuts when they see a moonlit magical garden and parts of the cottage come alive. I had a grown 50+ year old man make a noise like a 4 year old girl...
It took some sneaky trailing and positioning of the little solar panels, but with some sneaky “Ben magic” (wife’s term) they are all invisible 🙂
Yellow candles would clash and detract from all the white fairy magic. Most people work this out, so the desire to add open flames seems to be gone entirely.
