wedding wednesday, er, thursday: reception details
I have fallen off the blogging wagon. There really have been things to write about but I've been crazy busy with work and travel. With this job, a person needs an occasional office day. Or even an office half-day. Or, as a last resort, a few hours of work over a weekend. By "occasional" I mean it would be awesome to have 2 a week. I'm coming off of 8 days without one (including the weekend) followed by about a day of intermittent internet access. With the super long To Do list, this apparently makes for a sleepless cjm...
But! To get back to wedding recaps. We made it through the ceremony and we were married! We took some quick post-ceremony photographs and were on to the reception (which was held in the ballroom of a nearby college).
Like I've mentioned before, I didn't want our wedding to feel like every other wedding people had been to (although it may have...I'll just ignore that thought). One of the ways I tried to be original was with a little crafting. First up? My reception hair accessory. I got rid of the veil and added this:
Can I say again how much I loved my hair that day? Anyway, yes, I made that. A couple of fake flowers from a craft store and centers of earrings that belonged to my mother's mother. I found those fun, wispy feathers later and went back and added them. I think they gave it a little something extra. Hubby didn't realize it wasn't my hair. In all fairness, they were quite close in color. Loved how this turned out and it was really so easy to make.
Next up, favors. This is one of those things I think people could get away with skipping at a wedding but something about my Southern upbringing wouldn't let me. At least folks are generally moving away from weird little memorabilia-type favors and toward consumables. We're not sure if we broke any liquor laws/rules but we decided to go with rum.
Now, I wasn't the girl who had my entire wedding planned prior to getting engaged. I bought no bridal magazines in advance. I've heard of people buying their dress or booking a venue without that ring on their finger. Was not that person. However, I had thought that this would be a cute idea prior to saying "yes."
This wasn't just any rum. It was the rum from the local distillery that you may remember from here. May I add that we STILL haven't been inside this place? Sheesh. So, yes, local rum from a place that meant something in our relationship. Does the distillery sell cute, customized little bottles? Nope. We purchased regular ol' full-sized bottles of their dark rum, hundreds of tiny glass bottles from the internet (including shrink wrap to keep the cork on), and printed our own labels. It was an oddly satisfying task. The label on the bottle included the phrase "where it all started...almost...twice." The little tag tied to the neck of the bottle with twine said either "'rum' us to you" or "thanks for 'rum'-ing." There may have been a third possibility but I can't for the life of me remember what it was.
If you remember the engagement story (see link above), you won't be surprised to see that a snowglobe made it to the wedding. My Maid of Honor gave this to me for the previous Christmas. It's a digital picture frame inside a snowglobe. I glued on a little ribbon and the requisite butterfly, loaded it with what pictures we had left after the great computer crash of '09, and called it a day.
So, was that a long enough post? I'll hopefully have another this week as I marked another item off the Life List last weekend (and will cross off another next weekend).
But! To get back to wedding recaps. We made it through the ceremony and we were married! We took some quick post-ceremony photographs and were on to the reception (which was held in the ballroom of a nearby college).
Like I've mentioned before, I didn't want our wedding to feel like every other wedding people had been to (although it may have...I'll just ignore that thought). One of the ways I tried to be original was with a little crafting. First up? My reception hair accessory. I got rid of the veil and added this:
Can I say again how much I loved my hair that day? Anyway, yes, I made that. A couple of fake flowers from a craft store and centers of earrings that belonged to my mother's mother. I found those fun, wispy feathers later and went back and added them. I think they gave it a little something extra. Hubby didn't realize it wasn't my hair. In all fairness, they were quite close in color. Loved how this turned out and it was really so easy to make.
Next up, favors. This is one of those things I think people could get away with skipping at a wedding but something about my Southern upbringing wouldn't let me. At least folks are generally moving away from weird little memorabilia-type favors and toward consumables. We're not sure if we broke any liquor laws/rules but we decided to go with rum.
Now, I wasn't the girl who had my entire wedding planned prior to getting engaged. I bought no bridal magazines in advance. I've heard of people buying their dress or booking a venue without that ring on their finger. Was not that person. However, I had thought that this would be a cute idea prior to saying "yes."
This wasn't just any rum. It was the rum from the local distillery that you may remember from here. May I add that we STILL haven't been inside this place? Sheesh. So, yes, local rum from a place that meant something in our relationship. Does the distillery sell cute, customized little bottles? Nope. We purchased regular ol' full-sized bottles of their dark rum, hundreds of tiny glass bottles from the internet (including shrink wrap to keep the cork on), and printed our own labels. It was an oddly satisfying task. The label on the bottle included the phrase "where it all started...almost...twice." The little tag tied to the neck of the bottle with twine said either "'rum' us to you" or "thanks for 'rum'-ing." There may have been a third possibility but I can't for the life of me remember what it was.
If you remember the engagement story (see link above), you won't be surprised to see that a snowglobe made it to the wedding. My Maid of Honor gave this to me for the previous Christmas. It's a digital picture frame inside a snowglobe. I glued on a little ribbon and the requisite butterfly, loaded it with what pictures we had left after the great computer crash of '09, and called it a day.
Here's one thing that I would have done differently if we were getting married now instead of 9 months (!!!) ago. We served dinner buffet-style and had clear plastic plates per my country roots. The caterer would have provided white paper plates but who wants to pre-set the tables with that? They also provided "picnic packs"--those little clear plastic packets with plasticware, a napkin, and tiny salt & pepper. Again, doesn't make for a pretty table. I had seen online where a woman had the ingenious idea of putting these items in a set-up like this:
Loved it. Scoured the internet for manila envelopes of the right size (and with the opening being on the short side of the envelope) only to get them in and they were orange. Eh, whatever. Orange was one of our colors so no biggie. I hemmed and hawed FOREVER trying to figure out how I wanted to finish them. Ended up using more twine, printing out a quick tag, and punching them with that cute little fork-knife-spoon punch (also found after an exhaustive internet search). What would I do today, you ask? I would buy these cute bamboo utensils they make for really cheap these days and forgo the envelope altogether. (Do you have a wedding for me to plan? Because, really, I have tons of ideas for things and I'm not planning on a 2nd one for myself.)
And last but certainly not least, I give you this picture:
Swoon. So, those candles? They and their holders are all from IKEA--votives, regular tealights, and these giant, oversized tealights they have (that I love). The thing is, tealights are shiny and silver and that didn't really go with our decor. I cut strips of paper to mask their shiny exterior and am happy to say that none of them caught fire in an inappropriate way--even with my aunt as a guest. You know, the aunt who set fire to a tablecloth at another family wedding. And there was A LOT of candlelight. I think 7 per table.
Loved it. Scoured the internet for manila envelopes of the right size (and with the opening being on the short side of the envelope) only to get them in and they were orange. Eh, whatever. Orange was one of our colors so no biggie. I hemmed and hawed FOREVER trying to figure out how I wanted to finish them. Ended up using more twine, printing out a quick tag, and punching them with that cute little fork-knife-spoon punch (also found after an exhaustive internet search). What would I do today, you ask? I would buy these cute bamboo utensils they make for really cheap these days and forgo the envelope altogether. (Do you have a wedding for me to plan? Because, really, I have tons of ideas for things and I'm not planning on a 2nd one for myself.)
And last but certainly not least, I give you this picture:
Swoon. So, those candles? They and their holders are all from IKEA--votives, regular tealights, and these giant, oversized tealights they have (that I love). The thing is, tealights are shiny and silver and that didn't really go with our decor. I cut strips of paper to mask their shiny exterior and am happy to say that none of them caught fire in an inappropriate way--even with my aunt as a guest. You know, the aunt who set fire to a tablecloth at another family wedding. And there was A LOT of candlelight. I think 7 per table.
Hey, what's that candle kind of in the left foreground? The 4th picture here. I knew I wanted a rustic feel to the reception and wanted to incorporate a lot of wood. Hurricane Ike provided me with tons of fallen trees that Hubby collected and The Brother turned into candle holders (from one of my personal trees) and those awesome disks for the flowers to rest upon. He made those with a chainsaw. Pretty awesome, right? At some point, I thought it would be cute to add a little woodburned "carving" on the candle holders. It was easy, fun, and smelled great while woodburning. I guess our wedding was a little green despite the disposable plates...
And finally, those flowers up there? All the arrangements were done by my bridesmaids and a few other helpful mom-figures. They did a fantastic job. I had ordered some flowers online and the rest from a local grocery store. The greenery came from my yard. Seeing that tiny white flower at the top left of the picture up there makes me weirdly giddy knowing that I cut it from a plant that's at the end of our driveway.
So, was that a long enough post? I'll hopefully have another this week as I marked another item off the Life List last weekend (and will cross off another next weekend).
Up next for wedding recaps? How about our amazing cakes? And this time I'll actually aim for Wednesday...
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