Wedding Week - Reception

All in all I was really thrilled with how the reception turned out. It was hardly magazine worthy aesthetics, but it was fun and colorful and full of love.

Less important overall, but still a big deal to me, it wasn't in the church gym like so many Mormon receptions.

Some people try some very creative things to try and disguise the fact that a formal event is taking place on a basketball court, complete with hoops and a marked floor. Some of them manage to be kind of cool on their own, but none of them actually succeed at disguising the place.

In an ideal world I would have loved to have a backyard reception. Done well they have such a perfect cozy, fun vibe. Plus you have a decent amount of freedom to customize without restraints set by the venue. Of course, the backyard reception only works if there is a decent sized backyard available, which there wasn't.

I looked around at a few other venues in the area, wasn't really impressed with any of the ones in my price range. We could have rented a community center, but while they were mercifully lacking the basketball court vibe, most of them more than made up for it with either incredibly stringent restrictions (such as no music that would be audible to anyone) or very forest green and tacky patterned carpet decor.

I was almost resigned to the free church gym, which had once been my one big important desire to avoid, when I was looking through wedding pictures of a friend. She had her reception still at the free church location, but instead of at the gym, she used the big picnic pavilion next to the big field that was behind the church. It looked kind of similar to the backyard weddings I'd admired, so I decided to check things out.

It wasn't the prettiest structure, just some big red steel poles and a roof over a concrete slab next to a big, empty field. But it was a decent blank slate. 

So that's what we ended up with. We did use the picnic pavilion, but we also set up a big white tent that we were able to borrow from the produce company my Stepfather works for. Well, the first tent they gave us had these giant dingy green stripes, kind of like the tent of a sad carnival complete with a toothless lion and diseased monkeys. Fortunately, we were able to switch.

We had food and tables under the tent in the grass, and dancing and a few more chairs set up on the concrete underneath the pavilion.

 One of the drawback to this location was the big chain link fences lining the field. They were reasonably far away, but still kind of an eyesore. There was no way we could cover them up, but what we could do was keep the focus away from them and on the main area. We have some family friends who own this great big nursery, and they were so wonderful to let us come and borrow whatever plants we wanted. The plants really added a lusher vibe to the whole tent and made it a much more defined space. Plus, they really did distract from the fence.

To keep away the bugs we had several citronella torches. Also, fire is pretty.

Otherwise, for decorations we just had an assortment of paper lanterns and paper umbrellas. We also had a few saris around the edges of the tent, but we could never get them to drape right. When putting these pictures up I realized that our wedding colors of blue and purple are also the colors of this blog. Apparently my tastes are consistent. I thought they worked really well at bringing some bright color to the wedding without overwhelming the slightly more natural vibe of the plants and the setting.

The flowers were all done by my Stepmom's aunt. Again, a very simple arrangement, but I liked letting the simple beauty of the flowers stand out. We also put wood fans at each table, partly for decor and partly to provide some relief in case of heat. The weather was actually pretty perfect, but they were still nice to have around.

We had the reception from 4-6 in the afternoon, so we just served light hors d'oeuvres. Specifically, meatballs in marinara, bruschetta, humus and pita, olives, anti pasta tray, chicken wrapped in bacon with cashews and a lot of fruits and veggies. The food was simple but very flavorful. My stepmom's mother ran the food show fabulously . She also provided the gorgeous antique silver platters that everything was displayed on.

Well, she did all of the food except the fruit. My stepfather works in produce, so we got the best stuff he could direct from the warehouse and beautifully chopped and arranged it into things like this watermelon basket. The fruit was so so good.

The cake was made by a friend of my Mom. It was just a white cake with strawberry filling, mostly because my Mom called me saying she needed a cake flavor decision right now! and that's all I could think of. We also had a carrot cake sheet cake from Costco because Zach loves carrot cake. It tasted way better than the main cake, but wasn't nearly as pretty.

 We thankfully didn't try to do any type of a line, at least not formally. There was no way I was going to spend my time stuck in a line, nor was I going to make anyone else do so. We kind of naturally ended up hanging out by the entrance and greeting people as they came, which worked really well. It was so wonderful to see how many people came to celebrate with us. I don't think of myself as a social butterfly, and I was honestly very concerned that almost no one would show up. Instead I found myself constantly overwhelmed by the love and support people gave.

We had family who traveled from as far as Virginia, even many people for whom traveling is hard. I had a wonderful surprise from my aunt who lives in Missouri, who showed up unexpectedly to the rehearsal dinner the night before. Mindy flew in from California. Even of the more local guests, it meant so much that they would be willing to take the time from there weekend to be there for us.

Everytime I turned around and saw a new face, the day got exponentially better.

I felt so incredibly, almost overwhelmingly loved.

We also had an amazing number of family, friends, and even people I didn't know from church or friends of my parents who volunteered huge amounts of time to set things up and keep them running.

After about an hour of happily trying to say hello to everyone, we decided to get things started with the cake. No smooshing for us, thank you. I really don't get that tradition, it seems kind of mean and overly aggressive. We just laughed, like we had been for most of the day and tried to keep my veil from attacking us in the wind.

After cake, we had our first dance. We never really had a song naturally become ours, so we used Michael Buble's "Everything" Zach would often call me his everything, and it had a nice classic feel. Also, Zach's suggestion was the waltz from the Godfather, because it was nice and called a waltz or something. So when he agreed to a song not associated with the mafia, I jumped on it. It was a sweet, fun moment.

Honestly, nice as my dance with Zach was, the one with my Dad is what got me all emotional. I love all of my family, but my Dad and I have always been especially close, and it was so touching to have that one moment together where he could let it all out and express just how happy and proud he was. We danced to the "Unforgettable" duet between Nat King Cole and Natalie Cole, a song I can remember dancing to with him when I was a little girl.

 And then there was much rejoicing, dancing and generally having a blast. I picked out  each and every song carefully, organized into a great playlist, and it was super fun to see everyone grooving to my tunes. And fun to groove along, of course.

Of course, said having a blast also included people very non-subtly decorating the getaway car. Which, while kind of cheesy, I loved.

It was a wonderful day. Each and every little thing wasn't always how I had planned and stressed over, but all the important things were there in greater quantities than I ever could have hoped. I'm so grateful we were able to start our lives together with so much fun, love and support.