Show Us Your Life: Wedding Reception

Today at Kelly's Korner its another wedding installment of Show Us Your Life....everyone is going to be blogging about their reception:) Head on over there to read about hundreds of brides and how they celebrated on their big day.

Our wedding reception was awesome! Best time I've had in my life. When else do you have all the important people from all parts of your life in one place at one time with really good food, drinks and music?! Oh and I guess my new husband was there, so that part was cool too!

{looking back at the "club house" from the course}

We had our reception at the Ridge Club, a gated community and golf club on the cape (P loves golf, it was not a requirement for him that we have the reception at some sort of club house, it just worked out this way). We loved that the room did not feel like your typical function hall...it had brick floors and the walls were covered in traditional Cape Cod shingles, so you almost felt like you were outside instead of inside. The entire back wall of the room was covered in sliding french doors leading out onto a huge brick patio, luscious gardens, curving stone walls and the rolling green hills of the first hole. This is where we had the cocktail hour, with all the appetizers made on a huge outdoor grille. The bar was under the tent you see below for the whole night...we had gorgeous weather, so there was a great flow from inside to outside the whole evening...and this way, if you weren't into dancing, there was somewhere else to go and hang out.

{the patio, first hole to the left}

{the patio with some of our peeps}

{P playing around on hole 1 - where we had most of our group pics taken - with his niece, our flower girl}

I'm a bit disappointed that our photographer didn't get as many detail shots (of the flowers, signature matte, family photos, tables setup) as I would have liked. I think this was because during the cocktail hour we kept him too busy taking millions of family/friends group pics (lesson learned). But here's one photo of what the tables looked like. Crisp white linens and gold chivari chairs. Our florist was great and let me provide all the containers for the flowers...I collected/purchased a ton of square clear glass vases in different sizes and hot-glued random combinations of white, silver, sage and light blue ribbons around the middle (like a belt for the vase). Each table had 3 different sized and ribboned vases on it... and each vase was filled with only one type of white flower. Simple, slightly modern and a bit quirky:)

{our cake - simple and classic with white dots, real silver ribbon around the bottom of each layer and white and green flowers on top...it sure tasted good too - vanilla cake, white chocolate mousse and fresh strawberries, very summery}

One of my favorite special parts of the day was our favors. Have you heard of English crackers (not the kind you eat)? They are a sort of party favor and our tradition at my house on holidays or other big family get-together meals. Its a long cardboard tube wrapped with pretty paper and inside are several small prizes, jokes and a paper crown (the kind you wear on your head, kinda like the old school Burger King ones). We decided as an added fun and personal thing, to have these as our favors and escort cards, plus we thought they would be good icebreakers before dinner. So we ordered empty crackers from an online site in 3 different silver patterned papers. Then one afternoon we filled them with our own custom favors (a slip of paper I had designed and printed out telling guests how we had donated to a special close to our hearts cancer fund in their name, a yellow Live Strong Lance Armstrong bracelet and some Hershey kisses), tied them up and threaded a little card (mounted on sage green or sky blue paper - DIY) with their name and table number on them through the ribbon on one end. These were lined up on a long table on the patio as you went into the room with a sign saying not to open them yet.

Here's everyone opening/popping their crackers - its a very interactive, get to know the person you are sitting next to thing. I got up on the microphone and explained it to everyone:)

And here's the coolest part - inside each one was the traditional paper crown, in an assortment of bright colors. To our surprise, everyone totally wore their paper crowns for the rest of dinner (my sister even had hers on when she gave her speech)!!! (I had hoped everyone would embrace it, P was a little skeptical and thought people would think we were dorks!!)

{oh, those crazy relatives! see the back wall of french doors and the patio?!}

And so you can see where I spent most of my time, along with a majority of the guests (we were very proud that the dance floor was packed whole night), here's us doing the electric slide, minus paper crowns:)

{taking some final pics at the end of the night outside in front of the Ridge Club}

I think we were also supposed to post honeymoon pics as well for today's event, but I have too many of those (maybe that'll be another post - we went to Hawaii and hit up Oahu, the Big Island and Maui). Thanks for looking and reading! Thanks Kelly for hosting. Hope everyone has a great weekend. I'm headed to Martha's Vineyard this afternoon for a weekend-long bachelorette party for my friend Holly...yay!