Wedding Day Recap – Executing the Plan

As I said in my last post, there were a lot of things that had to come together to make the room and the day match my “vision” for it.  The first part of achieving my vision was to get the room how I wanted it.  One of the main things that I wanted to be sure of was that the room coordinated.  Not everything was going to match… even our wedding colors that we used in various things were not exactly the same throughout, but I knew that everything would coordinate.

So we got everything to the venue and unloaded the cars.  The girls were great… I told them exactly what I needed them to do and they did it.  As I think I’ve said in the past, the room itself was a big white box and we wanted to make sure that we incorporated some color, since we did not have a lot of flowers or anything very extravagant that we put in the space.

I put one of my cousins in charge of decorating the outside of the gate into the courtyard, where we had the ceremony.  It was not a super difficult task because all it took was some flower garland, but it was time consuming because it meant getting it over the top of the fence.  I didn’t realize that we had different colors of flowers on the garland, but she did a great job of making it look right!

I put my other two cousins on the task of putting ribbon around the head table.  They pined it there and when they were done they had enough to do the cake table and the three tables looked great in pictures with that extra pop of color.

We had another couple of bridesmaids who were in charge of table numbers.  The venue was awesome enough to put their plain numbers on the tables so we knew exactly which was which.  The bridesmaids also made sure there were enough chairs at each table (the guests’ names were on the table numbers) and once again, they were right on.

I had another bridesmaid in charge of lighting.  We rented 11 can lights that we used on 3 of the walls.  She tested the lights and determined which ones should go where (some were brighter than others) and by the end, they were all set up and ready to be plugged in, which the event staff did for us just as the ceremony was ending, so we didn’t have to worry about making that happen, either.

Here's what the finished product looked like that night... I loved it!

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The head table was mostly done once the ribbon was on, but we also put some vases on the table where the bridesmaids and I put our bouquets after the ceremony.  We also used table runners, that I bought we ended up not using, as chair sashes.  They were easy ways to make the head table have a little extra color.

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The lady who made my cake (and sheet cakes) was actually there very early that morning to bring everything.  Our show cake was 3 layers… 2 of those layers were fake.  She did a great job on it and she even stayed and decorated it with some of the silk flowers that my mom had for the arch.  It was beautiful when she was all done with it and it was so wonderful that she was able to stay and help with that.

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The weather for the day was uncertain and they did not set the chairs until the afternoon so we were not able to put the pomanders or reserved signs out.  In fact, I’m really not sure who did that for us… we left everything by the door so I’m thinking maybe our event manager and her staff did it for us, which was a very nice bonus.  Side note… they were AWESOME all night!!! 

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My mom had not had time to finish the arch earlier in the week since she was busy with a bunch of girls at her house so she and my aunts worked on it that morning.  When I walked outside and looked at it, it just took my breath away.  I could not have imagined a more perfect look for the arch and I am so grateful that they put such an amazing piece together for me.  I'm also so grateful that my cousin Todd took such an amazing picture of the arch... 

There was one small situation with the grooms cake that, thanks to my Grandma, was fixed by the time the wedding started.  The bridesmaid who was assembling the rice krispies treat layers that J made the day before somehow flooded one of the cake layers.  Like I said, Grandma saved the day so everything was fine, but of course it couldn’t have been the small layer at the top… it was the bottom layer… the one that took like 8 batches of rice krispies treats to fill.  Kudos to Grandma for springing into action and getting the situation fixed so quickly!

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The only other thing we had to do with the head table was to seat everyone.  For pictures’ sake, we didn’t want to put too many bridesmaids next to each other… we wanted a good mix of bridesmaids and groomsmen so the purple and green would be well distributed.  This was really the only point in my day where I started to feel like smoke was going to come out of my ears.  You know the saying “too many cooks spoil the soup”, well too many bridesmaids spoil the seating.  My MOH and I let everyone come over and give them opinions and then walked away and came back later to fix it.  People started to come over when I told my MOH that we were going to redo the seating and I just said, “we don’t need help” and left it at that.  Crisis (and blood pressure spike) averted.

The guestbook quilt was on its table...

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the card box was on the gift table...  

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the escort boards were in the foyer as were the buckets of sparklers and basket of matches for our exit...

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The “stuff” that we all needed to get ready was in the board room that became the bride room and everyone’s dresses were hung up on the portable hanging rack that my mom had.  

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Everything was in place and my vision had become a reality… now it was really time for the day to begin!!!

Next Up: Wedding Day Recap - Tea for 2… errrrr, make that 20