...wedding reception: our grand entrance...

And the World’s Worst Blogger Award goes to…

Eh, never mind all that.  Here’s the truth of the matter: Enough for Ever After has been sadly neglected as I’m busying myself with actually living the Ever After.  And I think it’s time to face facts.  I am not that girl who had a wedding and fell in love with having a wedding and would love to keep talking about her wedding.  Don’t get me wrong.  It was great.  I was proud of it.  We worked hard and it paid off because our wedding was A-list in my book and I loved every last detail.  That being said, by the time we got to our wedding I was sick of it and ready to put it away.  I am ready to put it away even now, but I still owe all of you patient readers the second half of the story.

So here’s the deal.  I’m going to do my darndest to push through the reception recaps, share all the helpful info that I can, and then I’m going to say goodbye.  I’ll leave this little blog hanging out here in Cyberland for a while in hopes that some of those ladies who will be planning future Nashville weddings, or any wedding for that matter, might find a little something that can help her along the way.  We’ve still got a ways to go, so don’t get all misty-eyed on me….but I just wanted you to know where this is headed.

Anyway, back to the reception….

Last you heard from me, DG and I had recorded that fantastic little video of us just being…well, us.  Our guests all parked in the Garage at the Curb Event Center, and we led them to one particular door.  Here’s how the transformation of our entrance to the reception took place.

This is really the only shot I have of the space before it was ready to go.  It's nothing more than a back hallway of white concrete block, but thanks to my lovely MOH, a drop ceiling, and some trusty binder clips, we draped it in black fabric and added some lighting to transform it into this...

We used strips of wide ribbon and clothes pins to organize the escort cards on the wall on the right where these...

became this...

Finally, this welcome area led our guests into a fabric tunnel, lit up with rope lights, which took them into the main reception area.

And cue the spotlight.  Here we our making our grand entrance....to the Black Eyed Peas I Gotta Feeling.  Oh yes we did.  (The bridesmaids...and a little brother...insisted!)

         

Up next...how we built our reception venue from the ground up...quite literally.  Stay tuned!

Thanks to Will Knowles for these handsome photos.

...intro to our reception...

We've finally reached that point in our chronicle where we all happily pack up and move over to the reception!  Are you so excited??  I'm not going to lie, I am!  When it comes to the real hard work and creativity of our wedding, here is where the story really just begins.  We did crazy ambititious things that I totally would not recommend.  Ok, maybe I would.  The payoff was worth every minute spent slaving away.  I am hoping to do sort of a progression of each project from start to finish for you, so it will take a little work to get organized, but I think you'll appreciate seeing how we accomplished each task. 

In the meantime...this is one of my MOST FAVORITE aspects of our wedding.  Our good friend Luke over at Orange Thread Media, worked with us on a number of projects.  He designed and hosted our wedding website, put all the content together for the projectors at both our ceremony and reception, and produced this fantastic little video!!

I'll get to the aesthetics and set up of our little guest entrance to the reception next, but wanted to share this little tidbit first.  We wanted to find a way to help our guests transition from ceremony to reception.  While our ceremony was meant to be very meaningful and somewhat serious, our reception was designed to be really laid-back and lighthearted.  We needed a way to set the tone.  After DG and I did some brainstorming, we came up with this concept and Luke pulled it off FLAWLESSLY.  This video was looping in the guest entrance to welcome them into our reception.

Enjoy!!

A Fun Spin on a Wedding Video from Orange Thread Media on Vimeo.

P.S.  This is pretty much what everyday life is like in my house.  Jealous??