...wedding reception: how we brought the outdoors inside...

In case you need to catch up...we talked about settling on our reception venue  here, here, and here.

All along, DG and I really loved the idea of an outdoor reception, but we did NOT love the risk.  Considering the 500-year flood happened ON OUR WEDDING DAY…we are really glad we came up with this lovely plan B. In the end...though we were  inside and still dry...we still achieved the feel of a late-night outdoor dinner party...or something.  (Yard games and all.)

We basically dreamed up this space in our heads, called in  A LOT of favors, lit the place up and got what you’ll see here.  Let’s start at the beginning….

This is what the arena at Belmont’s Curb Event Center looks like on a normal day.

And here’s an average dinner setup.

And here’s what we did...

Day one of setup was mostly just building the space. The floor was covered and the frame of truss to hang the curtain was flown.  Lighting and sound were hung...you know...normal wedding stuff. :)

I wish I had been more diligent about taking pictures of the progression because, well, Mom's photography....not that great.  (Sorry Mom! But it's true!)  But maybe you'll get the idea...

Here the curtain is being tied on to the frame, but we haven't flown it yet.  

Dad's working hard on putting our lanterns together...looking thrilled to be doing so.  (We'll get to exactly how we made them in a post coming soon!)

Here Dad and I are working on making four GIANT pseudo-lanterns out of these 55-gallon oil drums.  We're pretty hardcore if you haven't noticed.  (Also, this was pretty much my standard uniform for that entire week. Yoga pants all the way.)

In this one you can see we've hung everything where it belongs and our lanterns are suspended over an empty room...

Soon we put the brother and sisters-in-law to work covering our tables in kraft paper.  We owe them big.  They were awesome!

Obviously there are a lot of details that I'll show you in coming posts...but here's the basic finished product!! It was a lot of work, but oh-so worth it!  Will is one talented guy, but I really just don't think a photo can do it justice.

More details to come!  Big thanks to Will at Will Knowles Weddings for all the real pictures!

…reception-part three: the tables…

I keep thinking I'm going to be a good little blogger and blog some more….but I find myself spending my free time doing the most random of things. Scouring the internet for printing labels. Researching cardstock. Buying paint. You know…important things. I've been meaning to write more about our reception for quite some time, but I've been stalling because there are a handful of things I really need to take/find pictures of. However, in an effort to get at least one post in this week, we'll throw a little something together for now.
On to our reception… (If you'd like to catch up, parts one and two are here and here, respectively.)
So obviously, the tablescapes will make up much of the décor at our reception. We're starting with big long linear tables. (Lines make my heart so happy. J) You get the idea here in DG's rendering of the space. (Don't you love him?)

Next let's talk about linens. Or should I say lack thereof. It seems that renting linen is just one thing you can't easily get around. Because of the cleaning and all that's involved, it's pricey. We'd budgeted something like $400 for this purpose alone. I think that's a terribly large chunk of the $9,000 we're aspiring to overall. Seems foolish to spend almost 5% of the budget on glorified tablecloths. So, true to form, we're rebelling. One evening when we were sitting in the arena, dreaming up all these ideas, we got stumped by linens. Frustrated, DG looked at me and said, "You wanna just cover the tables in paper and pull out the crayons?" "Why, yes. Actually, I do," I said.

SO! Brown kraft paper will cover our tables. And thanks to Crayola, I was able to order a custom box of colors. I have four boxes of crayons at home full of a wide array of greens, purples, browns, and white. My mom tells me we need to learn to write our names upside-down, a la the wait staff at Macaroni Grill so that we can go around to each table and introduce ourselves. "Hi, I'm Racheal. I'll be your bride this evening." In keeping with the theme, our place cards and table numbers will be written/drawn in crayon. Just try not to be jealous.

We'll use a smaller 12" roll of white butcher paper down the center to serve as our runner and add a little contrast. And I'm pretty sure that will bring the grand total for "linen" to like $75. Yes, please. I've looked in a million places to find examples of where someone may have done this before, but to no avail. This was the best I could do, and I can't even remember where it came from. Lovely, no?

Finally, to tie into our lock and key theme, we're doing a sort of "vintage-metal-chic" kind of thing with the rest of the décor. We found these great little metal planters at Old Time Pottery for $3.00 each. We're painting them a dark metallic bronze. These will hold our flowers (which I have no idea about just yet, it's fine) and sit in the center of each table. I think they'll work well considering they're narrow enough to leave plenty of room for the place settings.

On each side of said centerpiece we'll display one of our smaller homemade tin can lanterns. (At some point when I can take some progressive pictures, there's a whole post coming on these.) Ours are way pretty and will be painted in the same bronze, but this at least gives you the idea.

That's all I've got for now. Details to come later. What do you think?