Weddingbee Blog

Ahh, the wedding reception details. I think happy thoughts when I see these photos. It’s so satisfying to see nine months of planning come to fruition. The projects weren’t Martha Stewart perfect, but they were special to me; it was the blood, sweat, and tears of myself and my closest family and friends that helped to pull this event off. I’m also deeply indebted to our floral designer/DOC/life saver, Stacey Miller. She handled a few emergencies without mentioning a single word to me, and she made our day utterly fabulous!

Part I: Primped and Prettied
Part II: The Dashing Gents
Part III: The Wedding Duds + A Suite Switcheroo
Part IV: The Threads, and How They Unravel!
Part V: Meet ’n Greet
Part VII: Wedding Portraits

All photographs are property of the awesome Apertura Photography.

While Erwin was finishing up our portrait session at the Stanford University campus, Ray headed back to take awesome pictures of our wedding details:

For escort cards, I made the flowered creations above. My cousin created three amazing ribbon boards that complemented perfectly. I’ll write a full post on the project soon, I promise. For now, let me say that the cards were a huge pain in the you-know-what. I punched each border by hand until my palms were crying bloody murder, and my Martha Stewart punch cracked.

I made special place cards for Mr. Eggplant and me. Obviously, we knew where we’d be sitting. But, these make for a good photo op, don’t they?

Guests commented on our table numbers and told us they really liked them. Some even took them home!

Stacey designed a mix of high and low centerpieces. These balls were the flowers from our ceremony, re-purposed as tall table decor.

Our low centerpieces were elegantly wrapped roses in a clear vase. Simple, yet pretty.

Thankfully, the banquet room lights were dim for this photo. In real life, our wedding cake was not as beautiful as this picture. The fondant was a faded green color that didn’t quite match the ribbon that I provided to the bakery. However, at $2.77 a slice, I’m not complaining.

My cousin gifted me with these initials to decorate our cake table. The letters were purchased from Paper Source, and she painted them in pretty shades of pink and brown.

Ray took a pretty photo of our Wang Love Knots cake servers. I’ve already used these a few times since the wedding, so I consider them a good purchase.

Candy buffets may be played out, but ours was a HUGE hit with everyone. Our emcee had trouble convincing people to stay seated during dinner. They were constantly mulling around the candy table.

For 180 guests, I purchased one third of a pound of candy per person. I limited the amount of sweets that each person could take home by providing compact Chinese take out cartons. These proved to be useful when Grandma Eggplant grabbed one and stuffed her leftover prime rib into it!

These were our Ferrero Rocher table favors and dinner menus, which I promise to write about soon.

Stacey decorated the sweetheart table with the bridesmaid bouquets. They looked stunning and they saved us money.

As guests trickled into cocktail hour, they were handed a guest book page by my sister-in-law and Mr. Eggplant’s cousin, who also watched over the wedding gifts.

Stacey created tall centerpieces for the check-in table using floating orchids and water. Pictures of the Eggplant parents also decorated the space.

Garden Court Hotel served everyone with yummy hors d’oeuvres.

Mr. Eggplant thought up our specialty cocktails: A Marry Me-hito and a Raspberry Sweetini.

I was ecstatic that people took the time out to complete the guest book pages. They came up with some pretty creative responses. I’ll share a few once I finish compiling the album.

We had lots of babies and kids at our event. All of them were angels throughout the night and I didn’t hear a single cry.

We gave goodie bags to all the kids at our event, which included coloring books, crayons, and other fun gifts. They were a hit and I recommend this small gesture to everyone who is inviting young ’uns to the wedding.

We had the entire courtyard to ourselves during cocktail hour. Here’s a view from our hotel suite above.

Erwin/Ray caught a photo of us spying on the festivities below from our hotel suite, right before we headed down to join everyone.

Next up: The football that almost killed our cake and the best man that almost stole my groom!