Weddingbee Blog

Before I get further in recapping the reception, I thought I would show you some of our reception’s little personal details and decor.

As I am sure I have said umpteen times here, I am not a crafter. I’ll show you the scary results of one of my half-way DIYs below. I am also not the most creative person around, either. I am always in awe of the ingenuity and overall badass-ness of my fellow bloggers and you, dearest hive members. Y’all be creative! Since I am pretty much okay with my lack of the crafty gene and visual artistry, I looked at different ways that I could add a personal touch to our wedding details.

Here’s our reception room all set up. I love the floor to ceiling windows and all of the light streaming in. The clean, modern lines of the room really reflected the look we wanted.

Since Battery Gardens is a restaurant, they supplied all of the tables, chairs, silverware and glasses. I will be the first to admit to you that table settings were not a priority for me during the planning stages. I could have brought in my own, but I didn’t. One of the main reasons I went with white table cloths is because of our hot pink and orange color scheme. In my mind, anything else but white would have been too busy. Did I mention that the white linens were included? Yeah, that too.

I should take this time to thank Ella Meyer of Limelight Floral Design for her help. Remember Swan Tip #2? This was primarily based on her. Ella was nice enough to humor me when I had one of my few “I think I am having a Platinum Wedding, but I’m really not” moments. See, I wanted to have each table have a different centerpiece. Ten different centerpieces! Ella nicely talked me down from the ledge, and we had about 4 different types of low centerpieces. Also I was pretty concerned about hot pinks I was using (yes, I did write that). I just wanted to make sure that everything matched (yes, I wrote that too). Ella made sure that everything matched but not too much, and the colors of the flowers actually worked well together. Did you know that there is a difference between fuchsia and hot pink? Thanks to Ella for not only listening to what I wanted but being able to point me in the right direction.

Also here’s a close-up of our table names. Yes, we were the crazy ones with no table numbers. The table names were places or people that meant something to us. The guests at the table, for the most part, had a connection to that person or place as well. For example, we had the name of the village in the Caribbean where my family is from. We also had a table named after my dorm in college where my college friends sat. Yeah, I know. Not original. Here’s a close-up:

(I actually took this picture)

Our table names were actually designed by our lovely calligrapher, Fran, of Little Flower Calligraphy.

We had menus at each place setting. EvaPaul, who designed our invitations, added the same modern style for our menus. At first, I was just going to do two per table in an effort to save paper, but then I just gave in and had one at each setting.

Let me introduce you to our escort card table:

Thank goodness for Ella and my DOC, Christine Viola, and the folks over at Battery Gardens. I don’t know who exactly set this up, but it looks downright lovely.

The oranges in the apothecary-looking jars were my idea (although inspired by so many things I saw), so I do get to claim something!

We didn’t just do any old escort cards. Our escort cards were envelopes which contained little note cards inside. Here’s the outside:

(I took this one, too)

The outside of the envelopes included our guests’ names and table assignments.

The note card looks like this inside:

(Mine too)

(Ditto)

Inside we wrote notes to our guests thanking them for coming and telling them what they meant to us (Okay, I did that. Mr Swan often told jokes for the ones he wrote). Mr. Swan held me back from writing a card for each individual guest. We ended up doing one card for each couple, which definitely cut down on the work.

Some other little touches included photos of us with some of our guests and other family, some of whom had passed away. MIL Swan painted a canvas for us to display them.

We also placed some framed pictures that we had of us and our guests.

Our guestbook was a little something different, I guess.

I know that I’m not the first bee blogger to use Moo Cards: Mrs. Candy Corn used them for her escort cards; Mrs. Kitten used them as trivia cards during her reception; and Mrs. Hot Cocoa used them to tell her guests about her wedding website. I told ya I wasn’t original. I actually used Moo Cards for our guest book. Also that big ball of hot pink craziness is actually a pomander that I tried to make. There were supposed to be more, but let’s just say that they didn’t make it. Moving on….

The Moo Cards were set up next to our escort cards during the cocktail hour and then moved upstairs during the reception. We asked our guests to pick their favorite photo card of us, flip the card over, and write us a message or a wish. The completed cards were put into a small jar that’s now in our office.

We used many of our engagement pictures that Dante took as well as a few other favorite pictures of us.

We made sure to include instructions ’cause this doesn’t really look self-explanatory.

I think that our guests enjoyed leaving us messages. Some were quite… interesting.

So that’s it! Our little details weren’t super crafty, but they added a personal touch that we liked.

Swan Tip #13 - More Mrs. Swan Tough Love: Definitely include personal details if you’d like to, but if you’re tearing your hair out about them, they’re just not worth it.

All Images by Dante Williams, unless otherwise noted.

This isn’t the first recap and definitely not the last:

• A Harborside Wedding - Early Peace?
• A Harborside Wedding - The Makeup Fraidy Cat Has Her Day
• A Harborside Wedding - Puttin’ It on at the Ritz, Dress & Shoes Edition
• A Harborside Wedding - Puttin’ It on at the Ritz, Veil, Etc. Edition
• A Harborside Wedding - The First Moment
• A Harborside Wedding - Just the Two of Us
• A Harborside Wedding - Gearing Up
• A Harborside Wedding - We Shall Proceed…
• A Harborside Wedding - Our “Other Guests”
• A Harborside Wedding - The Meaning of It All (or a Ceremony Begins) - Part I
• A Harborside Wedding - The Meaning of It All (A Vow & a Ring Exchange) - Part II
• A Harborside Wedding - A Productive Cocktail Hour
• A Harborside Wedding - The 8th Grade Sway with a Twist