Weddingbee Blog

Here it was, the morning of our wedding day, and there were a few things that needed to be done before we could get down to the business of becoming bridal. First on the agenda was getting the reception room ready to go.

With our wedding taking place on a Sunday, we were aware that there would be a chance that an event could take place in our venue the night before. When we learned a Saturday wedding had been booked, that just meant we, bridesmaids, my mother, Mr. DE’s mother and I, would have to get up a little earlier on the wedding day to deliver all of the reception decorations and take care of some set up. While I would have loved to have everything taken care of the day before, we rolled with the punches and arrived early, prepared to take care of business before heading off to the salon to relax and get pretty.

The main tasks that morning were preparing the centerpieces, arranging the seating cards/favors, putting on the chair covers and setting up the cake.

The cake! The centerpiece of any wedding reception and the DIY masterpiece that was in the works for months.

In case you forgot, I was the crazy bee who, with the help of her sister, decided to make her own wedding cake. How did it turn out? See for yourself:

There will be more on the cake later when I get to the part where we cut it, but I did get a few shots of us putting it together that morning.

(iPhone photo. Please ignore those ghostly white legs.)

I now present you with the “Bride icing her cake” photo. I’m so glad Ticia got this one!

The cake was a team effort. My sister baked the cakes and prepared most of the fondant. I helped her apply the icing and cover the forms. Mr. DE even helped by applying some of the pearls after I dabbed each spot with icing.

And do you see the display of food in the background? That is the start of our cookie table. Every wedding that takes place in western PA has a cookie table. Even some in Eastern Ohio support the tradition. Cookies are baked by family and friends and made available to eat during the reception. Think candy buffet, but less trendy and more expected. Right up until the start of the ceremony, aunts, cousins, neighbors and friends brought their boxes of home-baked goodies for the catering staff to tray up. Traying cooking was included in out per person price, but during my reception venue research, some venues charged an additional $0.50 – $2.00 per person to tray cookies. Since nixing the cookies was not an option, I was happy to not have to worry about a surcharge on cookie arranging. I think we ended up with over 150 dozen. If you are wondering, that’s just shy of one dozen per guest. I think my sister, Jess, baked over 70 dozen by herself. I was worried that we wouldn’t have enough. Wedding guests love their cookies! Thankfully, there were a few left at end of the night.

With the cake ready to go, we moved on to the centerpieces. I didn’t want to bring the centerpieces put together because I didn’t want to risk having thousands of split peas spill all through my car. We also didn’t have all of our votive candles (I went to buy a few packs at Walmart a few weeks earlier and they only had one. Someone forgot to go to go back and get more after they restocked, so my mom had to come to the rescue the day before). All we had to do was get them all ready and the caterer set them up after skirting the tables.

For the seating card/favor combos, I wanted to make sure we had them arranged on the table neatly and in alphabetical order. I could have trusted this to the venue, but this was just one of those things I couldn’t let go because I wanted to be sure we did it right. It only took about 20 minutes to set everything out and it was well worth the peace of mind.

The chair covers were a team effort. We knew that if my mom, Mr. DE’s mom, all the bridesmaids and I were there, putting them on wouldn’t take too long. I think we got all 160 on in less than 20 minutes.

The chair covers were my one wedding splurge. I paid for them myself because I felt it was a good investment in the overall look of our reception. I wanted elegance and the chair covers provided that. It was cheaper to buy than to rent. I bought them in bulk from an eBay store and they arrived with some heavy wrinkles from the way they were folded and packaged. Mr. DE’s mom saved my butt by helping to launder them and get the wrinkles out.

Here is a shot of the reception hall all set up and ready for the party.

With the work out of the way, we were off to the salon for some wedding-day pampering!

What was on your to-do list the morning of your wedding?

All photos (with the exception of the iPhone shot) are by Ticia Mangino Photography.