Weddingbee Blog

Family pictures were fast, furious, (not really, I just can’t say fast without furious anymore) and simple. We’d given the photographer lists of groups we wanted and she just called out names and switched us around. We took the pictures at the front of the sanctuary. For the sake of brevity, I’ll just share a couple of my favorites:

This is my family- my parents, sisters, brother, SIL, BIL, nephews, daughter and husband. How cute!

This one is everybody on both my and Mr. Cannon’s sides. My grandma had already left for the reception, so we didn’t get any pictures of her, but I got a picture with her and her husband later:

Lovely! After we finished up with family pictures, we went across the street to the reception venue. Everyone was already there—except our bartender!

Everyone has to have at least one thing go wrong on their wedding day. I’m pretty sure that’s the law and if you don’t have something go wrong, your marriage is not legally binding. This was ours—and it was totally MY fault. We had hired a friend of a friend to tend the bar for us. We met him at the bar he worked at and he made us great drinks, and was a friendly, nice guy, so we were happy with him. But, when I had put together the timeline for the wedding, I planned on the ceremony being much longer than it actually was. I guess I just have been to too many long Catholic weddings and didn’t realize that our wedding wouldn’t take over an hour. And, since the venue was across the street from the church, we had told everyone to head over after the ceremony to hang out for cocktails before dinner. So, I told the bartender to be there about a half hour later than the reception ended up starting. He showed up early, though, so the bar was only unmanned for a short time. And, we have totally awesome friends so it wasn’t even actually unmanned. Our best man, one of our friends, and my MIL all stepped behind the bar to fill in until the bartender showed up. Yes, we are lucky to have amazing family and friends. And no, no one seemed too worried about about the snafu, including yours truly. At that point, I was married, and pretty much figured everything would work out. I knew that the bartender wasn’t REALLY late according to when I had told him to show, so there wasn’t anything to be worried about at that point anyway. He showed up and all was well.

I had already seen the reception hall set up earlier, but it was our guests’ first look. As they came in the front, they could find their escort card on a table displaying all the color-your-own RSVP cards.

I HIGHLY recommend offering an opportunity like this for your guests to get creative. It made getting our RSVPs in the mail ten times more fun. I couldn’t wait to see what people did. Plus, it turns something you’d normally throw away into a keepsake. I still have all our RSVPs tucked away in my wedding memory box. (Okay, they’re in my front closet that I haven’t cleaned since the wedding. Whatever.) Here are a few of the most creative offerings:

I’m also really glad that I displayed them at the wedding. People seemed to really enjoy seeing the cards they decorated along with all the other guests’ cards.

My yarn balls went up and provided a central focal point above the dance floor. Not as flashy as a disco ball, but still fun.

We had our paper flowers for our centerpieces as well as our bouquets.

And of course, the spray painted wine bottles that almost knocked me out.

And this little rainbow crochet heart garland is pretty much my favorite thing about the whole wedding. I saw the plans for this on design sponge WAY before the wedding and thought it was so cute. I’m not a crocheter (I’m a knitter!), but my mom is, so I asked her to make it for me if she had time. She did, but didn’t work on it until pretty much the last minute, so I didn’t see it in until the day of the wedding. And I was in LOVE when I saw it. I wasn’t sure where I was going to put it, but my mom put it up on the mantel above the fireplace that was behind the head table and it was perfect. I still love that heart garland and have it in my house.

That’s pretty much it for the reception details. I have to say that I still love all the things we did and I’m really glad we put in all the effort required when you do it yourself.

Did you re-purpose any of your wedding decor as home decor?

All Photos by Mary Wyar Photography