At long last.... the account of our at-home reception!
Well I hope the delay in recounting our at-home reception hasnt built up any hopes that it will be as exciting as our actual wedding! Im sorry it took me so long to get around to telling the story, but to give you an idea of my priorities, I still havent finished our wedding photo album
Probably from the moment we announced we were getting married at Walt Disney World, we planned to have an at-home reception for those who couldnt be at the wedding. I think they are a great idea and free you to have the kind of wedding you want while still giving all your friends and family a chance to celebrate with you.
Ours was held in DHs hometown in the Bay Area of California. He has a huge family, and almost all of them live in Northern California, so the party was basically for them. I know some couples do a full-on reception with bridal attire, catering and a DJ, but after planning our spectacle of a wedding in about 5 months, I was completely uninterested in planning anything else.
So when DHs parents offered to host it as our wedding gift, we let them do what they wanted which turned out to be an open house with a sort of potluck. I wore my wedding necklace because so many people had asked to see it, but otherwise it was extremely casual which was perfect!
The party ran from 1pm to 6pm on a Saturday about 2 months after our wedding, and we sent out combo wedding announcement/reception invites on the day after we got married (a huge etiquette no-no, but man was it convenient!).
We encouraged people to drop in whenever they wanted and stay however long they wanted, so we didnt really have a schedule other than cutting the cake at some point. It was quite convivial and felt easy and fun rather than lets meet the entire fambly scary!
We had our wedding video playing on a loop in one room, and I was surprised how many people who arrived in the middle sat through the cycle to see the whole thing.
Even guys watched it!
Even more popular were the softcover Blurb books Id made of our wedding photos. We made one for each grandma and passed them around during the party. Tthe grandmas got their books at the end of the night and proceeded to share them with anyone who crossed their paths: bridge partners, hair dressers, the meter reader...
). People seemed to love being able to look at actual printed photos instead of the ones we had in a slideshow on DHs laptop, and we had people ask us how to get started using Blurb.
Front Cover & Flap:
A sampling of interior pages:
Back Cover & Flap:
DHs parents made a few crockpot dishes and put out sandwich fixings, and people brought desserts. We used leftover paper goods from our engagement party, which the hostess bought in our wedding colors awwww!
My contribution was an attempt at re-creating my parents wedding cake, which my aunt made them as a three-tiered version of the popular family birthday cake (a Ghirardelli milk chocolate cake with milk chocolate frosting!). I watched a video about making tiered cakes on YouTube, bought a Martha Stewart cake turntable, ordered all the other supplies Id need from a professional cake-baking website, and thought I knew all I needed to know
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What eight batches of frosting looks like!
Wheee! Thisll be a piece of cake (yukk, yukk, yukk!)
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Except, as it turns out, you have to be REEEEEEALLY precise when you cut the cake into layers and stack them, or else you get this:
Leaning Tower of Cake!
Persevering
Getting sidetracked
Maybe we just need to rotate it a little
Finished at last!