wedding wednesday: the reception

Happy Wednesday everyone! I think this is my second to last entry in the wedding story. It makes me sad, I've really enjoyed telling you all about our special day. I will have one last entry about an amazing addition to our wedding reception AND our honeymoon as well. So stay tuned. For now, it's all about the reception.

THE RECEPTION

Mike and I wanted nothing less than a huge party. We wanted all our friends to have fun and after all our planning we wanted to celebrate being husband and wife with all our nearest and dearest. Our three most important elements to this party was to be sure everyone was fed well {The food was amazing}, that everyone had a cocktail or beverage of choice {we fully stocked the bar}, and that everyone had tons of wonderful music to dance too {we hand picked every song played by the DJ that evening, along with a few special requests by guests - I still don't know who requested "Cotton Eye Joe", but it made for a fun family hoe down}.

Since the resort doesn't have a liquor license and the county it's located in is essentially a dry county we had to bring in our own drinks for our "private party". Mike and I raided the local ABC Liquor Store. It was a blast, and the first time I've EVER used one of the shopping carts they offer you up front. The beauty of this store was that any unopened bottle we didn't use could be returned or exchanged. Sounds great to me. We were purchasing for a bunch of different tastes and tried to keep most of our guests favorite brews in mind. We also purchased lots of wine {2 types of red, 2 types of white} and 2 Kegs of Beer {Originally we wanted Oktoberfest by Sam Adams but it wasn't available, we went with Coors and the guys got a darker brew for the rehearsal dinner}. Thankfully the resort did offer a bar set up, complete with mixers and garnishes for our guests. As well as Sweet Tea and Lemonade.

Mike and I both came up with our own signature cocktails. His: Pepper Stag, Hers: Buttered Pancakes. Both of these were a hit, needless to say we had hardly any Captain Morgan left, and NO Red Stagg left after the event. All of our guests loved the idea, and loved the cocktails.

ARTWORK DESIGNED BY ME FOR THE BAR TOP

This design matched all our Save the Date items as well as "seating cards" for the reception.

Food: We had an amazing buffet laid out for our guests complete with what I like to call a bit of Southern Comfort food. It was important to me to highlight to my out of town "Yankee" guests some of what I love about living here in Alabama. Being and Eastern girl born and raises it's strange how well I fit in down here, but I do. I think the funniest comment I heard about the food all night was from one of my maids she asked about an item on her plate "What's this? Is it a tater tot?"  I smiled and said "No, it's fried Okra." She looked at me confused. "What's IN Okra?" I laughed, "There's nothing IN it, Okra is a vegetable goof!" To be fair before I moved here I had heard about okra but never tried it, now I'm hooked! I love it fried, steamed, pickled - you name I'll try it. I think the seeds are my favorite part, my least favorite part, the slime. The food line was packed and everyone raved. I really wanted some specialty food originally but the resort requires you to use their catering services. In the end it was way better than I would have imagined and while it wasn't what most consider 5 star dining, it was affordable for out budget, tasty, and everyone was happy! It was like a sweet Southern grandma prepared it for us and that's just what I wanted.

The reception was amazing from cocktail hour, introduction, our first dance until the end of the night we all had a blast, but don't take my word for it. Check out the pictures!

OUR FIRST DANCE

We chose, "Patience" by Guns n' Roses. This song has a lot of meaning because in the past I've never been patient with love. Mike made me wait, longer than I was normally comfortable to wait for a guy. I was so into him, I figured he was worth it. In the end I couldn't be happier. {FYI That's my Brother-In-Law's Tie, and yes, everyone planked EVERYTHING that weekend and that is my other Bro-In-Law on the top of the bar.}

We all had a blast and half the fun was retelling each other the stories of the evening before. I wish I could up load video of the Best Man and Maid of Honor speeches because they were so epic I can't even put into words how amazing they were. All night my biggest issue was keeping track of my drink. I'd stop to say hi, set down a drink, give a hug and then realized there were two drinks of similar colors and I wasn't sure which was mine. Since it was open bar I ran and got another one. All in all we had an amazing time and I'm so thankful for all the great vendors we worked with.

Stay tuned for next weeks entry all about the Photo Booth!!! It was the best addition I could have ever asked for on our special day.