Finally! The Reception! I realize it has take me forever to share all the details of our wedding, but today I am sharing the decor. As most of you know, my mom, sister, & I spent a year collecting vintage dinner & dessert plates, which was one of the focal points of the decor.
For table markers, we were inspired by our friend's Sky & Dickie's wedding where they used their favorite record albums. We love music & Rich is a drummer {by night!}. We also loved the graphic nature of album covers. We made sure to pair appropriate album covers with the people who were going to sit at the table - Beatles for his parents, Jimmy Buffet for mine, Jamiroquai, Led Zeppelin, & Bob Marley for our friends. Each table had three milk glass vases of varying sizes that I also collected. Our florist, Minott's provided me with two large buckets of flowers & one of my mom's friends arranged all of the bud vases. Minott's arranged all of the larger or wider vases. Our flowers were goooorgeous & included a mix of dahlias, zinnias, queen anne's lace, straw flowers, David Austin roses, hydrangeas, & various decorative grasses.
My parent's bought Rich & me special plates as a nod to our engagement in Paris. My mom found these at Anthropologie & they were so pretty.
In additiona to the record albums & milk glass vases, I also purchased a bolt of green burlap & cut it into large squares to anchor everything in the middle of the table. We were allowed to have open flames, so we purchased tea lights & placed 6 per table. It added a wonderful glow to the room.
In additional to collecting vintage plates & vases, I spent a lot of time designing our escort card table. That is to say, I told people my ideas & they made it happen. That gorgeous table? Built by my father! He purchased the cherry wood & legs, sanded, stained, & finished all 7 feet of it {we are currently re-doing our house & it will eventually go in our dining room}. The shutters were a Craigslist find & were taken off an old Victorian mansion in downtown Portland, Maine. My mom, sister, dad, & I all worked on cleaning, sanding, & painting them with milk paint.
I did not have time to set-up the escort table myself, so I drew a photo for my Aunt Paula & cousin Lisa {& fellow bridesmaid}. The wreath was set-up by our florist, Samantha, & my aunt & cousin hung the photos, which were wedding photos of our grandparents.
On the table we had our parents' wedding photos, our engagement photo, the escort cards, & guest book.
I really, really, reeeally loved that wreath. It was beyond beautiful.
The room where our reception took place was really nice with minimal decoration. There were 2 large paintings on the wall which we could not take down because they were originals, but I was okay with that. We strategically placed the desert table in front of one, & the other one was in a far corner so you could not see it. The windows had wood blinds, but we decided they needed a little more, so my mom found these beautiful lace curtains with leaves & birds. We bought inexpensive tension rods & hung the curtains in each of the 15 windows {the curtains are for sale here!}.
Lastly, I created a few dozen paper flowers out of westminster bells & hung them on the head table. I found the perfect pink color on eBay. I decided I wanted to hang a few paper lanterns over the dance floor, which did not quite work out as I envisioned. If I had money to hire a professional lighting crew, I would have, but c'est la vie. It still looked festive!
Tomorrow I will share one our favorite parts - dessert!
{All images by Fat Orange Cat Studio}
My! Simple yet warm and inviting! That's how wedding receptions should be! I love the idea of putting album covers to almost designate the seats. I actually wondered if you had to leave the records inside!
Posted by: Monica Bremer | February 07, 2012 at 05:33 PM