Our wedding continues to feel like it was yesterday. I’m typing this up while wearing my night-before-the-wedding pajamas, we spoke with our reception venue yesterday, and we’re planning to head back up to our ceremony venue this weekend. Needless to say, we’re proudly living in the past and will be through this week of events for a long time. In thinking back on our wedding day, there are so many things that made it fun, but most that we couldn’t plan in advance – like the weird dance moves that the guys from Ray’s old hockey team came up with on the dance floor. But the few that we could come up with came in the form of the fun, little details.
Note that I will be planning three future wedding-related posts. The first will be reviewing our full wedding week leading up to the big day, the second will be our wedding day in a nutshell, and the third will be answering your questions in a Q&A style format. I’ve been collecting questions over time, but please send me any questions you have, either via email (info in the contact section), in the comments section below, or via your preferred form of media.
When we were planning our wedding, we knew we wanted it to be a day that truly symbolized us. This meant being surrounded by the things we love, the people we love, and trying to show our personality, while still keeping our day traditional. One thing that I love about us as a twosome is that we aren’t especially loud and that we don’t need to be the center of attention when we’re together. But, we are incredibly focused on community, and love to make other people laugh and smile.
Thus, while our wedding was kept relatively traditional, we added in a few special, nontraditional touches that helped our personalities shine. These are what became known as the fun, little details.
Funny Cocktail Napkins
After our deeply personal ceremony, we wanted our cocktail hour to almost be a shift in mood to be a more casual, lighthearted atmosphere. We were thinking about putting a fun, personal name to our favorite drinks – but thought it was silly to re-name a Vodka/Soda/Lime or Whiskey/Diet. Then we thought about having a personalized playlist playing – but knew we wanted people using some outdoor patio space and chatting the whole time, so that would have been a bust. So just about two weeks prior, we decided to get some funny cocktail napkins and they were a hit!
I always love personalized napkins at weddings. For whatever reason, they’re a detail I always notice – I don’t miss them when they’re not there, but I do love it when they’re personalized. After having our monogram and initials pretty much everywhere wedding-wise (monogram on all stationery, initials everywhere down to the chapsticks and water bottles we put in the Welcome Bags), I thought that our monogram would be a little too vain and we decided a little lighthearted comedy was in order!
We picked four seemingly random cocktail napkins that we found at stores in the area or had shipped in from stationery stores we found around the nation via Google. People loved them! We even had a few people that saved some saying that we should keep them for future use or for a scrapbook. While I’m sure that not everyone noticed their cocktail napkins, they were definitely noticed by some, and were a tiny way to let our event feel all the more personal.
Separate Dance Space
When we booked our reception space, one of our major fears was how tight the room would feel with dinner, a dance floor, and a band or DJ (we picked a DJ.) There was definitely enough room, but it would have felt very tight. They gave us the option to have our dance floor in a room across a hallway, but it felt a bit too far and separated from the dinner space. But then Ray came up with a genius idea.
There was a space just adjacent to our dinner room that is typically used as a “pre-function” space – i.e. where you pick up your escort cards, there’s a bathroom in there, and they usually set up some couches or seating in the space. But we figured, why not use that as our dance room!
To be honest, our reception venue was a bit worried about our idea, because nobody had ever had dancing or a significant portion of their event in that space. But it worked our seamlessly! Ray made the final speech saying “and we can’t wait to see you all on the dance floor,” two sets of doors opened, revealing our dance floor, the DJ started blasting a re-mix of JT’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” we had sequined table coverings for the DJ and cocktail tables, and our wedding planners (thanks for your help, ladies!) were handing out glowsticks, blinking foam sticks, and blinking sunglasses that we had purchased for our group.
It was a huge reveal and got everyone immediately up and on the dance floor. We continued to have seating space for those that needed to rest or a moment of quiet on either side of the room – in the dinner room and on an outdoor patio on the opposite side of the dance floor, complete with fire pits. But the majority of the group was focused on the dance floor and just having a blast.
Opening those dance floor doors will continue to be one of the most fun memories we have from our wedding day.
Dedicated Kids Room Filled with Fun Activities
Due to numbers and the amount of beautiful babies and children our friends and family members have, we knew that we couldn’t have everyone bringing their children and decided on an adults-only reception. However, we have nine gorgeous nieces and nephews, eight of which were able to attend our wedding day. We desperately wanted them to be a part of our special day, but knew that they’d honestly probably prefer to be running around playing with each other, rather than being stuck at a grown-up table and listening to speeches.
Thus, we decided to create a crazy fun kids room just one floor up where they’d be able to hang out and have a lot more fun! We rented out the “community room” especially for them, which hosts a pool table, ping-pong table, foosball table, computer games, video games, and a television for movies. We got them kids meals that were a lot more kid friendly than “Colorado Lamb Chops with Lobster Risotto” and we hand picked two baby sitters that were super fun girls that were from the area and had a ton of fun activities in their arsenal (plus were college grads that are school teachers during the year – so our siblings were happy, too.)
After dinner, some of the kids came down to join a bit of the dancing, but already sweaty from running around. They said they had fun, and I’m certain that they enjoyed their time a lot more than if they were listening to our speeches and enjoying light conversation around a candle-list table. We’re hoping that it helped to add to what was, hopefully, an overall amazing vacation.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
We’re to well over 1,000 words on this post, so what other questions do you have about our wedding? I’m an open book!
Are there little details that you’ve noticed and loved at other weddings?
Create a great life!
