Our Wedding Party

In the process of cleaning up this little blog of mine, I realized that I never posted about my wedding party that happened almost one year ago. Please indulge me as I spend the next few paragraphs and dozens of photos blabbing about nothing but me.

My hubby and I got married in May/2010 on our seven year dating anniversary surrounded by both sets of parents and a pair of dear friends who offered to be our photographers. Months later (July) we decided that we wanted to throw a party with all our friends and that said party should be in September. Because you know, two months is plenty of time to plan a party.

We rented this house in Malibu where both sides of our family stayed with us for a week:




The house was beautiful inside and out but we wanted something more casual so we set up shop on the lawn:




I spend a mad couple of weeks sourcing table and chair rentals. We drove all over the greater LA area to every Ikea/Target/Walmart/Dollar store possible to find linen + silverware + glassware. Exhausted, we scoffed at the idea of making seating charts and the such. Our wedding party was one big seating free for all.




The general seating area was set up as some cocktail tables + some round 60" tables + lounge areas. The food tables were set up as four stations, salads, cheese+bread+olives, main and dessert. I asked the caterer to bring out the three main courses in 20 minute intervals to facilitate an environment for people to walk around and mingle.

We munched on appetizers from the caterer before dinner:



and bowls of chips from my husbands family were placed around the bar:



For dinner we had salad + lasagna cupcakes + pork belly + trout + veggies:


And for dessert we had cupcakes baked by my dear friend, and cake pops baked by my brother and his gf.


Each of the main tables was decorated with a card. On one side of the card was a year and the other side a picture of us from that year along with a brief summary written by one of us (odd years for me, even for him). Also placed on all the tables were trivia cards. We made 150 or so unique cards with little questions on one side and answers on the other. Some of the cards contained personal information about us (where we were born etc.) and some of the cards had little factoids (what is the boiling point of niobium?) on them to help get conversation flowing. Both of these seemed to be a big hit and I heard non-overlapping sets of friends talking with each other about something they read on the cards or in the year synopsis. Wedding win!



All the flowers were made by another friend of mine. We went to the LA flower market and bought 130 dollars worth of flowers and she spent the next day cleaning and arranging ALL of them. In return, I gave her some leftover cupcake mix. Fair trade, I think. She also helped me with the name tags on all the champagne glasses that we used to serve Clairette de Die to all out guests when they arrived.


As if all the awesomeness of my friends weren't enough. I also have an awesome mother-in-law that made me a guestbook. I asked her to paint me anything that she felt symbolized my relationship with her son. She surprised me the day before the wedding with this.





The intertwining of the swans. The use of the color red. The chinese character. It is perfect and I love it. My guests had a fun time signing it too and it now resides hanging in our home.

And finally, the reason why I even thought about posting this on a sewing blog, my dress....




to be continued....



don't be mad, this entry is already wayyyyy too long.