Our Wedding: Reception Details

I know I dragged out wedding recaps as long as I possibly could, but I don’t want to leave out some of the details that perhaps got overlooked!

Going into wedding planning, I told myself that the little details didn’t matter. Nobody pays attention to them and I won’t remember most of them down the line anyways. And while all that is true and I didn’t put a lot of effort into the small details, I do think a lot of the little details helped make our wedding as special as it was when put together.

Favors

We decided not to have traditional favors at our wedding. Sorry, guests. Our point of view is that we provided dinner, drinks, dessert and a fun night out. And honestly, I can’t remember a favor that I actually remembered to take home (except for our friend Kevin and Kirsten’s because it was hot chocolate mix and I love hot chocolate).

Brides: do not feel obligated or bad about not having favors. It saved us hundreds of dollars. (Cue all the traditionalists to send me nasty emails.)

Glass Bulbs

I’ve had a few brides email me and ask where we got the glass bulbs that were strung in the tent. I have no idea! Our tent provided the glass bulbs for us. However, I did see these at Target and they looked very similar to what we had!

Lanterns

My grandma ordered our white paper lanterns from Hobby Lobby for us. Each package came in a variety of sizes, but we used just the medium and large ones in different patterns. We Kevin hung them using clear fishing line. We also only did the paper lanterns over the dance floor. It would have taken us days to string them throughout the whole tent!

Table Numbers

Again, simple simple simple. I bought these picture frames from Ikea (stole this idea from my MOH Katie!) and printed table numbers at home on our printer. I designed the table numbers using InDesign and set the image size to 4×6.

I found this little phrase on Pinterest one day and thought it was super cute. A lot of our guests were our age and I figure this would be a good way to check out photos that our friends posted and have them in one place. We printed this on the back of the table numbers since the frame was double-sided.

Centerpieces

After going back to our main list of things that were important to us, we realized that centerpieces and flowers in general were pretty low on the list. I bought these vases from Ikea and found a great navy and white striped ribbon in the dollar bin from Michaels and glued it to the vase. We used one white hydrangea flower to make up the centerpiece. It turned out better than I imagined!

Card Holder

I’m so sad we don’t have a picture of this (which I didn’t realize until now), but my dad bought a white mailbox for us to collect our cards. My mom is a mailman (and has been for my whole life!) so I thought that was sorta cute.

Place Cards

Again, nothing super fancy. I bought navy scrapbook paper and some white mailing labels to make our place cards. I downloaded the mailing label software to my computer and used the same typography that matched our invitations, program, table numbers, etc. to print our guests names.

I’m so thankful for my bridesmaid Sara who spent hours with me sorting the names according to our seating chart, which was perhaps my favorite part of wedding planning. I love a good challenge!

Other Signage

I made these signs, again using InDesign and in the same fonts as our other print materials (I sound like a person who works in PR, don’t I?).

We put these bar signs on either side of the bar so people could see what we had to offer and quickly get their beverage of choice.

My aunt made an adorable basket full of goodies for the bathroom. She included everything from floss and gum to tampons and bobby pins. We made this sign to accompany the basket. Thanks again, Cool Aunt Pam!

Our guestbook might be my favorite detail from our wedding. I plan on writing a separate post about it because it’s now decor in our house, but we put this sign on a table next to the easel that held our guestbook map.

Programs

It’s been so long now, that I think I forgot to include our program! Just like our Save the Dates and invitations, we used Vista Print to print these.

And there you have it – all the little details! I hope this helps any bride-to-be out there because when I was looking for this type of information, I had a hard time finding a good go-to list. As always, shout if you have any questions, brides!