With the passing and celebration of our first anniversary recently, I wanted to wrap up the blog series of our wedding day with a final post detailing our reception.
For lack of a better term, we envisioned a fancy house party for our reception. We wanted our guests to feel as though they had been welcomed in our home. An intimate gathering of friends and family - Formal but not stuffy.
The house itself has a very traditional layout. Though it’s not small in its own right, the floorplan is segmented into many separate rooms. We had to maximize the space to fit even our smaller group of guests. One of these decisions entailed breaking up the dining tables into two rooms. We had one long grand table set in the dining room for 20, and round tables set in the library for 50. Luckily the rooms were adjacent to each other.
Because of this unique layout, we made the unconventional decision for Matt and I to dine separately upstairs in one of the sitting rooms. It was our chance to have some time alone to connect and reflect on the day, since we hadn’t seen each other before the wedding,. This also meant that neither room felt like they were missing out on anything. After we quickly ate, we rejoined our guests and mingled through each table in the two rooms.
One of the details I was adamant about from the start was a champagne tower. At the time, I hadn’t seen them at weddings much and thought that it would be such a fun addition. It was such a fun way to start the toasts and speeches.
With the decor and the feel of the house, we thought a live band would be the perfect touch to the reception. Though it can sometimes limit your music options, it was fun and different and something I'm glad we went for. Our first dances were another favorite part of the night. We danced to "At Last", the song that we were serenaded to, the night of our engagement. Matt and I had taken dance classes (read more here) and we were excited to put our dancing shoes to the test. The dance with my dad was to the Beatles’ “When I’m 64” a song that he used to spin me around to in the kitchen when I was little.
A huge thank you to Matthew Land, for all the images from our wedding and reception. You captured our wedding flawlessly and I love seeing the laughter, dancing and general merriment from our guests throughout the night.
