Venue
We saw several places and had a few tasting and decided on having our reception at the Cotillion in Palatine IL. The food was great and huge portions. I wanted to have the reception at a hotel for the convenience factor for our guests but the Cotillion offered the lowest prices for the best food we found.
This is the floor plan for our room, we can fit up to 20 tables comfortably that each sit 10 people.
| circle-10.pdf |
Head Table
At first I wanted a sweetheart table but then after thinking about it, we decided on a head table. The girls will have vases for their bouquets across the tables for decorations.
Centerpieces
Our flowers will be all green and white throughout the reception and ceremony and bouquets.
We are having 3 styles of centerpieces:
#1 is Short Round mixed with ti-leaf wrap inside, green berries, dahlias, football mums, green roses, green cymbidium orchid accents, green or white hydrangea and Lady's Mantle/Bupluerum foliage
Centerpiece style #2 will be 5 cylinders of various heights with submerged orchid heads and hydrangea and floating candles at top and bear grass wisps inside.
Memory Table
I am working on getting the pictures to display on the table as well.
Reception Music
We hired Kate and Rachel from Toast & Jam to be our DJs. They will cover the Cocktail hour and Reception music. They gave us a list of songs that we can mark as Must Play or Do Not Play plus any additions we want to make.
Our first dance song is Let's Stay Together by Al Green.
We're letting our parents pick the Mother/Son and Father/Daughter songs so those are TBD.
Entrance Songs
Both K and I went to Indiana University as did most of our siblings so we're walking into the reception to the IU Fight Song.
The Bridal Party entrance songs are still up for debate...I want something old school and fun, right now I'm thinking Walk This Way by Run DMC or Tricky Tricky by Run DMC, but I want Tricky Tricky played during the reception so that won't work too well.
Chair covers
We hired The Chair Couture for our chair covers and sashes. They were the most reasonably priced we found and they were running a special! We got ivory chair covers, a navy sash and a navy table runner for the tables.
UPDATE: I'm meeting with them again in January to discuss our linens, I would like to nix the table runners and swap out the ivory linens for navy tablecloths. See the digital image I came up with to get an idea of how it will look. Colored tablecloths will really be a wow factor.
Photobooth
We have hired Photo Booth Express. I'm really excited about this aspect most because I've never been to a wedding with one. I know this will be a wow factor for our guests.
Let them eat cake
We chose our cake! We will be doing a 3 tier cake just like this first image but no purple orchids....sugar dahlias instead! We will also add the ribbon like the 2nd picture to the cake.
We chose a white cake with both vanilla buttercream and raspberry french custard as the fillings.
Cake table decor
These will go on our cake table along with some apples and candles. I bought these paper mache letters from Paper Source and painted them white. I then brushed on tacky glue on the top only then sprinkled white/clear glitter over the top to make them pop. Again, very easy DIY!
Toasting flutes
The ones my mom bought us have an angled top which makes it easier to drink from and have a cracked glass effect on the bottom.
