Category — ceremony & reception

If you’re having a full dinner reception, one of the most important decisions you’ll make is the style of service you’ll offer.

Of your options (buffet, plated dinner, family-style service), a buffet will give you the most variety and least service cost. However, a word of caution. What you save in service cost, you’ll spend in extra food. As you can imagine, caterers do not want to run out of a certain dish, so many will begin by pricing out serving each dish to 100% of your guests (i.e. - assuming that every guest will eat one serving of every item). This is not only wasteful, but it also dramatically increases your budget, virtually eliminating any savings you receive from the service costs.

If your catering proposal includes a price per person instead of a price per dish and quantity of dish offered, push your caterer to offer quantity/piece pricing. You’ll be surprised at the quantities you’re paying for and will be able to adjust to save quite a bit in cost and waste!

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Beth writes to ask:

I’d really like to have a dessert reception. I think the only appropriate time of day to do this is late evening, but as we’re having a Catholic wedding, the only times to get married at our church are 12:30 and 2:30 pm. While not ideal, would it be okay to have a 2:30 ceremony followed by a 3:30-6:30 dessert reception? (We’d obviously let everyone know in the form of “Dessert reception to follow” on the invitations…

Beth, I think that a 2:30 wedding is the ideal time for a dessert reception. With a 12:30 ceremony, the guests would not have time to eat prior to the wedding, but at 2:30 they will have had a full lunch and then can leave your reception and still have dinner at a normal hour.

Dessert receptions are so trendy and fun and we love the look of the buffets that have been prevalent lately, such as this one from Amy Atlas via Once Wed:

With a little styling and forethought, your dessert reception can be uber-chic and totally affordable!

E.

Thanks to Design*Sponge, I was clued into these gorgeous ring pillows by Llubav Choy Duerr.

First Bklyn Pillow and now this? What has the wedding world done to deserve such ring pillow goodness?!

E.

The tabletop is likely to be one of the most distinctive and memorable elements of your entire event. We have selected tabletops with varying aesthetics to provide you with some inspiration.

Manhattan Black-Tie - Here is an event with Artfool. The tabletops were highly dramatic and perfectly complimented the formality of this event. Caviar and iceblocks filled with vodka were also placed on each table as a compliment to the floral arrangements. The rich lighting and colors reflected season with the black & white theme. To add color, the bridal party carried deep red and purple tones.

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Sometime in the middle of planning a $2,000 wedding, it occurred to me, “Why not think of it as a reunion instead of a wedding?” Weddings tend to focus on surface things like flowers, attire, and centerpieces. Reunions tend to be about fun.

When it was time to plan the reception, we focused on just that: Fun. We rented out an entire B&B in the mountains of Colorado. We set up tables in a grove of trees, and our guests feasted on homemade fajitas, tamales, guacamole, salsa, nachos, seven-layer dip, black bean and corn salad, frozen margaritas, and six different types of cakes.

After dinner, we gathered everyone on the flagstone patio for our first dance. Matt and I stood in the center of the dance floor, surrounded by a semi-circle of our wedding party. Our friend, Nick, announced that it was time for our first dance. Matt and I stared lovingly into each other’s eyes. The music started. It was “Kiss” by Prince. We immediately started scissoring our hands and gyrating our hips. The entire wedding party joined in and we performed a choreographed dance, complete with a semi-strip tease by Matt’s brother.

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Last summer, I went to a very traditional wedding: stained-glassed windows coloring and diffusing the light, the priest commanding the audience with his noble presence, the flowers framing the scene, the bride and groom posing picturesquely.

And next to me in the pew was a fellow guest, bent over his cell phone, sending text messages to his friend.

Although texting is, by far, pretty high on the thermometer of wedding rudeness (up there with playing tic-tac-toe on the wedding program or having a thumb war with your date), his obvious disengagement left me wondering: How many people are equally bored with the ceremony but just too polite to do anything but look forward and smile blithely?

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When you undertake the seemingly crazy task of planning a wedding within a $2,000 budget, you have to think outside the box. When it came to the idea of traditional wedding vendors and wedding rings, we did exactly that.

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My friend got engaged a few months before I did. By the time I baked a celebratory engagement cake and showed up on her doorstep, she had already purchased several bridal magazines and started a file folder to capture all her wedding ideas and inspiration.

Instead of starting with the details—dress, flowers, centerpieces, invitations—Matt and I took a different approach while planning our $2,000 wedding. We headed to a good Mexican restaurant to brainstorm our goals and vision for our wedding.

As a teacher, I learned to create lesson plans though a backwards-design approach. The idea is to start with the end vision first. You ask yourself, “What do I want students to know and be able to do by the end of this lesson?” Once you’ve answered that question, you can then plan the smaller activities that align with the end goal.

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One of my favorite parts of planning my vow renewal has been picking my rentals! Today we had the chance to stop by We Rent Atlanta to work with Glen.

Here are some of my pieces.

Charger:

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Choosing how much alcohol to serve at a backyard wedding is often one of the hardest decisions. Too little, guests won’t have a good time. Too much, guest go c-razy and you get a lot of nipple shots at the Smile Booth (not always a bad thing).

Party Central has a great guide to serving alcohol at parties. Keep in mind that this is for a full bar, not a limited specialty bar. I’m also assuming that this is geared towards an evening event. If you do end up buying more than you need, check with the supplier ahead of time. They may let you return unopened bottles of wine and alcohol.

Other Resources: Liene at Blue Orchid has posted a great guide to alcohol (part of her 30 Days to Planning a Wedding feature). I also found a drink calculator at That’s a Wrapper, including this break down of drinks per bottle.

The legal stuff: Keep in mind that with a DIY bar, you take on a lot of liability. Make sure your (or your parents) home owner’s insurance covers a party, and you have en experienced bartender who can set limits on guests.

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