By this point you may be thinking, "Ms. Aardvark!, we loved your cute stories about budding love, but this is not a biography! You said it was going to be a wedding blog!" And you are right! Let's take a break from all the "getting to know you" niceties and talk about the main event (or at least the kick off to the main event, the wedding, the real main event being the marriage, of course.)
When Mr. Aardvark and I first got engaged, and perhaps a little before that, We knew we wanted an inexpensive simple wedding with our nearest and dearest around us. This, is not what we had in mind:
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| Photo by Hugo Burnand. Officail Royal Wedding Photo |
We wanted a Catholic ceremony with Mass, followed by a party. Not a grand ball. So I started looking at "Laid back" weddings to get an idea of how that could be pulled off. Type "Casual Wedding Reception" into Google and there are all sorts of things that pop up. Very elaborate "casual" weddings. People builing tent villages on the beach or english gardens in their back yards... not ballroom maybe but a little still more fromal than we are looking for!
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| Photo from www.Travelsinirerland.com |
In the beginning we thought we would be footing the bill and there was no room for clear acrylic chairs and rose topiary. We were thinking about going old school with a cake and punch reception at the American Legion. And not the kind of old school where every place setting is a different antique plate. (Although I LOVE that idea and think if you can find/store/use antique china you totally should because they are SO beautiful!) We were thinking something along the line of this:
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| (Taylored Weddings ) This is more our speed. |
Granted I may have tied ribbons to the folding chairs and put a bit more pizazz into the tables, this was much more our speed. I did not want to set up un-realistic expectations for the wedding, and I did not want to go into debt.
Then things shifted. The first shift came when we started talking about our guest list. Before the planning had begun in earnest, we had discussed having 100 guests give or take. We both had large families so we though this would be the most reasonable "small" number.
HA! We sat down one night to each write our own list and, about 15 minutes in each of is had a list of over 80 people. In case you are no good with numbers that would be more than 60% over our first number. Then our parents sent in their lists and it grew again. This time swelling to over 250 people! eep!
However, all was not lost. Even before the list began ballooning,our parents also VERY generously offered to contribute. Three sets of parents ( I have two sets, more on that later) all offering an amount about equal to our first budget. That's right folks. Our budget TRIPLED just like that. We were so grateful and blessed!
Then came the realization that A) all of these people would not fit in the original venue(which had fortunately not been booked yet). B) Many would be traveling to get there, they would want more than cake and punch to eat. And C) Casual small talk and an iPod would not a party make for a crowd of that size. We'd need to find a DJ or Emcee or something more "wedding-y" to keep do after the eating part of the day.
We did not want anything too stuffy, but we also did not want to cram our nearest and dearest (all 250 of them) into a big ugly warehouse type space. We were off to find a middle ground. Something fun, big enough for all our guests, not too ball-roomy, and "us". With our expanded budget, this proved easier than expected. Maybe we were looking at something more along these lines:
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(Photo from the knot.com via Cameron Ingalls) This would be perfect! |
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