Our Wedding Day: The Wedding Reception

Introducing the part of our special day that took the most time and planning to create: after the wedding ceremony and receiving line, guests made their way to our wedding reception, which we filled with romantic flowers and timeless decor.

{Click here for our L.O.V.E. balloons.}

Wedding Reception Decor

While we didn’t decorate the ceremony space for the wedding, we did spend a lot of fun wine-filled nights getting the decor ready for the reception. One of the main things I focused on when shopping for decorations was picking pieces we’d be able to use again as home decor.

{Shop for this pretty gold frame or design a custom guest book.}

My family and I love to go antiquing and so we had a blast collecting things to decorate the wedding reception. We found this large cream frame at one antique shop and decided to use it to create our seating chart. After the wedding, my stepdad had the frame made into a beautiful full-length mirror for Chase and me to hang in our apartment.

For our guestbook, I used our favorite engagement photos to create an album on Shutterfly.

I wanted to keep things simple yet elegant for our table decor. We spent the year before the wedding thrifting antique vases in various shapes and sizes to use for the centerpieces. We also added simple votive candles in glass hurricanes to create a soft glow during the reception.

Our table number cards featured photos of Chase and me at ages that corresponded with the table numbers. For the years before we met, there was one photo of Chase and one photo of me. Starting at the age we met, each card featured one photo of us together.

Wedding Reception Flowers

Because I didn’t want to spend a huge portion of the budget on flowers, my amazing friends and family helped me create our centerpieces, rather than having a florist make them.

Not only did doing this save us a ton of money, it turned into a fun girls’ night. The Boesen the Florist team ordered loose stems and let us put the centerpieces together at their shop. They even stored the centerpieces in their cooler and delivered them to Rollins Mansion on the day of the wedding.

We used silver dollar eucalyptus and a variety of flowers to decorate our reception, including hydrangeas, garden roses and lisianthus.

Wedding Reception Menu

We brought in Gateway Market to cater the cocktail hour and dinner for the wedding reception.

Our dinner menu included three meal options: grilled beef tri-tip with horseradish cream, spinach and feta-stuffed chicken breast and eggplant parmesan. All meals included roasted garlic mashed potatoes, sautéed vegetables and focaccia bread on the side. I was sneaky and ordered the eggplant parmesan because I knew Chase ordered the beef dinner and Britni, my matron of honor, ordered the chicken — that way, I was able to steal a bite of each option.

Wedding Reception Dessert

We are so lucky to have a close family friend, Kim’s Cakes, who makes the most beautiful and delicious desserts.

{L.O.V.E. balloons.}

From the beginning, Chase and I knew we wanted to serve cupcakes at our wedding reception. They’re fun, trendy and allow guest to indulge in a variety of flavors. We loved getting to sit down with Kim to taste test a ton of delicious cakes and fillings to decide on our favorite combinations.

We chose to serve three cupcake flavors: spice with caramel filling,chocolate with peanut butter cream filling and lemon with strawberry filling. The cupcakes were served on antique glass platters.

{Find our Mr. & Mrs. sign here.}

Our cake was a spice cake with caramel buttercream — seriously amazing.

I think I’ll always regret not eating more of it during the reception, but of course, we saved a piece to eat next year on our anniversary (but it definitely won’t be the same).

Wedding Reception Music & Dances

We opted to have a DJ, BCP Live, provide the entertainment during our reception.

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Chase and I danced to “My Best Friend” and my dad and I danced to “My Little Girl” — both by Tim McGraw. Chase and his mom danced to “Then They Do” by Trace Adkins.

And then, of course, there was the “Cha-Cha Slide.”

Wedding Reception Details & Vendors

Jessi Russell