Wedding Reception DONE!

Yesterday, Mom, Holly, and I went to Alexander's in Oxford to talk with Mike Alexander about catering and decorations for the wedding and reception. It was a little overwhelming at first, but Mike was absolutely GREAT and had some awesome ideas.  He also had an amazing deal that got us a whole lot of free food and decor!  The reception is going to be at the church in gym.  My biggest fear was that the gym look would be overpowering and take away from the reception.  Mike had this awesome idea to "cover up" the walls of the gym with pipe and drape.  He is going to line the walls of the gym with white pipe and drape and make the focal wall black pipe and drape with pink drape tied up with silver/crystal bling!  We are doing a black and white with damask print with hot pink accent!  We are going to have sit down tables and high boys (stand up tables).  The sit down tables are going to have black table cloths with damask runners.  The chairs are going to have black chair covers with hot pink ribbon.  The centerpieces are going to have crystal vases with hot pink flower balls and candles. The high boy stand up tables are going to have black table clothes with a damask ribbon tied around the table.  The centerpieces will be the same!  What I am excited about it the cake table!  Along the focal wall, the bride's cake table will be in the center with the groom's cake to one side and the punch, tea, water, etc. on the other side.  The table cloth for the bride's cake is going to be what he calls the pink prom dress cloth (its just a hot pink table cloth with frilly things all on it). The punch and groom's cake table are going to have a black and white damask table cloths.  The food tables will be in the center of the gym.  He is going to put 3 big round tables together with a round table on top of those 3 with some beautiful crystal trees on top.  The cloths will be hot pink with a black over-lay on them.  There will be 2 long tables for food as well as another round table for the chocolate station (more on that in just a minute!!)  It is going to be GORGEOUS and I absolutely cannot wait for our wedding!!!

This is what the tables will look like, except they will have a different centerpiece and black chair covers with hot pink ribbon.

These are the hot pink flower balls we are going to use as centerpieces, with a different vase.

The damask table cloths!!

This is a photo of the church gym wedding he did.  This is what our reception will look like, except the drapes will be black with hot pink drapes tied.  The tables in the back will be the same as the picture, except the round table will be the bride's cake table with hot pink table cloth and the two tables on either size will have damask table cloth for punch and groom's cake. We will also have a "sweetheart" table for Kip and I in front of the bride's cake table! :)

This is what the food tables will look like, only with black and pink table cloths.  He is going to use 2 crystal trees instead of just one!

The table in the back of the photo is one of the high boy tables we will have.  It will have a black table cloth with damask ribbon tied.  I think these are really cool tables, even though we wont have a lot of seating for the reception, people can stand at these (because he said a lot of people don't stay seat long, if at all, during the reception.

The sanctuary is going to be decorated with a white colonnade with flowers and maybe some candles and that is all.  He said the bride is the focal point for the ceremony, so we don't need a lot of outlandish decor in the sanctuary.

This is the colonnade we are going to use, with flowers, in the sanctuary.

Now....for the big and most important thing....the FOOD!! Because I won a prize package, I got a free chocolate station and a free food item.  The chocolate station is a large dessert bar with mini s'mores, brownie bites, red velvet balls, chocolate pretzels, and peanut butter balls.  But because Kip and my flower girl, Ava are both allergic to peanuts/peanut butter, we are going to trade that out for banana pudding in cups. Talk about some awesome dessert!! YUMMMMM! Of course we are going to have fresh fruit, veggies, Alexander's homemade cheese ball, and crackers.  We also added some more food items: a chicken salad mound, BBQ meatballs, hot spinach dip, grilled chicken pasta salad, and triple turkey stacks.  He also threw in 2 items at NO CHARGE: lemon tarts and black bean delights (the way he described them, it sounds like they are like southwestern egg rolls like Chili's has but in a croissant).  We also got 1 of our food items free from the prize package ( we did the triple turkey stacks since they were a higher dollar item).

Banana pudding in cups!

Some of the food for the chocolate station.

Cheese ball with cheese and fruit!

Fresh cut veggies

Fresh fruit

Mike was absolutely wonderful and helpful in picking out our food and decor.  I am so glad we picked him to be our caterer and decorator!  He also had this special: Pay $5000 and get $10,000 worth of food and decor, so Mom jumped on that special since my parents already had the money saved up.  So, couple that with my free food items PLUS $1,000 in free decor from the prize package and we had over $17,000 worth of food and decor that we got for $5500.00.  YES, that is right. ONLY $5500.00!! And the reception is COMPLETELY paid for!! It feels absolutely awesome to know that I do not have to worry about the reception part of my wedding at all!

**ALL PHOTOS ARE FROM ALEXERANDER'S WEBSITE!!**
www.alexandersthegreatevents.com