Let's talk about venues

Summer is approaching us and that means weekends in CT at the summer house! This past weekend was the first time we spent it at the summer home. This isn't my families summer home but it's my brother-in laws family who never uses it. So my sister and her husband are the main users and pay the taxes on the place. My family uses it more to be honest. Since my parents move to Florida and my FI parents moved as well, this is our only connection to our hometown and I am so thankful for that.

The summer house (taken this past weekend), isn't it such a cute little place?!

The view from the house of the lake. So peaceful!

I couldn't wait to take a walk with my mother to the clubhouse in the community since this is where we will have our home reception (HR) a week after our wedding. Like I've mentioned a couple months ago, my sister had her engagement party at the clubhouse and it was so beautiful. When we spoke about getting married and wanting a home reception we didn't want anything too formal. I instantly thought of the clubhouse because in September the leaves are starting to turn and lake is beautiful.

I am super excited to share with you a sneak peek of the HR venue. I wasn't able to take pictures inside because there was a private event going on and you had to pay to get in.

The View

I just absolutely love the this place. People will be able to hangout on the porch or relax inside with picturesque view. The place provides a full kitchen, tables and chairs, fireplace, flat screen tv and more!

I promise to take more pictures in the next coming weeks as well. Time is starting to fly by and I'm getting extremely excited for the main event to happen! Aren't you??

Bottle It Up!

Source

Don't you just love when all of sudden an idea pops in your head and the light bulb goes off?!?! Well I just had that kind of moment. Since I'm obsessed with stalking wedding blogs I was captivated by this one from Style Me Pretty.

Source

The entire wedding is just absolutely and elegant and fun! And what sparked the idea is the wine bottle table numbers and that's when it HIT ME. 1 + 1 = 2. I remember reading on weddingbee
about a contest they're having with a company called Bottle Your Brand. And so I checked out their website to see all the different kinds of labels you can create and even customize!



Wouldn't it be perfect if we could create our own wine labels for the at home reception?? Oh the excitement swarmed my body and I started to create a label online.

A little hard to see buuuuuut those labels are only .99 each! Whhhaaaat? Yes. That made the excitement even more intense and I had to instantly text my FI to see what he thought of the idea. And of course he thought it was a clever and creative idea. BINGO! We have a winner ladies and gentlemen! Although now it's figuring out how to either A) get wine bottles with no labels. Is there such a thing? Or B) Buy a bunch of bottles and get a wine label remover and practice!

Have you ever used custom wine or beer labels before? If so, how did you get the on the wine bottle? Was it a sucess?

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999! (singing part 2)

HAHA! I had to continue my singing escapade since the first half of my wedding day details had it! C'mon you know you were singing too!

The Wet Bar.....the place where we will drink, dine, and dance! Part of the wedding package at the resort offers you a free dinner for you and your guests in one of the restaurants but to me that's not very intimate and private since we'll be dining with everyone else in the resort. So it would be just like every other night at the resort which isn't special. I want to also make it memorable for our guests since they are taking the time and money to come down to celebrate with us. So we chose to pay extra for our own private dinner reception from 6:30pm - 11pm. Here we will have a buffet menu, cut the cake, speeches, our first dance, father/daughter and mother/son dances and the whatever the night will bring us.

LOVE the lanterns! Not sure if i'm going to have enough people to do the tradtional bouquet toss. Kind of leaning towards scratching that from the program. source

Love the set up but does it look more like a birthday party than a wedding? My mother commented on that to me. I love the hanging lanterns!

source

My mother even wants to hire fire dancers to entertain our guests. NEVER would have imagined them to suggest that! I believe it's about $500 for a 10 minute show and to me that's not worth it but then again if they want to pay for it who I am to say no?! Speaking of entertainment we are going to rent a sound system and hook our i-pods up to it and make a playlist for each part of the night (i.e. dinner music, first dance, cutting the cake) and that is going to be one of my FI responsibilities since i'm taking care of that.

The resort doesn't decorate the reception area much except for putting white table linens and chair covers. It is our responsibility to bring down any other decorations that we want. Although we can choose centerpieces from the resort for an additional cost which we just might do since it's too plain to leave the table without something in the middle....at least in my eyes. Decorations is another story to come but for now do you think I should buy table runners in our colors or table clothes? Maybe colored napkins? Mind you I have to bring all of this down with me including my dress and whatever else I plan to wear that week so maybe nix the napkins?

source: Majestic Colonial Brides Facebook Group, and here.

A second chance....

Since our wedding is taking place in the caribbean we understand that most people will not be able to spend the time nor money to attend. So we decided to have an At Home Reception (AHR) the weekend after we get married in our hometown. Nothing too formal, but not casual, since we don't want to spend a lot of money. We came up with the idea to use the clubhouse in my brother-in laws summer house community. My sister actually had their engagement party there in September of 2005 and it was perfect not only for the location but for that time of year. The clubhouse has a big wrap around porch overlooking the lake and great big lawn in the back leading to the boat docks. The cost to rent for the day is only $350 and that includes the tables and chairs, sound system, flat screen tv, fireplace and kitchen.

As far as the catering goes we are lucky enough that his sister works for a catering company and can supply the food for the party at a fraction of the price! We'll get a keg, wine, and some bottles of liquor (possibly) and we should be on our way!!

I envision a lot of DIY projects for this part of the wedding and i'm excited! I figured since we have the flat screen tv we can hook up a laptop to it and project our photos from the wedding so people can feel incorporated on our big day. We can hook up our i-pod to the sound system so we have some music, although I haven't figured out if we will clear an area for the dance floor or just have music in the background.

I want people to come and enjoy themselves like they have in the past at family events. Those in true family style but just add a touch of class.