Wedding Recap {Costume Change & Cocktails}

You'll have to bear with me with this post, it's going to be a long one! I wore three different dresses on my wedding day (well before Kimmy K even had the thought of sinking her lovely teeth into Kris Humphries). I had the typical bridal princess dress for the ceremony and pictures, then I wanted a shorter one for the reception so I could dance my you know what off! The shorter dress was my Grandmother's wedding dress, then my mom's wedding dress and then my second wedding dress! When I went into the dress maker I told her I wanted to look like a cupcake (surprise surprise!) and she delivered in the greatest way! And of course I needed amazing shoes to wear with said short dress so I decided on a pair of amazing (and sky high, duh) Betsey Johnson's. I also had my glam squad come back to let my hair out of the chignon and put a new headpiece in. This was a H to T (head to toe) costume change.

I had all my (unmarried) bridesmaids sign the bottom of my shoe and who's ever name wore off the most my the end of the night was the one to get married next!

#GlamSquad

Hairpiece purchased on Etsy.

#SkyHigh

The reason why this second dress was so major was because of the back of it. It has vintage buttons running down the whole back of the bodice. Real buttons, not buttons with a zipper underneath.

#CupCakeDress (more on that tomorrow)

Cocktails - 

Our reception venue was two floors. So cocktail hour was downstairs in a very masculine, fireplace-y, dark wood, over looking the park type of room. It was so fun to come up with a decor story for this room!

We had photo props as the centerpiece of all of our tall cocktail tables for our guests to play around with. (Again, before Pinterest ruined photo props for everyone)

#MeetTheMaids&Men - There was a very long blank shelf in the cocktail hour room. It took a while for me to come up with the plan for this space but once I did, I knew it was the perfect idea to give everyone in the wedding party a brief "about me" page. Guests loved finding out a little bit more about all of our friends in the wedding party!

We had two favors...a bloom bar (more on that later) and these tiny, vintage-y picture holder chairs that held the seating assignments. On the back they had our names and wedding date.

#EatDrink&BeMarried - Our cocktail napkins and stirrers had our date on them.

We had cigars with personalized match books set up at the guest book table. The cigars and personalized match books took place of the cigar roller booth that I wanted at cocktail hour. Alas, we DID save some money there. 

Instead of a full open bar, we instead had an open signature drink menu. It included - A Grey Goose dirty martini (my favorite drink), Balvenie Scotch (The Mister's favorite drink), Barefoot Bubbly Rose (my other favorite drink) and a bunch of local RI (Sakonnet Vineyards wine and Narragansett beer) beer and wine. I know open bars are a hot topic in the wedding community. Many wedding experts say that cash bars are tacky and equate it to inviting your guests to your house and making them pay for drinks. I agree with this to an extent. So, wedding tip # 6 - If you can not afford to have a full open bar, at least have one type of signature drink to offer yours guests for free and/or have wine on the tables.

In the cocktail hour room, we had a mantle that was just calling to be decorated. We chose to put up wedding photos of all of our close relatives married before us. It was a big hit.

(You'll have to forgive the quality of the picture above. Our photographer didn't get a picture of it in the frame)

Since our reception venue had a wrap around deck, I knew we needed something to be outside right before you walked into the reception. So, I decided to put a Dels table for our guests to enjoy. Dels is an RI institution, so this was the perfect touch for the cocktail hour!

Random wedding tip #7 - As I mentioned in one of my previous wedding recap posts...you need to walk into wherever you are getting married/having your reception with a very judgmental eye. When we first went to tour the Roger Williams Park Casino and after I did some stalking around the internet for other wedding pictures at the casino, I noticed these fake trees throughout people's pictures. They were literally the grossest thing I have ever seen and I demanded to my "day of" wedding coordinators that they be relocated to the back deck of the Casino where no one would see them. They obliged and as you'll see in our reception pictures tomorrow, there are no fake ficus' accidentally in any of our pictures. Those things should be burned as far as I am concerned...don't even get me started as to how many unknowing brides and grooms had those hideous trees in the back of their first dance pictures. #Yuck