{rehearsal dinner, turned} Welcome Party

February 6, 2013

From the moment we booked our wedding location, we knew we wanted to have a 'welcome party' as opposed to the traditional rehearsal dinner. Mainly we just wanted more time to spend with all of our guests - it isn't too often you have all the people you love in one spot! And with many people traveling to our destination for the weekend, we wanted to thank them by having a second party!

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Because we decided to have a larger party and invite everyone who is invited to the wedding, we had to keep it more low-key than we would if we were hosting just our immediate family and wedding party. In other words, we couldn't do a full-on sit-down dinner. And that is fine with my fiance and me since we will be having the sit-down dinner the next night.

Luckily we found a bigger venue that also happens to be a winery (score!) and we found our exact vision of the food we wanted - a traveling wood fire pizza oven. When we found the place that had a traveling brick oven, we knew we had to get them for our welcome party. It was just what we were looking for - casual and cost-effective, but, at the same time, quality, local ingredients, delicious, fresh food, and a fun vibe. If you are hosting an event in the Columbia Gorge, I highly recommend checking out Solstice Wood Fire Cafe!

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I love rehearsal dinners/welcome parties because it's like a mini wedding, minus all the pressure! You can make it what you want. Go all out, or keep it casual. It gives the bride and groom a chance to greet guests and catch up with everyone before the wedding. It's a great way to ease into the wedding weekend and get into the relaxing frame of mind for the big day. And, the way I see it, the more time your guests have to get to know each other before the wedding, the more fun they will have the day of, right?

If you haven't noticed, I'm almost as excited for our welcome party as I am for the actual wedding.

What are you doing the day before the big day?! If you are having a 'welcome party,' how did you cut back so that you could host a bigger group?

Oregon Showers Bring July Flowers

July 25, 2012

The countdown is on! My fiance and I are officially getting married in less than a year! So now when I read the wedding check lists I will actually need to pay closer attention to the "12 months before" section. The cool thing about being a year out from our big day is that this is the one time we are in our wedding month - July! Which has me thinking about all things seasonal - weather, food, and flowers, among other things. But right now it's mostly flowers. And even though booking the florist is on the "8 months before" list in my Brides magazine, when it comes to seasonal things, I think the perfect time to think about what you want is during the season your wedding will be in. Last month I posted about my wedding color palette, so this week I want to delve further into the flowers - such a big part of the color scheme. We are doing light neutrals for the bridesmaid dresses, grey for the guys and pops of bright with the flowers. See more on my wedding colors in my post, here.

So, for the flowers...I am liking the bouquets with bright colors, but that are balanced out with some lighter, neutrals.

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I LOVE the look of the single flowers for the bridesmaids (also budget friendly, I would think). Including the peonies in the brides bouquet ties it all together. I think for my color scheme I would do similar to one of the colors below for my bridesmaids.

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My next task on the flower front is contacting some florists in the Columbia Gorge area to see if these flowers are doable in July.

Speaking of beautiful flowers, I want to give a shout out to my dear friends, Lauren and Nick Allen, whose gorgeous wedding was featured on Wedding Chicks last week - click here to see. I'm in the first picture all the way on the right and a couple pictures down with the glowing bride. ;-) Aren't their flowers amazing?!

Follow up from my post last week when I was trying to figure out what to do for our negative one year anniversary. We decided to go get drinks at the neighborhood bar down the street. After some delicious beer we grabbed takeout Ethiopian food, went home, popped a bottle of pink champagne (that we had been given as an engagement gift) and just ate, drank and laughed together. It was my ideal laid-back, negative anniversary celebration!

Venue...Check!

May 16, 2012

I'm happy to say we found the 'where' and the 'when' for our wedding! We took an extended weekend trip up to Oregon last weekend and fell in love with one venue in particular...it had all the checks on my list and then some. Not only that, but we got to spend an afternoon in Hood River, where our guests will be staying, and had so much fun! As a bonus, our friends and their sweet ten-month-old baby girl were passing through town too, so we got to go to lunch and walk around town with them (with a little wine tasting room pit-stop). I can only hope for the 80-degree weather from last weekend when our wedding comes around! I hadn't been to Hood River since I was a teenager, and I can say that it definitely lived up to the memories. I know our friends and family will enjoy this town as much as we did. As I mentioned last week, it's really important to us that our guests are staying in a place that they can explore and hang out with each other. As we walked around town, we kept our eyes out for places we could be in the days before the wedding. There were so many great spots and things about the town that fit our style...breweries, fresh and local food, outdoor decks, nice people, etc.

The downtown area is full of quaint buildings with home and clothing boutiques, windsurfing stores and restaurants. In the background is the Columbia River and the State of Washington.

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Hood River is also the windsurfing capital of the world!

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About a 30-minute drive south of the town of Hood River, past wineries, lavender farms, and pear orchards lies the spot we will be saying 'I do' in July of 2013 - Mt. Hood B&B.

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Here are some pictures of their awesome 47-acre property that sits on the northeast side of Mount Hood.

Mountain backdrop: check.

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Room for lawn games: check.

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Great dance floor: check!

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Spot for the music: check (although now my fiance wants a band and I'm not sure if that fits into our budget :-)

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Another reason we loved the B&B is that the owners were really sweet and helpful. Jackie (the wife/mom) happily answered my million and one questions. The couple raised their four kids on the property and now their daughter is also a day-of event coordinator. We wanted a day-of coordinator and she knew her stuff, so we hired her on the spot. That is sort of becoming a theme with our planning - if we know we like something, we make the decision quickly.

I am so relieved to have the date set and the venue booked. Now I feel like I can make all the other decisions within that framework and the vision can sort of fall into place. My mind is racing with all the other fun details...the colors, the dress, the flowers! Did anyone else feel like this? Or are the hard decisions yet to come?