Our Wedding: Part 3 - Prost!
Written 9/2/2016
With kisses my lips were wounded by you, Hast du die Lippen mir wund geküßtSo kiss them well again; So küsse sie wieder heil,And if by evening you are not through, Und wenn du bis Abend nicht fertig bist,You need not hurry then. So hat es auch keine Eil. For you have still the whole, long night, Du hast ja noch die ganze Nacht,Darling, to comfort me! Du Herzallerliebste mein!And what long kisses and what delight Man kann in solch einer ganzen NachtIn such a night may be. Viel küssen und selig sein.-"Hast du die Lippen mir wund gekusst" Heinrich Heine
Since we eloped privately, we wanted to come back from our honeymoon and celebrate with our family and friends. Originally, we had planned to have a huge tent reception, with a relaxed vibe, canoes filled with beer, BBQ, and a band playing for roughly 100-150 people on my in-laws' land. Sounds fun, right? As I started planning the reception, I became really uninterested in having a huge backwoods party. It was one of those ideas that just couldn't be salvaged; I was completely disconnected to the whole idea. I had to go back to square one.
When we were planning on pursuing the tent reception, I realized how none of our families would be able to really enjoy themselves at the party, because I would need their help to keep things in order. I think the deciding factor was when I was getting quotes on those fancy porta-potty trailers. I would have to make sure throughout the night that there was enough toilet paper, paper towels, soap, etc to keep the bathroom clean. I certainly did NOT want to clean porta-potties on the night of our party, and I DEFINITELY couldn't bring myself to ask anyone else to do that either! LOL...Even after the party died down, we wouldn't be able to just go home. We would have to stay and clean up afterwards, no matter how tired we were.
What it ended up coming down to is: What is important to us? We both believed celebrating with our immediate family and friends was a priority. And keeping things simple was a must! But where?
And then, it came to me! From my earliest memories, my family has always celebrated any occasion at The Bayern Stube Restaurant in Gibson City. Be it a birthday, family in town, a night out for dinner, or any other milestone, we would go to the Bayern Stube for schnitzels. Being that both sides of our family are German, it seemed to be the perfect place! And, oh baby, it was!
Here are some pictures of the interior on one of the MANY visits we made so I could VISUALIZE how I wanted to decorate:
We honestly didn't get any pictures of the table decor! Can you believe it? I was so sad when I got home and realized that I didn't take any pictures! :(
After we got home from our honeymoon, we had about 3 weeks to complete decoration ideas, but you know what happened to me? PROCRASTINATION! I think I came to this conclusion that I didn't really care about making the reception all Pinterest-y, and I just wanted things to be simple.
A week before the party, I called my mum and asked her to meet me at Prairie Gardens. I was in succulent heaven, but my mum wasn't very crazy about the succulents. She didn't like the monotone-ness of them, and convinced me that we needed "real flowers." We picked out some Trixie flowers that were heavy on the purple, pink, and peach colors!
They were absolutely PERFECT on the tables! We found compostable planters that were the exact blue and green color of our invitations! They also sat on pretty matching ivory doilies.
Which, speaking of our invites...check them out:
I worked with a print shop on Etsy to design my invitations and they printed them on coasters! Knowing my love for scrapbooking, I was planning on making my own cards from scratch; however, I had way too many design ideas, and my indecisiveness kicked in. I came up with the idea of coasters because I felt like it went along with the German theme. I knew that the coaster invitations were super cool, but they could easily get lost. I came up with the idea to add a magnet on the back of our coasters, which the print shop had never done before. They thought that was such a neat idea, and it was!
I also designed a matching set of coasters to be used the day of the party. They were a HUGE hit and looked SO GOOD on the table! Again, no pictures :(
As you can see, dinner was most definitely destroyed! :) We had the entire banquet hall to ourselves, and I cannot stress enough how PERFECT our dinner party was! We had 21 people total, so we kept it pretty small! We would have loved to invite so many more people, especially family, but we were under the impression the entire time that we would be paying for everything on our own. Even though we didn't go through with the big tent reception, having our dinner party wasn't cheap either!
What's funny is: Ben told me his friend's wife was bashing us on Facebook the next day about not being invited to our dinner party (AND our wedding). Honestly, I could walk past this girl in a grocery store and not even know who she is or what she looks like! It was just shocking (and oddly flattering) that someone I have never met was so upset that they weren't invited! #crazy
HIGHLIGHT OF THE NIGHT: Our party favors!
So, I put a lot of thought into what we wanted to give as party favors to our guests. I'm sure some people thought I was crazy for wanting to give party favors when we were just having a small dinner party, but it was something that was very important to me. I started brainstorming. I always LOVE getting a coozie at a wedding, but that felt too chintzy for our dinner party. And, I have to admit, I hate going to weddings and I'm given those NASTY wedding mints as my "favor"...call me a bitch, but I can tell you that those mints have probably touched so many hands...Ew, just ew! I didn't want anything that people would throw away either...
I needed to come up with an idea that would be something special for this kind of event. And then, I figured it all out on my own! What about a custom German beer stein!? Because we weren't inviting a SHIT TON of people, I could spend a lot more on our gifts. I started searching for custom steins and I was so disappointed. All of the customizable steins were glass and super cheesy. I'm sure one wash in a dishwasher would wash the label off right away!
I wanted to make it EXTRA SPECIAL...
I came up with the idea to contact a pottery studio and see if they could hand-throw some custom German steins. I ended up choosing a company that was able to do a custom graphic on the cup and they had gorgeous products/color customization. BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE...I had an even GREATER idea...I found out that Ben's family has a coat of arms! Through a lot of effort on his family's part, I was able to get a copy of the family crest. A very talented friend of mine drew the image from scratch into an image that incorporated our last name and "established 2016."
We picked the colors we wanted, and I think they turned out beautiful! Since they are all handmade, each stein is different from the other. Perfectly unique! Our guests were saying that they didn't want to drink out of it, because it was so pretty! GAH! I knew I had STRAIGHT KILLED IT with these party favors! When they were being made, Ben started to get nervous about spending so much money on them, but I told him that it's going to be worth it! The day the box arrived, I let him open it (I was jumping up and down right next to him!) He immediately loved them and so did I! He said he was sorry for ever doubting it!
I had another table setup at the party where I placed the steins. I attached little name tags for everyone. They were all handwritten by me (I think my hand is still recovering!). I actually had a lot of handwritten touches throughout the party. From the invites/envelopes, to the place cards...all handwritten by me! On the same table, I had embroidery hoops that said "LOVE" in German, LOVE, and a monogrammed B. They sat on some cute handmade crocheted doilies in matching blue too! Take a look:
You can also get a glimpse at our menu above! The restaurant took care of printing the menus out. I originally was going to embroider a menu, but I just ran out of time! When we picked our menu choices, we decided to choose 5 "dinners." Since this was going to be a "first time eating German food" experience for several guests, I wanted them to have a lot of options. Notice I did not put a salad or a vegetarian option on the menu...#screwit
After dinner was over, we BARELY had to clean up (which was one of the positives about having our party here). We went with a couple others to Burgers & Beer which was a bar/restaurant just around the corner to get a couple more drinks. BEN was the SMART one who brought a change of clothes...fucker lol.
We had such a good time there! I was just on cloud 9 the whole time...probably 90% of that feeling was from the MASSIVE amounts of alcohol consumed (on a Sunday too!).
We played music on the jukebox and played little table-talk games, which Lindsay told me the next day she loved! I'm full of games to get people interacting, talking, and having a good conversation!
We decided it was getting kinda late, and we should probably stop drinking if we were going to make it into work the next day! SMART, HUH?!
When we got home, I was SOOO happy to take my dress off! I loved that dress, but I love sweatpants and no bra even more! We noticed that there was all this crazy flash lightning going on, and Ben said, "Let's jump in the truck and go cruise." So, I hopped in wearing pajamas and no bra lol. We drove out to the country and parked our truck halfway in someone's field to watch the lightning show. It was just AMAZING! We were both pretty damn drunk, happy, and in love. We karaoked on the way home too...
Ultimately, I couldn't have had a better reception to celebrate our marriage! I did all the planning for our wedding, honeymoon, and reception on my own. Traditionally, brides involve their whole family, but I think they knew that this was something that I wanted to plan myself, because it allowed me to put personal touches on everything and to show everyone a good time! Of course, I have to thank our wonderful parents, because everything was possible with their love and support throughout the wedding planning process! And to everyone else that came or was a part of our day in someway...Thank you!
You've filled my heart with so much happiness!
Thank you for reading! :)
