The Order of Things

I can't tell you what a wealth of information the coordinators, Victoria and Dann, at the Lake Union Café are. I met with Dann this week to go over some details of the big day and ask some questions, and I walked out of there with a few items of my to do list done.

For Example, the order of the reception.

I had been paging through Mrs. Daffodil's amazing wedding packet. It's so detailed and EXTREMELY helpful. Her wedding is longer than mine and therefore has more elements to it, but it's still so helpful because it lists more wedding elements/events than I could possibly think of at one time. The only problem was I couldn't decide what order to do things in. When is the first dance? What do we do if there is not cake cutting. How do we arrive if there is no receiving line?

Thankfully Dann mapped out what he thought the order of the reception would be and I'm totally happy with it and know Mr. Joey will be too. Here's our order of events:

Noon - guests arrive and enjoy a 1/2 hour of cocktails, appetizers and mingling
12:30 - Mr. & Mrs. Joey (did I say Mrs?) make a grand entrance and straight into the first dance.
12:35 - Lunch and the Joeys greet guests
1:15-ish - toasts and cream puffs
1:30-ish Mother-Son and Father-Daughter dance followed by more dancing
3:15 - Thank You from the Joeys and invitation to join us later for drinks

I love that we don't have to be at the reception before the guests. We're planning on doing most of our portraits before the wedding because of transportation problems and bridge closures. With the extra time between the ceremony and reception, we should get a chance to get some nice shots at the University or Washington or on the Lake near our venue.

We go straight into the first dance because of my costume changing. I'm changing into a sari as a surprise for my Dad but I wanted to be in my wedding dress during the first dance - mostly for the pictures. Dann suggested doing the first dance and then changing towards the end of lunch. I suggested changing while Mr. Joey and his Mom danced but Dann pointed out I'd need more than 5 minutes to get the sari on.

Are you changing up the order of events for your reception?