You Make My Dreams Come True: Decorating on Friday

We were up bright and early on Friday morning and met my parents, MIL, David's brother (best man) J and his wife L, Jr BM K, and MOH A and her boyfriend at the church. J and L brought donuts, milk, and juice for everyone which was so smart. I hadn't even thought of it. Since we had already set up the stage and decorated for the rehearsal dinner when we did the walk through, we basically just needed to decorate the aisle and set everything out in the foyer.

I didn't want to lay the aisle runner down until after the rehearsal, so we worked on attaching the shepherd hooks to the chairs, hanging the pomanders, and swagging the tulle down the aisle. Before you go and buy $20 shepherd hooks with stands for an indoor ceremony, try our trick first - We had chairs, so we were able to use black zip ties to connect the hook to the chair in 2 different places. You couldn't see them against the black frame of the chair and the black hook and I was able to use my dollar tree shepherd hooks!

We set the bin (found on sale at Michaels months before the wedding - you might recognize it from the dancing shoes post!) with programs right by the door along with the tears of joy packets and set up the 'guestbook' nearby. We set a table out that guests would see right as they walked in the door with the memorial candles and card box and that I also put the bubbles on so our bridesmaids could grab them right after the ceremony and hand them out. It kind of turned into the gift table too since I had kind of forgotten to find a place for gifts.

The artificial flowers were switched out with leftover roses from the bouquets as seen below.

Credit: Lola Jo Photo Design

(More pictures coming in the detail post!)

I checked on the room for the rehearsal dinner to make sure everything was set up and then it was time to head to the reception hall which was much more detailed. David, J, L, and MOH A's boyfriend had gone over about 20 minutes before we were ready to leave which ended up being really smart - Of course none of the tables or chairs were set up even though they were originally supossed to be. This was the least of our worries with them, though (if you don't know why, you must have missed this post.)

I wish I had done a better job of labeling things with what they were and where they needed to go, but I didn't. So I tried to give a quick rundown of what I wanted the tables to look like and we all got to work. I knew we had a lot of details, but decorating took even longer than I thought I would. And in the middle of it someone had to go get fishing wire to hang the paper lanterns (because I forgot even though it had been on my list for months), my dad had to go pick up the sheet cakes and balloons (to tie to the sign in front of the banquet hall), I had to drive across town to get David's grooms cake and then pick up some last minute details (handkerchiefs for the moms, flower girl gifts, etc.) from a shop in town. Of course one of the picture frames for the flower girls had her name spelled wrong, but the owner was able to fix it and I was able to stop by, run in, and grab it on our way to the rehearsal. Long story short, it was an insane afternoon. 

But in the end, everything was perfect. Tablecloths were laid and centerpieces were set up:

The kids table was arranged:

The family wedding pictures were set up:

The bathroom baskets were placed:

A coaster and 'favor' were placed at each table setting:

The bar was filled:

And the paper lanterns were painstakingly hung (by MOH A's boyfriend - I know, she needs to marry that guy!). The room was ready to go.

*I apologize for the quality of the pictures - I took them quickly thinking I'd have pro pics of everything to show you guys, but we didn't get pictures of a lot of the details in this post. We haven't seen pictures from our friend who took pictures at the reception, so fingers crossed that she has some.*

By the time we were finished it was 4:20 and our rehearsal started at 5:30. David and I were able to run home and get changed (I didn't even get to shower) and were there on time, but poor J and L stayed until the last minute with us and then had to drive 20 minutes home to get ready before driving all the way across town to the church. Our rehearsal started a little late, but it was worth the peace of mind knowing that our reception was set up the way I wanted it.

Did you spend the day before your wedding decorating? How did everything turn out?

Tip #2: If at all possible, decorate the day before so you're able to see how things look. And try to have all of your decor as organized as possible so that people will know what it is/what it's for without having to ask you questions every few minutes. It'll make everything run much more smoothly! 

Need to catch up?

We started on Thursday.