Wedding // Reception

Well, it’s our 5th Anniversary today, so I thought it was about time I shared my wedding photos! I shared them all this week over three parts: Getting Ready, the Ceremony, and the Reception and today’s post is all about the being merry at the reception!

All photos by Sarah K Chen Photography. But before we just dive into the wedding, here’s a little background:

Our wedding was inspired by the venue. We were married on the porch of the beautiful Hale House at Heritage Square Museum, and we incorporated many elements of “home” into the wedding design. I’m a huge fan of Alice in Wonderland, so Alice was included as well with hints of a mad tea party, pink flamingos, doorknobs, and even croquet. The wedding was truly a labor of love. My mom and I spent months scouring Craigslist, the Rose Bowl Flea Market, antique stores, and thrift stores for furniture, decor, and all of the mismatched china. At least half a dozen times we received strange looks on the freeway as we used my mom’s convertible to transport a dresser or cabinet. I also hand-stitched seventy (70!) Save the Date postcards, while my husband, Ken, an illustrator and animator, drew all of the elements for the invitations, and Emily, one of my best friends and an amazingly talented graphic designer, took the drawings and created the invitations. She also created the wedding programs, and calligraphied the envelopes, as well as any other handwritten signs. Emily also handmade my garter and my veil, which used the lace of my mother’s wedding dress. She also helped me make a unique fascinator for each of the bridesmaids. I asked my bridesmaids to simply wear a black dress of their choosing, so the fascinators were a way to make them stand out from the other wedding guests. We also hand-polished the mismatched antique silverware, folded a hundred paper airplanes, and handmade the bunting, garlands, signs, and table numbers. Whew! And it was all worth it! Since the venue doesn’t have a kitchen, we brought in two food trucks! Burgers and crepes! I loved it! It was very “us” since I’m a picky eater and I hate warmed up wedding food. One food truck would have been enough to feed everyone, but I brought in two just to make the lines go faster. And, I had everyone preselect what they would order at each truck and left their “tickets” on their plates with their selections to just hand to the order taker to speed things along.
And of course there was cake for dessert! Three cakes in fact! And yes, we had Barbie and Ken cake toppers shoved right into the cake!
One of the biggest hits of the night were the flip flops I had ready for the girls for dancing. I heard there was a mad dash grab for them!
I have so many wonderful memories of the day, but one of my favorites was of our first dance. We were both so nervous about it! Ken took some dance classes, but I could never make it to class because of law school, so we winged it. Our first dance was to the song Midnight, the Stars, and You by Ray Noble, which is the song at the end of our first movie together, The Shining. Just as Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining had “always been the caretaker,” Ken whispered to me during the dance, “I have always been your husband. Forever and ever.” And then we all danced and drank the night away! Here I am awkwardly throwing the bouquet … you can laugh, it’s ok!Again, it was truly a labor of love. We drove in a Uhaul with all of the furniture, decor, etc. and then had to go back and pack it all up the next day. I think my mom ran 10 loads of dishes through her dishwasher. Almost everything was handmade and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. So many people have commented how great the wedding was and how it was very “us” and that’s exactly what I wanted, not some wedding where you can just swap out the bride and groom.

Click here if you missed the “Getting Ready” photos or the Ceremony photos!