When I left off my post on part 1 of our wedding, Mike and I had just grabbed hands and danced down the aisle to Natalie Cole. We were married!! And now it was time to live happily ever after!! We were so excited to celebrate with an awesome wedding reception, after party, and post-wedding activities, and our reception was one giant swirl of food, music, dancing, and laughter. Here’s how it all unfolded after the ceremony…
As soon as we exited the meadow where our ceremony was held, Mike and I headed up to the barn loft to sign our marriage license with our officiant Jackie, toast champagne flutes, and get a few minutes to ourselves to just bask in the glow of being husband and wife. We did it!! I was so excited.
The rest of the guests proceeded to the lower level of the barn, which had a walkout basement saloon area for our cocktail hour. Mike and I had already done a first look and couples’ photos with each other before the ceremony, as well as photos with our bridal party; this meant we didn’t need to spend time on a big photo shoot before getting to enjoy the cocktail hour with our guests. Instead, we stayed inside just long enough to give all the guests time to gather and get their first drink, then made a grand entrance onto the outdoor balcony to the tune of Ben Rector’s “Brand New”. (I love this song – and it always gets me jumping and dancing with excitement!) Since everyone was already outside to welcome us, our photographer brought everyone over for a quick group photo.
We were so excited to have everyone we loved in one fun photo!
And then, into the Barn to cut the cake. Yup, cut the cake before dinner! Mike and I agreed early on that neither of us liked cake all that much, and wedding cakes are really expensive; we thought it didn’t make sense to spend all that money on something we didn’t particularly like. Instead, our caterer put together an absolutely incredible dessert that had me literally licking the plate clean at our tasting: Palisade peach cobbler with Breckenridge bourbon caramel sauce and homemade vanilla bean ice cream. With dessert covered, that meant we could do the traditional “cake cutting” in a very non-traditional way… with giant wheels of cheese stacked into a cake-like tower. I was especially excited about the cake topper that I had custom-ordered on Etsy, which shows me with my ballgown, Mike in his cowboy hat, and our four dogs around us in the woods. Perfection!
Mike and I spent weeks before the wedding having date nights where we tried dozens and dozens of cheeses, ranking them in a spreadsheet to ultimately decide which cheeses we would serve. The winners: Cypress Grove Lamb Chopper for the base, Sweet Grass Mez Cow for the second layer, Papillon Bleu for the third layer, and Saint Andre cream for the top. The tower wasn’t the easiest to cut, but once we had symbolically made the first cut, our catering staff whisked it away to cut large chunks that would join our already-overflowing charcuterie spread.
Seriously, y’all, this was the table of my dreams!!
My biggest regret about the wedding was that even though we did our best, we still didn’t get to hang out with people nearly as much as I would have liked. In particular, my friend Caitlin came all the way from Boston to celebrate, and I think I only got to wave at her from 10 feet away but never made it over to chat with her! It was so hard to see everyone, and I wish our cocktail hour could have been longer.
But while Mike and I were having trouble getting around to everyone, everyone else was doing an amazing job mingling… and I will totally take the credit for that with a unique idea I came up with. For our seating chart, we used simple white envelopes with the guest/couple’s name and the table number written below. But when they opened the envelope, they found a photo of another guest/couple inside, along with a note:
This is your mystery match – someone we think you need to meet! You share something in common, but we’re not telling you what. When you find your match, take a photo together… and bonus points if you figure out why we paired you up. Friendship (or at least a good laugh) awaits. Let the mingling begin! Love, Laura and Mike ∞
The idea came from our joint realization that not only had Mike and I become a couple really quickly (not really giving our friends and family an opportunity to more naturally integrate), but we had so many friends that seemed to be serious twins of each other. Kelly and Chris are avid cyclists; Anya and Jackie are accomplished outdoor adventure guides; Carmen and Kendra are die-hard runners; Elizabeth and Nate are nonprofit leaders; Jeff and Larry are big-time kayakers; and Rhy and Sam are Nashville-based foodies. We needed these people to meet and become friends! Rather than leave that up to chance, we thought the mystery matchups would encourage those introductions… and we’ve gotten more great feedback on this than nearly anything else about our wedding.
Long ago, I read and raved about Priya Parker’s “Art of Gathering”. In the early stages of planning our wedding, I came across a worksheet she created to help couples design the perfect wedding for them by aligning on goals and purpose. While we couldn’t control whether this would actually happen, I said that my ideal outcome for our wedding would be if people met there and then became friends who hung out on their own. It’s only been a few months since our wedding, but it really seems like this is happening! Some people have met up for meals when they’re traveling for business, a group of my badass girlfriends went hiking together, and a few people even started dating their match. Nothing is making me happier than people tagging Mike and me on Instagram when they meet up, and I hope these friendships continue as long as Mike’s and my marriage 🥰
Anyway! The cocktail hour was full of a ton of mingling, but soon it was time to head upstairs for dinner. As people started to do that, Mike and I snuck away with our families for a very quick round of photos. My instructions to the photographer were that we wanted exactly three photos: one of Mike’s family with us, one of my family with us, and one of both families with us. And if anyone was in the bathroom or couldn’t be found or otherwise weren’t ready? We weren’t waiting; the photo was getting taken and we were moving on. Fortunately, everyone was there, I loved the photos we got, and we didn’t miss more than 10 minutes by doing these quick pics. Definitely recommend this approach!
Once everyone was upstairs and getting settled (which took a while, as I later learned there were some snafus with the wrong number of chairs being set at various tables 🤦♀️), Mike and I had a few more minutes to ourselves to steal some more bites of the charcuterie board, and then we did one more “grand entrance” to the main reception area, to the joyful fanfare of Ray LaMontagne’s “You Are The Best Thing.” It only really played the intro, because as soon as we got upstairs, we immediately took our positions on the dance floor. We decided to do our first dance right away so we could have it done and stop being nervous, then do dinner and speeches, and then have our family dance open up the dance floor. We were both really happy we did it this way!
The first dance was something I put a lot of time into. Although it’s been a while, I studied ballet for 18 years, and I really wanted to do something more elaborate than the typical boring things everyone politely cheers for. But while Mike is a good dancer, he likes to be impromptu, and and told me ahead of time he would struggle to learn choreography. We chose our song – Alex Warren’s “Carry You Home” – back in January, and I used a combo of my own choreography and some great moves I borrowed / taught Mike from the Anna and Matt from Dance From Home (highly recommend!!). While the dance started out fairly simple, once Mike got the hang of it, he kept wanting it to become even bigger and more elaborate… and by two weeks before the wedding, he was telling me we needed to incorporate the overhead lift from Dirty Dancing… so we added it! We performed the lift successfully many times in practice, including in a practice wedding gown and crinoline, but when the time came on our wedding day, I tripped over my ballgown a bit and bobbled getting up onto his shoulders cleanly… oops. I am still really bummed about that, and want to find another occasion to do the dance and film it so we can show off our skills! But it still seemed to really impress our guests, and a few weeks after our wedding, one of my work mentors who I really admire even told me that watching our dance and seeing my gown swirl as I flew threw the air was a core memory for her 💕
After the dance was done, we settled in for dinner – with an amazing menu I am so proud of! Having amazing food and drinks was really important to us, and I’m really thrilled with how dinner came out. Our Chef was a friend of Mike’s, Colt, and he put together nine dishes that we absolutely drooled over during our tasting… I literally licked the plate clean when we had the peach cobbler dessert 😂
On the drinks front, I wasn’t as happy. Unfortunately, the owner of our bartending company, Eventgineers, was incredibly difficult to work with. He insisted that we needed way more bartenders and alcohol than we actually did (even though we pointed out repeatedly that we and are our guests aren’t in our 20s, and wouldn’t be drinking our faces off), and then complained afterward that his bartenders didn’t serve as many drinks as expected (and so were bored and undertipped). On the bright side, the drinks were all mixed fine, but working with Eventgineers was so stressful and caused me to lose sleep on multiple occasions wondering if we should switch to a different bartending service; I wish I had trusted my gut and done that. But! We did come up with some fun signature cocktails – one that represented my family, one that represented Mike’s, and one that represented the new life we’re building together in Colorado. Yum!
Once Mike and I finished our own dinner, we headed around to say hello to each table, but we ran short on time as we got to the end, and we had to get back for the speeches. While the speeches were beautifully written and delivered, this part of our celebration was fairly traditional… except for one more set of easter eggs that kept cropping up throughout!
On Instagram, I had seen the suggestion to designate a “table captain” for each table… and I ran with that. We chose people we knew were natural extroverts and who might not have had a special role otherwise, formally asked them if they were willing to play the part, and emailed them details ahead of time (as well as printed the instructions to have on hand at the table). In short, the table captains were asked to be their table’s “Ambassador of Fun”: there to spark connections, keep things lively, and sprinkle a little extra joy throughout the evening. First, they were responsible for making sure everyone at the table got introduced to each other, then choosing a team name for the table. Each table got an anniversary card whose year corresponded to their table number (e.g., we would open table 3’s card on our 3rd anniversary), and we asked the whole table to sign it with any messages, jokes, or well wishes. We were way more excited about this than a guest book we’d probably never look at!
But the main activity for the table captains was to encourage participation in our photo scavenger hunt: pic of your whole table on the dance floor, pic of you with someone from the bride’s family, pic of you with someone from the groom’s family, pic of an emotional moment, pic of your favorite food, pic of the dance floor from an unusual angle, etc. We set up a photo upload site so that each table had their own album, and then told everyone it was a competition with an awards ceremony at our brunch the next day! Mike and I are both competitive to the core, so this felt like a fun and very “us” way to add to the celebration while also ensuring we got plenty of candid shots uploaded quickly.
And finally, a bonus activity. Not only are Mike and I competitive, but we love silly challenges – so each table was given two unique “secret missions” that only they knew about. We told the table captains that for bonus points (as with Whose Line Is It Anyway, the points were all arbitrary), they could complete one or both of their secret missions. And those secret missions ended up being so fun! One table started a conga line, another started a stadium wave that went around the room during the toasts. One table came up with an original cocktail and delivered it to our table for us to try (“The Rizzler”, which evidently blew up as a word later in the summer), and another formed a human pyramid. I have no idea if all the secret missions were completed, but it was really fun to see a lot of them randomly pop up throughout the night, and it seemed like people enjoyed coming together around a common goal. I was so glad we did this!!
The speeches were really touching, and then it was time for the dance floor to open! Rather than a father-daughter dance, mother-son dance, etc, we decided to pick one song (Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”) and invite all four of our parents to the dance floor; we then each grabbed a partner and changed partners every verse until we had gotten to dance with everyone. I loved that we were able to honor all four of our parents this way, and also not drag this part on for the rest of the guests!
And from there, we kicked off the open dance floor with Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling”. Tonight was indeed going to be a good night!
All too soon, Mike and I had to leave the dance floor for 15 minutes of golden hour couples’ photos – and while I wished we didn’t have to leave the party, it was fun to get a little time with just him. We had fun posing for pics outside, and getting some nice shots of the two of us!
And then the rest of the night went by in a blur. I was dancing constantly, and having the time of my life spinning around like a top in my ballgown, particularly when Abba’s “Dancing Queen” came on. My girlfriends rallied around as we relived the scene in our Steamboat condo at 1am for my bachelorette party, where I was spinning and twirling nonstop for the whole number. And this time, my stepdaughters and a bunch of other girlfriends were in on it too!
Between that and a few line dances, I had an absolute blast. One of my favorite moments was when our DJ called out that he “heard there were a bunch of Village People in the crowd”, and put on the YMCA… because Mike’s (and now my new!) company refers to itself as a “Village”, and we had a lot of Mike’s coworkers there. I had a lot of fun dancing the YMCA with everyone, and I couldn’t believe it when Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” came on to wrap up the party. Not only is this such a great end of the night song, but it also felt so perfect for me and Mike, having found each other later in life 💕
When Journey wrapped, the lights came out for a few minutes as everyone was asked to go outside for the grand exit, then dimmed again as Mike and I stayed inside for our last private dance. No one else was in the Barn (besides the photographer / videographer), the main lights were off, and the string lights were sparkling as we wrapped our arms around each other and slowly swayed to Etta James’ “At Last”. I definitely teared up once again, and I’m tearing up now just thinking of it! All these key songs are now on a playlist I listen to when I want to feel completely full of happiness… I still can’t believe Mike and I found each other.
But there was one more special song to go! Our coordinator turned on bubble machines outside, our guests lined up to blow handheld bulbs, and as the beat kicked in, Mike and I ran out the Barn doors hand in hand to One Republic’s “Good Life.” This is going to be a good life, indeed!
We ran from the Barn to the middle of the parking lot, then turned around laughing as we realized that although we had asked my mom to drive us from there to the after party, no one had told her it was time to go or where she needed to be! 😂 So the three of us wandered through the parking lot to find her car, then headed ten minutes down the road to Little Bear, a dive bar in Evergreen we both love. I found it fabulous to be at this dirty dive bar in my big white wedding ballgown, and we had a blast partying with our late night guests there!
One secret we didn’t reveal to almost any guests beforehand was where we were spending our wedding night. (We didn’t trust Mike’s brothers not to mess with us.) And our special first night was spent… in our adventure van that we had staked out in our friends’ downtown parking lot!! I knew we wouldn’t be getting more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep, so to us it didn’t make sense to book an expensive hotel room for such a short time. Plus, our van Corn Nut is sooooo comfy, and we love adventuring in her! This felt like the perfect start to a life of adventuring together – not always fancy, but so much fun and full of love. The people we told about this plan ahead of time seemed skeptical, but in the end, I was so happy with this decision to just crash into bed together rather than deal with a hotel room.
And we had to be up early the next morning! We got up at 5am, stopped back at the venue for me to shuttle Mike’s truck back to our house (now full of all the packed up decor / leftover alcohol / etc), and then took Corn Nut to a trailhead, where we had coffee and gatorade ready for the brave guests who wanted to come hiking with us at 8am. We had a lovely leisurely hike around Flatirons Vista, then hightailed it back to our house to get things ready for a farewell brunch. Besides eating, most of our guests stopped by to share memories and receive their hastily-decided prizes for best / funniest photos, best team name, and “latest on the dance floor but still made it to the morning hike”. Once again, the house was a little overwhelming with all the people I wanted to chat with more, but having all of these different events at least gave me more chances to see everyone, and I’m so thrilled we did it this way.
In all, the whole day and night went by like a blur, but I’m so happy with how it all turned out! Stay tuned for my final post part 3, where I get into a few of the little details that made me so excited…
