At Home Reception

What a weekend! I blinked and it was gone. We had our At Home Reception last night and it was pretty great.

On Friday, Pauline and I left work early to go pack up the wedding decorations at my house. We met Mallory up at Remington Park and spent about 3 hours putting on chair covers, tying bows and setting up the candy buffet table.

On Saturday, Ryan came home from working a 30 hour shift and went to bed to sleep all day. I spent the morning running errands...I got my nails painted, picked up prescriptions and ran by the bank. Then I went to my hair appointment and to Crest to pick up pineapples for the centerpieces, and came home. Jenny was there and she got ready to come up to Remington early with me to finish decorating. Ryan was awake and said he would meet us out there.

We got there about 4:45 and Mallory met us up at the room. We finished setting up and some of the guests started arriving while I was still in my tank top and shorts, so we left to go to the bathroom to get ready and change. When I came back, the room was full of people and the party was on!

I tried so hard to talk to everyone right away. There were so many different groups, and I felt torn and anxious because I couldn't spend a good amount of time with everyone. I basically didn't spend any time at first with the friends I see on a regular basis (I did later when we started dancing). I barely saw Ryan too, haha!

The food was really good, it was a build your own fajita and nacho buffet with lots of fruits, cheeses, grilled and chilled veggies and cookies and brownies and lemon bars. The bar was open for beer, wine and the suites manager said he would buy me and Ryan drinks all night on him. We had a lot of Mai Tais! I think he felt guilty because the A/C wasn't turned on and they couldn't get it working so the room was HOT!

The candy buffet was a hit. We didn't have much left over, and people were talking about it all night. A line formed and I got some good pictures of the kids with their giant pixie sticks! I'm sure the parents hated us that night when they were all on sugar highs!

It seemed like just 10 minutes later that people started telling me they had to leave. I ran over to the DJ and told him to announce that we were cutting the cake because I didn't want to get stuck with tons to take home (it happened anyway!). Then I really wanted people to start dancing, so he dimmed the lights and started playing the dancing music. A lot of people got out there and yelled at me to join them. This is the part I regret the most, because when I was done dancing I looked around and two of the families that had come the farthest to see us had gone. And I barely saw or spoke to them (Stef and Tracie). :(

The rest of the night we spent dancing and drinking and saying goodbye to people as they trickled out. Daton, Ryan and Josh were being hilarious dancers and dancing crazy to every song. They were soaked in sweat, and Josh split his pants sliding on the floor at one point. Everyone was laughing at them.

It was a lot of fun, but it had to end.....when it was over, we had to throw everything in another room so they could lock it up for the night. Everyone pitched in and it didn't take long. Coming back, Jenny wanted to stop at Sonic for Cheddar Bites and then we were OUT.

I set the alarm for pretty early so we could get back to Remington Park and get everything home. When we got there, the security guard couldn't open the door to the room. We sat there forever, at least an hour before they finally let us in. Ryan and Jenny's parents met us up there, and Ryan took the chair covers and sashes back to the rental place while we all went to lunch.

I had fun, but I'm so glad it's over!!! Now we can box everything up and prepare to move. We have some great memories though, of our "wedding summer."