The Reception

Ah, fill the Cup: what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn Tomorrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if Today be sweet?
—The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The ceremony was perfect, the
music was beautiful, the flowers were
gorgeous, no one fainted, and now you are
husband and wife—it is time to make your way to
the wonderful party that awaits you.
After the pictures are taken and you arrive at the
reception site to make your grand entrance, there
are a few more photo sessions you’ll have to pose
for and then you’ll be free to celebrate and enjoy
your party and your guests. Your responsibilities are
coming to an end now, and you can relax. While
your guests were waiting for you to arrive, they
were nibbling on hors d’oeuvres and partaking of
refreshments, perhaps even being amused by the
entertainment you thoughtfully provided for them.

When your guests arrive at the reception hall, a
guest book or a presentation with table cards
should greet them. They’ll stop to sign the guest
book and retrieve their table cards for directions to
their tables. If you’re working to keep a theme
going throughout your wedding, the table card is a
fantastic opportunity to be creative. Instead of
directing guests to their table by number, keep
your theme in mind. If you’re having, for instance,
a Christmas wedding, you might give the tables
reindeer names. You could name the tables for
milestones in your courtship or for anything that’s
important to the two of you.

Cathleen & Chris
Cathleen’s and Chris’s table naming scheme
was based on places they would be visiting
on their honeymoon. Their tables were called
The Tower of London, the Canterbury
Cathedral, the London Eye, and so forth.
They bought inexpensive stand-up 5×7
frames and printed out the table name with
a picture of the location on it for each table.
A board near the entrance of the venue
instructed guests which London tourist site
they’d be sitting at.

When you do arrive, the wedding party will make
a grand entrance and be announced by the DJ or
bandleader; the bride and groom will enter after
their attendants and their parents have been
introduced to the waiting guests. Again, music is
a central part of the reception. Something upbeat
should be playing before you arrive; and then
something a bit more soothing during dinner.

Heather & Mark
“We bought a wooden bound scrapbook, and
all of our guests passed it around during the
reception and wrote notes and poems, drew
pictures, or just signed it. We liked that idea
more than just a guest book with limited
room for people to express themselves, and
all of our friends and family wrote such
wonderful things. Then I put all of the “paper”
from the wedding in it, copies of the invitations,
a program, a copy of the ceremony, the
list of music we used for the ceremony and
reception, and the large-format photos of the
wedding that we printed for ourselves.
Through the years I’ve added the cards we
give to each other on our anniversary and
the like. It even has the reservation confirmation
for the place we stayed on our honeymoon,
and the card I signed there with my
new, married name, the first time I signed it
that way.”