Wedding Wednesday-The Reception

Location, location, location.  That was key to me when I began planning this wedding.  LC and I were engaged on July 3, 2008 & our venue was booked July 26, 2008 :-) As soon as I saw Pier Wisconsin, I knew that I had to have our wedding here.  It was EVERYTHING that I had wanted.  Right on the water, not a hotel ballroom, and windows! Tons and tons of windows!  One problem with place? A Saturday wedding was well out of our budget.  So my mom and I went home and looked at the calendar and played around with the dates.  Sundays, of course were the cheapest.  I didn't want a Sunday wedding but when I saw that July 4, 2011 was a Monday, I was definitely sold on our July 3, 2011 wedding.  And that's how that came to be.  It worked out perfectly because it's the same date that LC had proposed to me.  When we went to visit with our coordinator at Pier Wisconsin for our food tasting, she said she had over 12 couples ask to see if that date was available. At the end of this post, you'll see why.   

We had a food and beverage minimum we had to meet, so we threw in a few extra things :-)

Instead of traditional cake we served cupcakes from Miss Cupcake out of Milwaukee.  The selections we chose were red velvet, pink lemonade, key lime, and chocolate with peanut butter frosting.  They were to die for.

The flavor of the cake we cut into was peach bellini. It was heaven on a platter.

After dinner was served & eaten, we danced our first dance to John Legend's "Stay with You". One of my favorite songs.

Next, I danced with my mom, to Carrie Underwood's "Mama's Song". I get teary eyed whenever I hear it and I think of this moment.  This will forever be "our song".

LC & I decided that we wanted to do a parents dance as a way of honoring my stepfather.  He didn't want to dance with his mom alone.

After all the designated dances, it was time to hit the dance floor! LC and I went around and thanked our guests for coming, but I told myself from the beginning that I would dance the night away at this wedding & that I did. And I brought our guests with me :-)

At about 9:30 p.m. our DJ played Katy Perry's "Firework" & "Blow" by Ke$ha just as our spectacular fireworks show was about to begin.  Every year on July 3rd, Milwaukee's lakefront has an awesome, hour long fireworks display.  We had the best seat in the house.

And they lived happily ever after!

10 months to go-Our Reception Venue

Happy Friday! Today officially marks the 10 month mark until the big day. Every month, on the third, I will be blogging about some part of our wedding planning process. I love weddings, but I can only write so much about them before it starts to get mundane.

Wedding planning, so far, has been a rollercoaster of emotion. I can sum it up as this: "Wedding planning is the most fun I'll never want to have again." I was really excited at first. I think I bought every wedding magazine out there the day after we got engaged. From excited, I became really overwhelmed with all the decisions that had to be made. Then came frustration. I found a great venue in IL, and my mom threw a fit because I wasn't getting married in WI-where I'm from. Long story short, she won that war-but I picked out the best venue in Milwaukee. Now I'm content and everything is falling right into place. Before LC left, I wanted to make sure that we got all of the imporant stuff decided together and that I wasn't the only one making the decisions. The first thing we did together was look for the reception and ceremony site.

We will be getting married in a church just outside of Milwaukee and our reception is going to be at Pier Wisconsin in the Discovery World Museum. I fell in love with this space instantly and I knew that I would. It was new, it is on Lake Michigan, it would be perfect for a summer wedding, it was out of our budget. LC and I found a place within our budget that we liked a lot and that we thought would be just fine for our wedding. But when my mom got wind of us getting married in IL and not in WI, she thew a fit. She wouldn't talk to me and she was really beside herself. (Can we say momzilla?) So to make her happy, I decided to look at venues in Milwaukee. I found two others that I really liked but were in the suburbs. LC and I decided to try to keep it in Milwaukee because that would make it easier for our guests traveling from Chicago. And that's how we came to decide on Pier Wisconsin. We're getting married on a Sunday so that brought down the cost some. I'm so happy that we were able to find a place that EVERYONE could agree upon. Our wedding date coinsides with Milwaukee Lakefront's big bang fire works display and we will have an awesome view of it! I can't wait for our big party.