Wedding Update #7 | Reception Seating Chart, Goodbye Breakfast Dilemma & More

MY OUTFIT DETAILS // Long Sleeve Henley Dress (so comfortable!) | Similar Felt Hat (also love this style too) | Similar Shoes | Michele Watch | David Yurman Bracelets

We are officially in the THICK of wedding planning. Folks aren’t lying when they say that the most work happens in the two months before the big day. Up until three weeks ago the planning process had been so simple (thanks to our planner Stephanie and all our amazing vendors!) and Nick and I would often ask each other: Is it really this easy? LOL.

I wouldn’t say the planning we’re doing now is “difficult” but overall it’s much more time-consuming and nitty gritty. All of the little tasks that we knew we’d eventually have to do are finally on our plate i.e. ordering a welcome sign & other personalized signage, designing + writing text for all the paper materials, finalizing the alcohol order, creating a seating chart, breaking down the cost of rooms for our 30+ guests who are staying in the accommodations at our venue — the list goes on and on.

The stress got to me earlier this month so I asked Stephanie if we could schedule an additional in-person meeting prior to our planned floral & decor presentation last Sunday (more on this below!) to go over everything. I drove up to Connecticut and met with her and our florist for nearly four hours at our venue and we pretty much went through every moment of our wedding weekend from start to finish.

^^ I seriously can’t wait to transform this tented space!! I snapped at our venue earlier this month when they were in the beginning stages of setting up for another wedding. 

I’m really excited that our florist is providing not only our flowers, but nearly all of our decor. It just makes things so much simpler having the aesthetic items coming from one vendor who understands your vision. That meeting was exactly what I needed because I left feeling like I had a much clearer idea of how the weekend would flow and what I needed to do immediately vs what could be saved for next month’s to-do list.

Everything that’s on our immediate to-do list is BOLDED below. If you keep scrolling you can read about a few of the tasks we’ve accomplished and are currently working on now!

WEDDING PLANNING CHECKLIST

✓ Gown fitting
✓ Pick out jewelry/accessories for bridesmaids
✓ Finalize our wedding bands
✓ Finalize florals, decor & rentals
✓ Order all printed materials (programs, menus, etc.)
✓ Create seating chart for reception
✓ Order any personalized items (welcome sign, etc.)
✓ Design, order & send out wedding invitations
✓ Get wedding insurance
✓ Found our officiant
✓ Booked minimoon for after wedding (saving a long honeymoon for 2020)
✓ Did our cake tasting
✓ Had floral design meeting
✓ Booked day-of glam team + did my hair & makeup trial
✓ Had my bachelorette party in Isle of Palms + Charleston
✓ Began planning my bridal shower with my Aunt Jen
✓ Picked out our tabletop rentals + chairs for reception
✓ Found my dress
✓ Picked out & ordered bridesmaid’s dresses + shoes
✓ Sent out save the dates (you see them here)
✓ Created our wedding registry (here are some of the items we registered for)
✓ Shot our engagement photos
✓ Asked all my favorite gals to be my bridesmaids  (see how I did it here!)
✓ Confirmed florist + met to go over initial ideas
✓ Met with our caterer for a Q&A + did a tasting
✓ Worked on our wedding moodboard with our planner
✓ Did a venue visit + walk through with planner to map out flow of the day
✓ Created our wedding website on WeddingWire
✓ Got over my fear of trying on wedding dresses
✓ Booked room blocks at local hotels
✓ Confirmed caterer
✓ Confirmed band
✓ Confirmed videographer
✓ Confirmed photographer
✓ Found our wedding planner
✓ Created a budget spreadsheet
✓ Confirmed the date (October 2019!!!)
✓ Decided on a venue

Seating Chart. The plan is to use the WeddingWire Seating Chart tool to map out seating for our entire reception. We’re using all long wood farm tables that have an 8 person capacity, so we’re likely going to have to spread out our guests using 12-15 tables depending on head count (aiming for 100-120 guests.)

Confession: figuring out seating was a task I’d been dreading since we got engaged #familydrama. However after a few minutes of playing around with the Seating Chart tool last week, I felt SUCH A SENSE OF RELIEF. You can see an example of what it looks like below…

Basically you can create an exact replica of your reception floor. The Seating Chart tool allows you to select your table shape and the guest capacity. You can add as many tables as you need and move them around in the exact positioning as you plan to have them laid out at your own reception.

To make life even easier, the Seating Chart tool automatically imports your guest list from your WeddingWire dashboard so literally all you have to do is drag and drop guest names into place at each table. I’m a visual person so being able to see our list and a view of all our reception tables at once is SO HELPFUL. I feel much more confident now about figuring out the seating for our reception thanks to this tool! Now if only everyone would send back their RSVP card… 😛

We Sent Out Our Invites! We finally sent out our invites! It took us a little bit of time to figure out the design we wanted, but we ended up using one from the same vendor as our Save The Dates. I’ll reveal these in a post after our wedding!

Cake Tasting. We did this yesterday and as you can see Nick had the time of his life 😛 We’re going to do a 3-layer cake decorated with fruit inspired from our signature cocktails… Can’t wait to see (and taste!) it!

Menus & Programs. I found a design that I love on Minted for our printed menus and programs. I’ve already drafted the menu text and plan on finalizing the program with our planner Stephanie. Once we get a better idea of our exact headcount we’ll order these!

Wedding Signs + Personalized Items. I’ve been hitting up Etsy like crazy lately! I ordered a custom wood welcome sign and a few personalized lawn games that we’re going to use at our pizza truck rehearsal dinner. I’ll share details on everything once our wedding weekend is over and I have pictures 🙂

Florals, Decor & Rentals. We had a BIG meeting with our planner Stephanie and our florist over the weekend where they presented to us a mockup of one of our reception tables, along with a few other vignettes we plan to have at our wedding weekend. It just made everything feel so much more real being able to see the flowers styled along with our rentals. I really hope you gals love it all as much as I do! Without giving too much away… Here are some of my inspiration images 🙂

^^ all images found via Pinterest

Goodbye Breakfast. From the beginning of our planning process I was against having a goodbye breakfast, but earlier this month I had a change of heart and decided we should do something very informal (i.e. catered bagel platters + coffee served buffet style.) Stephanie and I began initial discussions, updated our budget accordingly and we alerted our venue that we would indeed be holding an additional event on the property on Sunday morning.

Long story short. My desire to have a goodbye breakfast was short-lived because as of two days ago Nick and I decided to nix it from our wedding weekend itinerary. Why? Every time we would talk about plans for the breakfast, neither of us felt any excitement and the conversation would always end with us both being annoyed at the added expense. We eventually realized the only reason we were doing it was because of outside pressure that we had to keep up with traditional wedding norms– not because we actually wanted it. I have a good feeling after a long night of drinking and dancing at our reception, we are going to be SO happy we made this decision.

Booked Our Minimoon. We officially booked flights for a 6 night minimoon after our wedding tooooooo… Paris! I could not care less if it’s cliché. Nick and I have absolutely loved all three of our trips to France and Paris is by far our favorite city we’ve ever visited. Nick especially! Homeboy is in his ELEMENT in Paris. It’s so funny! We’ll likely spend a few days in the city and then maybe rent a car and go out to the Loire Valley or another area of the countryside for a night or two. We haven’t booked any hotels yet so I am all ears to any recommendations!!!

We had initially hoped to do a minimoon in the Scottish Highlands (aka pretend we’re in an episode of Outlander) but after doing some research we realized late October was just not the best time of year to visit northern Scotland. We also feel like a trip to Scotland deserves more than just the 5-6 days we have allotted for a post-wedding trip. It was a kind of a bummer because we were SO pumped about Scotland, but I definitely think we made the right choice to wait on planning this trip.

MORE WEDDING UPDATES

wedding update #6 | cake tasting, honeymoon, officiant & more
wedding update #5 | my hair & makeup trial + pre-wedding beauty treatments
wedding update #4 | how i said yes to the dress!
wedding update #3 | engagement photos + bridesmaid proposals
 wedding update #2 | playing dress up with david’s bridal
wedding update #1 | summer tablescape + booking vendors
our proposal story
our engagement photos
our save the date card design
wedding planning q&a
our bed bath & beyond wedding registry
little white dress guide
how to save money on wedding reception rentals