palo alto reception

i know three wedding receptions seems like a little…much. but the boy’s parents wanted to celebrate with their friends in texas, and since the bay area has been home to the two of us for several years, we wanted to celebrate with our friends here.   the boy is a counselor to the bishop in our local congregation, so he has developed relationships with many of the people at church, and we thought it would be wonderful to bring together those awesome folks with our coworkers, students, the boy’s professors and advisors, and dear mutual friends from our single days (many of whom could not come to the wedding in utah but who have seen and supported us through our whole wild journey). we kept the post-wedding festivities pretty simple and really enjoyed the opportunity to see and thank so many good people in our lives.

the boy and i hired our close friends michael and melinda to help us put on our palo alto reception – michael coordinated all the food and melinda all the decor. wow, we are soooo blessed to have these incredible friends. michael is an extraordinary cook and has impeccable taste in good good food and fabulous parties, and every single thing melinda touches turns outrageously lovely and beautiful. we are forever grateful for all they did to make the event so gorgeous and dreamy – we loved everything about it.

we had the reception in the backyard of a friend from church. a couple of weeks before, we started checking the weather every few hours, hoping that it wouldn’t rain! the forecast said rain on saturday, october 25 every single time we checked. two days before the reception, the hourly forecast showed a 70-80% chance of rain in the morning and a 50% chance in the afternoon and evening. we started to get pretty nervous. i woke up that saturday to the boy saying, “babe. you’ve gotta see this.” he was on the weather app of his phone, which predicted a small chance of showers in the morning and later at night, but zero percent chance from 1pm until 7pm (right when we needed to start setting up to right when we’d finish clearing up). what?!? we were pretty chuffed at how well that worked out.

i think the best part of our palo alto reception was that we got to be a big part of the day-of work to put it on –for our utah events we had to delegate and in texas my incredible mother-in-law had everything in order. i loved setting up and cleaning up and being a direct part of the actual hands-on creation. early that morning, i drove up to the san francisco flower market and picked out all the flowers and greenery. i was giddy exploring and selecting so many pretty things. i met melinda in the backyard to arrange the flowers in the vases we brought from utah. we had so much fun – i wish i had a picture of us doing this together. we hung vases from the trees and set up the entryway with a greenery arch and flowers around a patio swing set up for gifts. our parents were there helping, and many friends came to help string lights, set up tables and chairs, and arrange the food with michael. it was just really fun!


^^ the result of our flower arranging fun! ^^

and now i am going to share a lot of pictures … it was just so pretty and we got so many good shots! our friends jen and michelle lee (sisters!) took these for us (and i mixed in some from my mom’s iphone). it was just the perfect palo alto evening and i adored everything about the whole setup – down to the golden autumn leaves peppering the grass.


^^ melinda made these chalkboards for us. i can’t stop thinking about how great they were! ^^
 
^^ i loooved the entryway with the sign in table, decorated swing for gifts, and this arch melinda and i wired up ^^

we had three tables of food: 1) fruit, vegetables and canapés, 2) cheese, nuts and breads, and 3) a cake bar! ^^
  
^^ melinda created these darling vintage washed circular photos to scatter around in vases

^^ there’s michael directing the cute young women from our ward who manned the cake bar. seriously, michael is incredible. the food spread was so amazing! ^^

^^ and i can’t believe this is the only picture i have of melinda that day. she’s in the background above making sure the tables look perfect. she is honestly the loveliest human i’ve ever met. ^^

^^ we had these napkins custom made by wedding paper divas, and had some at all three of our receptions. we have quite a few left over so we use them at the dinner table everyday! ^^
  
^^  it was so great to see beloved friends and meet each other’s coworkers/students/associates! ^^
   
^^ two of my sweet 8th grade (now 9th grade!) students came! ^^ this is jen, who took many of these photographs and who came up from southern california. love that girl.
 
^^ see that little peek of autumn on the trees there?
    
^^ my friends jonathan and polin came from sacramento and brought their adorable baby boy noah. it was so fun to see them and to meet him! ^^
  
^^ soooo great to introduce our parents to all of our people! ^^
 
^^ flowers that my parents brought back to my aunt and uncle’s home (where they were staying). i mean, aren’t they just spectacular? ^^

when the party was over, we helped take everything down and clean everything up with our parents and friends. we really enjoyed doing that. then, the boy’s parents helped us cram our tiny apartment with gifts and we had ice cream while we opened them. as we snuggled into bed that night, we realized that all our wedding stuff was really over. it was bittersweet, but mostly we just felt so so so immeasurably grateful for all the relationships in our lives and the opportunity to celebrate them in conjunction with our wedding.

i seriously can’t believe how perfect all of our wedding celebrations felt. i am such a blessed girl.