As I mentioned, we wanted to spend more time with our guests and decided to host parties on Friday and Sunday. We settled on a cocktail and dessert theme for our wedding open house. We included an information card about the parties (and hotels) with our invites. Sadly, I don’t have any photos. 🙁
Bulk buy your food and drinks
Since we were already spending a ton of the wedding dinner, we opted for a more cost-effective option for the wedding open house. We opted to buy most of our food and drinks from Sam’s Club. Our Sam’s Club haul included dip mix (great idea), crackers, cream puffs, cheesecake bites, and some light appetizers (Mac had to have mozzarella sticks). We stocked up on wine there, too. My parents brought beer and cookies from home.
Many hands make light work
Our families were already in town for the wedding, so we enlisted everyone to help with different things. After we got home from our rehearsal, we began setting up. We converted our kitchen table into a buffet and assembled the appetizer trays and serving dishes we received as gifts. Beer and soda went on ice in the coolers. Within 45 minutes, we had the house tidied and spread set.
Our first guests arrived right before 8 pm. To be honest, I had no idea how many people would actually attend. I was hoping for enough to eat most of the food! We were not disappointed. We probably had 60 or so of our 85 guests make an appearance. Mac and I made the rounds, told people to eat, refilled drinks, and introduced each other to our friends and family. One problem: we set the drinks up in the kitchen on the bar, so we had some traffic jams. Because of this, the house became oppressively hot. Some of the younger crowd filtered outside which helped cool the house down. Folks also didn’t eat as much as we had planned. My guess is that the heat and late hour weren’t working up any appetites. The wine and beer went rather quickly.
Overall, I would say our open house was a success. Most of our friends stayed past 10 pm (our invite said 8-10). We cleaned up the big stuff and headed up to bed close to midnight. We put on a movie then fell asleep, spending our last night before the wedding together. Up next, wedding day starts off bright and early.
Did y’all host any other wedding events? What did you do?
