Color Scheme/Theme

As I have been looking for inspiration for our special event, I have decided to go with a Lemon & Lime theme with touches of pink. Yellow is one of the colors traditionally used for a 1st year anniversary and since our event is in the spring, I thought it would be nice.

Being that I love the Word of God, I had to find christian references to my chosen colors. Yellow will represent the God’s glory and how he desire to reflect it in our lives. The green symbolizes a healthy spiritual growth so that we can produce the fruit of the spirit of God.  And I just thought that pink would be cute – my sorority colors are pink and green so there you have it. I have figured out ways to incorporate the colors in just about everything.  So we are going to have lemon cake and key lime cake (my favorite).  Strawberry cake would be a nice touch too, but we shall see.  Of course our favors will be yellow and green.  I have seen pics of brides with their white dresses and yellow shoes so I may try that.  I am thinking yellow and pink roses maybe.  Definitely flower petals.  It’s cool because my vision is clear.  Yea!!! I have a theme.

Photographers/Music/Flowers/Food

We had an amazing photographer when we eloped and I would love to use him again.  I just don’t know if we can afford him again.  So I have started to think about friends that wouldn’t mind taking pics at our event.  For the music, my mom has some ideas but there’s always the trusy IPOD.  Since it’s at the church, the sound guy will be in place so we don’t really need a DJ.  I am going to ask a lady at the church to assist me with decor and my friend to do my bouquet.  My mother and aunts are handling the food.  So…I believe that I have a lot of main things covered.

Guest List/Head Count

This is a work in progress.  Hopefully we can finalize the list this weekend.  My and hubby and I have had some serious conversations about this.  He is a bit more low-key and I love to entertain.  However, I put a lot of people on the list because I felt obligated.  It’s funny that our budget went down and the guest list went up.  We will see what happens.

Menu

So my mom and I have been discussing various menu ideas.  She and my aunts will be taking care of all of the food details. I want a cocktail style menu, you know small plates and all.  My first thoughts went to chicken wings and meatballs and various salads and such, but that’s not what I really wanted.  It seems as though most non-catered cocktail menus have that same food.  We decided to go a totally different route.  As of now, here’s our menu:

 

Carved Ham & Turkey

Garlic Shrimp

Veggie Wraps

Pasta Salad

Broccoli Salad

Cheese Tray

Fruit Tray

Bruschetta

Favors

For the party favors, we are going for lemonheads (my hubby’s favorite) and coupons (like love coupons). The coupons will list about four different things that we can offer to our guests for years to come.  They will of course be printed in our colors.

So how did I come up with this idea? I was looking at a list of paper gift ideas for the 1st year wedding anniversary and I saw that love coupons were listed.  I thought how cute would that be to make up some and print them out for our guests. 

 I love this idea!!!

Event Logistics

Our church sanctuary is rather small, but I believe that all of the guests will be comfortable.  However, the fellowship hall is even smaller.  It will definitely be too tight for the amount of guests that we plan to have. I would like to see if we can have the reception on the parking lot because it is the most level. 

Budget

One of the first things that you are advised to do when planning anything is to figure out your budget.  My husband and I set a budget and I started looking for a few venues based on that. Then later we realized that there were some other things that took precedence financially so we had to adjust the budget accordingly. I realized that I didn’t have the money to do the extravagant event that I envisioned but I am bound and determined to do this.  I don’t want to have to put this off until the next year or the next year after that.  We will have a celebration this year.  We will enlist the help of family and friends and keep it moving.

Starting to Plan

So this is the year that we get to celebrate our 1st anniversary and we are making a big deal of it because none our family and friends witnessed our union.  We eloped and decided that we would celebrate later.  Now that later is about 4 months away, I have to start planning and figure out the course of action.  I want to have fun and I want this process to be stress free.