The Wedding Planner, Part 4

Be sure you have read The Wedding Planner, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3!

My favorite part of any wedding is, no surprise, the food!

The parents of the bride, Andrea and Mark, really wanted the wedding to reflect Nathan & Emily’s tastes so they let them totally choose the menu.

From the start they knew they wanted to have Key Lime pie instead of cake.  After searching around for a place to order pies from, they ended up enlisting some friends and baking 200 individual pies.  It took them about 3 1/2 hours to make them all and they had to raid quite a few stores for all the crusts that they needed.  They were delicious and a fun treat.

For the lunch menu, they wanted Mexican.  They chose a local favorite in the Lansing area called EL AZTECO.  They also decided to let the guest eat upon arrival at the reception rather than have them wait for the wedding party to arrive.  This made for very happy guests with tummies filled with delicious Mexican food when the photos were done.

The food was served buffet style with clear plastic plates from Sam’s Club and plastic silverware that they rolled up into white napkins and tied with twine.  The wedding invitations that Andrea’s daughter,Lauren designed consisted of 5 3×5 cards that were tied together with twine also.

Andrea affectionately calls their wedding style SHABBY CHIC.

They also had a fun candy bar at the reception.

They chose candy that they liked!  They made it the favor for everyone to take home.  Andrea learned that the tricky part of doing a candy bar is that you need 2-3 times the amount of candy that will actually be taken home or consumed in order to make it look FULL.  A great tip they had was to put small bowls overturned inside some of the big punch bowls that they used to take up space and make it look fuller.

Again, Andrea enlisted help and gave one of her friends the list of all the candy and she bought it all at Sam’s Club and Gordon Food Service in bulk.  They bought little plastic gusseted bags that had white lace printed on them and came with silver twist ties.  They were a little bigger than they wanted people to have so they trimmed them down.  I was surprised how many people loved it!  Even the older people still loved the candy!

This was definitely a wedding full of love and attention to what really matters!  Andrea was able to put together an amazing, not to be forgotten, wedding of her dreams for her daughter while staying within their families budget and not going totally crazy!

Thanks Andrea for sharing your photos and all the great information!!