At Home Wedding Reception Planning Secrets

Nothing is more sentimental or comforting than a wedding reception that occurs in your very own home. But while you may be eager to celebrate your vows in your cosy abode, prepping for these upcoming festivities may seem daunting. Fortunately, you can easily pull off an at-home wedding celebration with these 5 secrets in mind:

  1. Secret #1 — Don’t Do All the Work Alone

Just because you’ve decided to host your reception at your home doesn’t mean you have to do all of the planning and prepping solo. With all of the cleaning, organising and executing involved, even Wonder Woman would struggle to put a whole wedding together alone.

Don’t be afraid to hire a wedding coordinator – They’re not just for those who having a reception in a dining hall or church, after all! If you have a crew of eager family members and friends who are ready to offer you their support, take advantage of their willingness to pitch in. When you divvy up tasks, you’ll find that the process of planning a wedding reception at home doesn’t need to involve any stress at all.

  1. Secret #2 — You’ll Need a Plan

When planning for a wedding reception at home, making the actual plan may seem like a given. But far too often, brides get caught up in prepping and making arrangements that they forget to create a step-by-step plan that ensures their wedding day will go by smoothly.

Create a wedding day checklist that clearly defines your goals, events and the details that you intend to manifest during your reception. Do you have enough seating available for the amount of guests you invited? Will you cook your food, or cater? Do you have a back-up plan in case the weather interferes with your arrangements?

Make sure you touch on key aspects of your wedding, such as decorations, food and drink and entertainment. When you have an actual plan mapped out for your reception, everything will be much more correlated and in order for your special day. 

  1. Secret #3 — Make Cleaning Your Home Easy

Inviting guests over for any occasion often comes with the panic of quickly cleaning your home. But after prepping and planning for your wedding day ceremony, the last thing you want to do is spend the weekend scrubbing the toilet before you walk down the aisle.

Sometimes, the best solution is to have someone else who can take the burden off your shoulders. Professionals know just what areas to clean and will leave your home spotless so that you can focus on getting pampered before you tie the knot instead.

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Wedding Dress Alterations – What Can I Change About My Wedding Dress?

When it comes to wedding dress alterations, sometimes people forget that you can change more than just the fit. It is so important on your wedding day that you truly love your dress and feel it reflects your personality perfectly! You can’t always find that perfect dress in the store, which is why it’s important to know just how much of a difference wedding dress alterations can make. From adding details to changing the style, there is so much a professional seamstress will be able to do for you. We’ve teamed up with Alterations Boutique, experts in dress alterations, to let you know just a few of the things you can change about your dress.

Adjusting Your Wedding Dress

The Fit

The fit of the dress is one of the most common and important wedding dress alterations. Having a dress that fits you properly is essential on your big day. You want to make sure that the dress fits as intended all over. When a wedding dress doesn’t fit properly it can change the appearance of the whole dress, so you want to make sure it is sculpted perfectly for your body. Remember, you’ll be in this dress all day, so if it’s too small or too large you’ll be really uncomfortable. 

The Length

The length is an easy changeable feature of your wedding dress. Whether you just want to make the dress the right length, or want to turn it into a shorter version, this can be done for you. Shortening a dress is always an easier job than lengthening, though lengthening a dress is possible. This is only to a certain extent and we would always recommend getting a dress that is too long rather than too short. 

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The Curious Place – The Liverpool Wedding Show

Are you looking for alternative wedding suppliers to make your day freaking rock? No two weddings are the same and not all brides and grooms want the traditional wedding so for couples who want to rock their wedding day, their way, I get to introduce you to The Curious Place at The Liverpool & North West Wedding Show to give your wedding day the attitude it deserves – Taking place 21st-22nd September at the Exhibition Centre, Liverpool.

Alternative weddings are bright, bold and beautiful, but this doesn’t mean you have to covered head to toe in tattoos to appreciate it – Alternative brides and grooms can be hipster grooms or boho brides, love vintage or a bit of retro, full-on Rock n Roll or just something completely unique and quirky and The Curious Place is the place to let your imagination run wild.

Being a part of The Curious Place earlier this year along with Legend Bridal Designs and Maddison Rocks Floral Sculpture, I’m so excited to see what this month’s show brings! If it’s anything like this Ghetto Golf shoot with the rest of the Curious Place suppliers – I can’t wait! Make sure you go book your tickets here (By the way, it’s free for the Bride and/or Groom for the next 10 days!)

Photography – Vicky Dubois Photography
Venue – Ghetto Golf, Liverpool
Dresses – Legend Bridal Design
Bouquets – Maddison Rocks Floral Sculpture
Decor – The Maiden Mother & Crone Emporium
Venue Dressing – Wachadoin Events
Stationery – Prim and Glad Stationery
Cakes – Debbie Gillespie Cake Design
Hair & Make up – The Glam Bunny Makeup Artist

A DIY Wedding at Arnos Vale Cemetery – Sophie & Cameron

As we head on into my favourite time of year (Autumn and Halloween), I though it would be perfect to share with you Sophie and Cameron’s Bristol wedding that took place at Arnos Vale Cemetery from Larissa Joice Photography.

We met each other through a well-known dating app – We started talking and bonded over our love of an obscure (and a bit gruesome) horror film that not many people we knew had heard of. We met in a coffee shop in a big shopping centre because I (Sophie) wanted somewhere with designated parking – I wasn’t willing to parallel park in Bristol for someone I didn’t know was the one!

We ended up staying there for several hours, discussing some obscure topics and being more and more amazed by how much we had in common. We were pretty much inseparable from our first date – we had moved in together after 5 months, were engaged a month later, and then married just under a year after that. We got engaged just before my 29th birthday, after an evening watching The Wickerman (we chose the soundtrack to be played over our wedding meal).

We both wear our hearts on our sleeves and it was super important for us to have a wedding which was genuine and represented us as a couple. Our vows had lines from one of the first films we had together, and our table names were named after Lovecraftian locations.

We made some choices which I think people judged at first (especially getting married in a cemetery) but afterwards, we had lots of compliments about how well our wedding day fit in with how people see us as a couple.

One the highlights of our wedding day was definitely dancing with our friends to Beautiful People by Marilyn Manson – we chose an awesome DJ who was willing to work with our eclectic taste so we ended up with a playlist with 80s classics, 90s indie, and a good bit of metal thrown in. My mum was a bit dubious, but we showed her that you definitely can dance to Marilyn Manson at a wedding.

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