A wedding is such an incredible day in a young couple’s life. The couple gets to have their ceremonial firsts of events throughout an entire day from the moment they wake up until the moment they are waving goodbye from the getaway car. I am here to tell you while a wedding is incredible, an anniversary party is freaking amazing!!! An entire evening filled with what you love, want, with no traditions or formalities! We were a bit hesitant to have one as we do not like to be in the spotlight and we could have taken that dream European vacation we have always seen and heard of. However, to this day I still get butterflies just thinking about our anniversary party/weekend event with so many amazing memories we made with our closest family and friends.
Eddie and I got married when we were in our early 20’s. He and I knew nothing about weddings, and were the first in our group of friends to get married. We were college students planning a wedding and were out of our element entirely. 10 years and over 800 weddings later I was so ready to plan and execute what I would have done the first time if I knew or cared enough the first time. Let’s face it, 20 year olds really don’t know or care about wedding details/traditions as much as the reception partying. In school, while I worked at the flower shop and designed wedding floral designs, I did not romanticize my wedding or getting married, but now it was all different! I had seen and done what I loved so many times and had the opportunity to do it over! I also couldn’t wait to share my lifelong passion with my friends and family.
Much of our family and friends we had not seen in over 2 years due to the pandemic and the everyday bustle of life and jobs. Which is another reason why I wanted to make this evening even more spectacular! For my venue I had a checklist I wanted; a place with an indoor outdoor rain option, accommodations, casual/elegant, golf/sports/hobby, close to Austin, away from the city, no traffic, parking, and all on my budget. My venue was The Mansion at ColoVista. They exceeded our checklist and even provided important add on rentals; easels, outdoor yard games, dance floor, chairs, cocktail tables, guest tables, band stage, twinkle lights, string lights, up lighting, microphone, and sound system! It was absolutely perfect for us and our guests!
We used ivory, white, mulberry, hints of light blush, with dark italian ruskus greenery and paired it all with my favorite new white ratans and disco ball accent decor rentals. While the flower and colors were timeless and classic the disco ball added a fun Kasey Muscgraves meet Betsy Johnson flair. Disco balls glammed up our main signs and easels to greet the guests when they entered into our champagne/cotton candy wall foyer from Tasty Swirls. The polaroid camera book/ sign in was such a great nostalgic sun addition. The guests took a picture and taped it to our book with a fun or sweet message, picture, whatever they wanted to share. I loved this because we were able to reuse our album from our wedding day 10 years ago and because it was so awesome to be able to relive that evening again re reading what our guests wrote and took pics of. Everyone’s pic and message were so unique to them; some hilarious, some loving, some very direct, some that make you wonder what you are looking at.
The only real big difference between the first wedding and 10 years later were children and alcohol consumption. Most of our friends at this point had children and some had babies that we did not want to have to ask them to hire sitters for or leave at home…we wanted to see them too and have all of the kiddos play together. When you have an event and you want the adults to enjoy it, it is really important to keep the kids busy. Other than the cotton candy cart, and non alcoholic champagne wall, non alcoholic bar and alcoholic bar, flower bar cart, and yard games. We only served beer and wine which helped the bar to move quickly and help prevent any chaos that can sometimes occur when there is a fully stocked liquor bar. We even had alcohol left over afterwards.
The most memorable part of the party for all of our guests and Eddie was my Extragram gift I surprised Eddie and everyone with! Eddie and I are a BIG Schitt’s Creek fan and I worked Extragram in the past so many times and have had soooo much fun at every event they host so of course I needed to have Eddie serenaded with our favorite sitcom’s love song and performance! The announcer came out and gathered everyone together and Tina Turner walked down the winding staircase singing “The Best”. The performance was phenomenal and I still get goosebumps everytime the song comes on and it takes me back to the best night ever! After the big performance,the performers taught us how to do a cat walk an we all did a walk off competition! It was so much fun everyone joined in!! Literally, everyone is still talking about Extragrams to this day and want to do the same at their next wedding/event!
The Mansion has a beautiful pink floral room with textured silk wallpaper. This perfectly pink room was a lovely setting for Kiwis Parties and macaron displays. Children and adults loved being able to have their body and/or face painted with beautiful artwork. The party company also made awesome balloons so you did not have to get your body painted, or could have both:) Our macaron assortment favors were a hit! We had enough for each guest to have 3 and they were entirely gone! Light, fluffy, flavorful,but most of all gorgeous! I rented Michelle Patisseries cake stands that were of similar tones to the desserts and had the prepackaged goodies served at different intervals and different flavors. The cool part about this dessert table was that it looked amazing and was our awe factor for the room, but guests could keep it as a guest favor.
Austin Catering was amazing! We still look back on this day and think such fond thoughts of our food! They were so kind and made us to-go boxes that were still soo tasty the next day. We had passed hor d'oeuvres so guests didn't have to awkwardly sit and have a formal meal together. Instead, they were able to talk, mingle, play, hang out, and catch up and didn't get crazy full and prevent them from dancing. We had 2 stations set up for anyone who wanted larger portions of either macaroni or yummy bourbon pork biscuits!! As the night progressed the stations then turned into our dessert which was gooey fluffy bread pudding with a bourbon pecan glaze, and our after hour snack bags. For the snack bags we did a popcorn bar with assorted pre-packaged popcorn bags so the guests could take one back to the cottages if they wanted to enjoy a late night snack.
The music was another favorite of mine! We had Luis Pertenilli live band perform jazz outside under the venue's enormous sprawling trees. We rented the stage and dance floor from the venue and the entire area was lit up by the strung lights overhead and around. It was so warm and romantic. Inside we had more of a variety playlist for guests who wanted to stay in the air condition and visit. The venue provided the sound system and lighting, and by the time we were 15 min away from the last song of the evening I did not know how the evening went by so quickly! Sadly the party finally came to an end, and what better way than with our theme song “Forever” by Blink 182 and glowsticks?! We danced until we had to be out! The most perfect night ever.
