Sewn Together: At-Home Reception Part 2

Round Two! Go, go, power reception!

Once everyone was finished stuffing themselves for dinner, desserts were brought out. Isn't it amazing how there's always room for dessert?

China Stix's mango flan is simply amazing with it's delicious pureed mango on the top, and I ate two cups.
The dessert table was also a huge hit, mostly thanks to Penga-Aunt's fantastic homemade cookies.

They went so fast I didn't get to try them all, so she made me a special batch of everything this Christmas. The jam thumbprints are probably my favorite. So delicious!

Cookie line!

Penga-Aunt restocking her delectable sweets.

We had all our favorites, actually. From mini princess cakes...

IKEA sells them in a box, how awesome is that?

to tres leches cake!

Stocked up on sugar, my sister then helped break out the bingo. Deemed too "unclassy" by Sak for the actual wedding, it was fair game for this party. And even better, there happened to be like 20 children under the age of 12 in attendance, so bingo was a solid kid-friendly activity.

I bought pre-cut bingo cards from Daiso, which made for an easy and dot blotter-less way to play. And inside about a dozen or so leftover chair cover bags, Penga-Mom put random (and I do mean random) small prizes.

Someone gave Penga-Sis the microphone, and I'm only sorry no one videotaped her hammed-up performance.

"Tweeeellllveee. Seven plus five is Twellllveee."

Maybe because she was surrounded (by the most part) by people she knew well, she really went wild with the theatrics. She had the crowd, most of whom were itching at that point from lack-of-world-series watching, in complete stitches.

Prizes ranged from (much coveted) Pokemon figurines, to Japanese toilet deodorizing drops (they work like magic, I tell you). It was pretty hilarious.

Let's see...A frog planter, Star Wars puzzle, stuffed turkey,  coffee and mug, and My Little Pony!

Once all the prize bags had been claimed, emcee Penga-bro called everyone's attention to the photobooth and our four boxes of props. It's evident that we made the backdrop width much too short, but all the crazy photos split my sides regardless.

Mario...and pink Luigi?

"I know what you did last summer!"

Wand ear-swabs.

Mom?!

Honestly I have no idea where half the props even came from.

Operator? Operator?

Twinsies!

A photobooth also doubles as a talent show.

Domo? Wait, I think that's some Pretzels in disguise!

"Bring on the Mushmom!"

Banana?

Nevermind Mothma, Godzilla fights his cousin!

What?

What?!

Oh, photobooth.  You are the best wedding trend since big fat wedding cakes. I hope you stay around forever, because you make me laugh and smile so much.

We had a wonderful second reception, as unpolished and mish-mashed as it was.  So for those of you planning your own - no, it won't be the same as your wedding, but it can be something equally awesome in it's own special way.   Food and laughter is really all you need. And you might even get away with laughter alone if your friends and family aren't voracious carnivores like mine.

(All photos by family members)

Our wedding in review:

• We took care of some last minute DIY details, and officialized everything.
• We vacationed with our out-of-towners, and threw a yummy welcome beach brunch.
• Sak saluted an angry dragon during our wedding rehearsal, and we sniffed at our dinner.
• Wal-Mart crashed my bachelorette.
• The women magically transformed, and Sak tied me into our dress.
• There was a windy photoshoot on the beach, and then we hung out at the chapel in flat shoes.
• We marched to the altar and got married.
• Everyone was camera-happy.
• Reception time! A bustle for our first dance, and then it was time to eat.
• I wore a kimono, and then fed some lions.
• We tried a bouquet pull, which didn't go as planned. Coincidentally, neither did our cake feeding.
• Everyone yelled banzai before Rick-rolling on the dance floor.
• Details: ceremony and reception
• Our wedding movie!
• Honeymoon in Japan: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4
• Back at home! Reception Part 1

Sewn Together: At-Home Reception Part 1

I never found a real guideline for how to plan a second reception (though Mrs. Pretzel helped me figure it out, retrospectively). I guess it's more a regular party than an expected set of traditions like it's more formal cousin, the wedding reception. And I think that's what our at-home reception was - a chaotic party (revolving mostly around food).

It was raining buckets, Saturday October the 22nd in Santa Clara. We arrived at China Stix with an hour of set-up time, only to find some of our guests were already there. Clearly not everyone was running on "Asian-time" as I had hoped. The early guests apparently wanted to help setup though, so they pestered me on what to do as I tried to wrap my head around the situation. I had brought loose seating charts with me, but had no prior knowledge to how the room would be laid out, so it was a challenge.

Penga-Sis: DOC.

My brother and cousins set up our photobooth while my aunts, grandmother and mom worked their magic on the dessert table.

I laid out a tea tray for guests to sign in silver Sharpie. Also on the table were some photo albums from the wedding for guests to look at.

The tea tray about half-way signed. It's quite pretty in all it's silvery glory now!

And the tables were minimally set with favors, buttons (this time professionally printed and with less wedding and more Zelda, Ewoks and Mario Boo's) and double happiness tealight holders with table names taped to the back. We went with Japanese cities, and each held a picture of us at the respective place.

My sister greeted people at the front door, handing out Pocky escort cards.

Checking out the favors!

Then my uncle prayed over the food, and we ate.

And ate.

And ate.

And ate. (Our wedding pictures and movie played in the background.)

That's curry, in a pumpkin! Definitely one of the favorites of the night.

And we cut up the lechon gifted to us by family friends, to eat some more.

There was so much food (about 11 dishes in all!), the servers didn't even bring out rice or tea or water (unless the table asked for it) because there was no room. I didn't even make it to the last two dishes for feeling stuffed!

We drank fantastic blood-orange soda and sparkling apple cider.

Some tables drank a whole lot of the blood-orange soda, actually.

You can find it at some Costcos. We checked about 10 of them for the stuff.

It was delicious. And the leftovers were so very tasty over the next few days. Most of the guests took their leftovers home too, so there was very little waste!

I must say, the best part of having a party close to home is that you can go back for the food more often! Yum!

(All photos by family members)

Our wedding in review:

• We took care of some last minute DIY details, and officialized everything.
• We vacationed with our out-of-towners, and threw a yummy welcome beach brunch.
• Sak saluted an angry dragon during our wedding rehearsal, and we sniffed at our dinner.
• Wal-Mart crashed my bachelorette.
• The women magically transformed, and Sak tied me into our dress.
• There was a windy photoshoot on the beach, and then we hung out at the chapel in flat shoes.
• We marched to the altar and got married.
• Everyone was camera-happy.
• Reception time! A bustle for our first dance, and then it was time to eat.
• I wore a kimono, and then fed some lions.
• We tried a bouquet pull, which didn't go as planned. Coincidentally, neither did our cake feeding.
• Everyone yelled banzai before Rick-rolling on the dance floor.
• Details: ceremony and reception
• Our wedding movie!
• Honeymoon in Japan: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4

Escort to the Photobooth, Please

One of the best parts of planning an at-home reception is being able to use all the cool ideas you found but never got to use the first time.

Starting with the DIY photobooth. It's been done by many a Bee in the past, but I happened to use Mrs. Pin Cushion's version for a starting point.

And yes, it's possible to fit 10-foot poles in a little Prius. Barely.

I won't bother with our measurements since they were ad-libbed - adjusted to fit our tallest guest and the width of the Ikea fabric we bought. It's pretty cool fabric, actually.

Though I admit we only bought it for Godzilla-type shots:

Rawwwrrrrr!

I also grabbed three red boxes at Ikea to fill with our props. There's a lot of props - what can I say? You'll have to wait and see what sorts of props, considering I don't have them all collected yet. But dinosaur hats are a given, rest assured!

Idea number two comes straight from Miss Glasses and her Japanese snack favors. I bought a couple of cute bento boxes from Daiso, with plans to fill them with our escort cards. I'll get to re-use the boxes later, yay!

For escort cards, we bought 5 cases of Pocky and gave each person a chocolate pack with their name on it.

The nametag will eventually point to the guest's table, where one is free to sit where one wants.

I say, what's the point of all this inspiration if you never get to use any of it? I'm thankful to everyone's great ideas, obviously!

What projects have inspired you, to the point of including them in your celebration?

Wedding Favor Redux

While I do the pro-pic wait, let's do some more projects, shall we? Projects are fun.

We'll start with favors for our fast-approaching second reception. There's just something about personalized favors that I love. Sure, they are by no-means necessary, but they can be so fun to make, give, and receive. It must be some side effect of that paraphernalia-collecting disease I'm afflicted with.

Anyway, we needed something usable, Chinese restaurant-appropriate, and of course something that can embody the saka-spirit.

Tea favors it is - now off we go!

To start off, we ordered a bunch of metal tins from SKS Bottle.

Then we picked up several different kinds of tea from our local Asian grocery store, and sampled them all. We chose green, genmai, jasmine and chrysanthemum - since they were available in big packs and not sketchy like oolong.

After designing a tea packet template, I doodled all over it. Sak suppressed a smile and tried to tell me they were too weird. Of course they are weird. We printed them out on recycled printer paper to ease a little bit of the guilt of using way too much paper. Sorry trees!

We cut them out and folded them into little pockets.

Here's the four different designs, along with their inner flaps:

After we folded 600 pieces of paper, we took a break to staple on new tags over the existing tea tags. Rebranding!

Then we stuffed the bag into the folded packet, and finished by tucking in the last flap.

Going back to the tins now, we put two almond cookies in the bottom of each. Who doesn't like some munchies with their tea?

In went one packet of each flavor. I didn't size the packets quite right though, so there was a little squashing involved to get them to fit in the tin.

We cut out some tags in black and white cardstock, and prepared to do the stamp-emboss. I custom ordered the 1" stamp from here. Obscure aside - can anyone name the anime the design was derived from?

After embossing, we punched some holes and cut some ribbon to wrap around our tin.

Here, have a tea favor!

And 149 more!

What's your favorite type of tea? Or are you like Sak, on team hot-choco-would-be-better?