An Extraordinary Saturday: Light Me Up

Before we take a last spin around the dance floor, let’s obsess over some details.  Oh, details.  Wedding magazines and blogs love them, they make great editorial illustration and - they really don’t matter.  Well, they do.  As much as anything else that’s entertaining or pleasant.  But the cocktail napkins, collected silverplate, boutonnieres, cheeky water bottle labels, effing chair covers….  they were all appreciated, but none of those things really made the party.  (Of course they didn’t matter to the marriage.  The quality of your marriage and the planned-ness of your party are two different goals.  Right now we’re talking party.  Obviously, right?)

So what did matter to the party?  Lights.  The biggest impact for my money came from lights, both for ambiance and in pictures.

Lights mattered, especially after dark.  If you flip back through the photos so far, you’ll find a lot of lights.  If I had it to do again and had to make cuts, I’d definitely keep DJ, Kim and Elizabeth  – and I’d keep the lights.

So how many lights?  We had 24 dozen votive candles (on the tables and around the barn beams), 48 luminaria on the path to the barn, 48 hanging jars with LED votives, seven strings of globe lights, and sixteen pillar candles in the bar/silo.  A whole lot of lights. 

Everyone tells you to plan for music and flowers.  I disagree.  For the party and the pictures, you want music and lights.  Trust me.  Lots of little lights infuse a little magic, which can’t hurt when you’re throwing a party about love.

Photos by Kim from Bow Tie Photography, who probably agrees with me about the lights.