Wedding Shindig Part One

Last Saturday we hosted a celebration of our son and daughter-in-law's wedding. Aramin and Deidre got married last year and just bought a house last month so we wanted to throw them a party, a little shindig, we called it. This post will be about the preparations. Party people to follow.

Since I'm into everything vintage, I've been hoarding stuff from our shop, Chirp. I made these fans from old photographs from both sides of the family. These were certainly a hit as the temperature was in the 90's and the humidity typical August.

We borrowed Krista's huge tent

We picked wild flowers, sunflowers, roses, maple leaves, to assemble an array of bouquets.

 I was at our local dump the week before and snagged two of these little cable tables. I ran into one of Aramin's friends there and got to talking about how I find cool things at the dump. He looked in the back of my pickup and he said that he had just dumped those cable holders off the day before! He liked the redo on them when he saw them at the party.

We got the yard spiffed up. Luckily it's been a rainy and coolish summer. Usually by late August the grass is brown and the ground is rock hard.

 When I got these chairs months ago, I knew I wanted to redo them for the head table, one for Aramin and one for Deidre.

The week before the party, they still looked like this.

But with Krista's help, we got 'em done! They turned out beautiful!

I sent Forrest to procure 20 bales of hay to be used as extra seating. I told the hay guy that I wanted half the bales to be orchard grass and the other half alfalfa. I said that I was using it for my sheep but also to sit on for a party. Glad he told me about alfalfa being really pokey and scratchy. We got all orchard grass.

I set up a drinking station with 3 types of citrus water and two types of red wine. The white wine and pop were in my old double washtub. 

We had a photo 'booth' set up, but these cameras were used just as props.

The ubiquitous milk glass. 

Had my hoops hung up on my old lamp stand.

The chickens and sheep were pimped out for the celebration. Hours later, all seven chickens had their ribbons strewn around the coop. Not sure how they got them off, but they are pretty clever.

Sheep, not so much. Or maybe they really liked their bling.

 I've had this iron crop up in the barn loft for years. Finally got it down and it worked great for seating.

 Somehow I've collected a heap of red stuff. We'll use it for our holiday decorating at our shop.

          The head table. We used canvas painter's cloth with burlap table runners on the tables.

Each table had different little vignettes. 

The night before the big event. We had a lot of help putting this all together. Houston and the boys did a great job of putting the tent up and Houston put together a fantastic music area, complete with massive speakers that he had built years ago. Next: the party