Planning our Backyard, DIY Wedding Reception During COVID-19

Music

My dad loves speakers. And the wedding proved no exception. I asked if we should rent two of the big standing amp speakers from the rental company, but in order for them to send sound to the edges of the party, they’re always deafening when you’re close. My dad had a much better idea. He said, “you know how at Disneyland, it just feels like the music is coming from everywhere?” For my wedding, he wanted to turn our backyard into a magical, musical Disneyland. So he bought ten wireless, waterproof Bluetooth speakers, and placed them in the bushes all around our seating area. Ambient sound, rather than directional sound. The speakers were the Anker Soundcore Flare 2, and we all agreed they sounded fantastic especially considering the relatively low price. My parents also emailed the neighbors to tell them about the wedding and give a heads up about the noise, and everyone was gracious and congratulatory and happy to let us play our music.

We made Spotify playlists for our music (and obviously we upgraded to Premium for the wedding). Managing the playlist sounded easy enough, and I considered just handling it myself from my phone. This is where we say, “No! Bad Sam! You’re the bride. Ask for help.” So I did. I asked my brother Andy if he’d be our DJ and he agreed, and he did a fantastic job. He started the music for the cocktail hour, which was extra perfect since we were taking photos and arrived after all of our guests (as planned). He played our entrance song when we arrived, which was the song from the Disney World parade that was going on when David proposed – the key line for us? “Let’s get it started, ’cause we just can’t wait.“

For dinner, we just let it play. Here’s our playlist. A lot of Disney parks ambient music, some of our favorite special songs, and a few very cheesy romantic songs. I know Hannah was just shocked that I included Taylor Swift on my wedding playlist… I was too! But something about, you know, getting married made me feel a lot cheesier and more romantic than usual.

Having a dedicated DJ was crucial. There was some troubleshooting, I remember Andy running up and down the deck stairs to the “DJ stand”. He was also the one to hit pause for the toasts by the best man and matron of honor, and my dad’s prayer before dinner. He changed the playlists for our dances, and then changed it again when we invited everyone to the dance floor. And while we had a playlist, we weren’t tethered to it, and I’ll never forget when Hannah said, “WAIT – is Andy taking requests?!?!” and ran up to request the song that we girls sang all weekend at my bachelorette party. Good music, and a great music manager, was key to our party.

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Lighting

Our ceremony was at 2 at the church, and that was about 40 minutes from my parents’ house. I knew that by the time we got back from church and pictures, it would be around 5pm and starting to get dark. Luckily, my dad had this one under control, too.

The Thursday before the wedding, my hair stylist came to the house to do my hair trial, and David and my dad went on a tour of the local Home Depots. They bought out multiple stores’ worth of patio lights, plus some 1×2″ boards. My dad doesn’t do anything halfway. We could have strung the lights along the fence, but that would have only been around waist level. So my dad and my groom bolted boards to every-other fence post, so that the lights could be strung 10-12 feet in the air to bathe the whole backyard in a soft glow.

Andy brought a spool of color changing LED lights with him because he figured they might come in handy. My mom had draped white tulle along the edge of the deck, and Andy tucked his lights along the tulle. He programmed the lights to rainbow and it was awesome to have some color to add to our dance floor!

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Rentals

We rented the mandatory stuff: tables, chairs, and tablecloths. I loved how the chairs and tablecloths looked – those Chiavari chairs are just so “wedding-y” to me, and it was the small details like that that helped me feel like my DIY wedding was a Real Wedding.

We also rented all of our tableware. The number of table items we needed added up fast! Plates, forks, knives; water glasses, beer glasses, champagne flutes (we decided to give each guest 1 wine glass and 1 beer glass, assuming they could put water in one and their drink of choice in the other); cloth napkins; water pitchers. Renting the tableware was awesome because we didn’t have to wash any dishes – just scraped off the extra food and then they were all picked up the next day. And, of course, no waste from single-use plates. Our rentals came from Sammy’s Rental (DC area), they were fantastic to work with and very, very organized.

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Food

Planning the food was a tough decision because we were trying to avoid the dense gathering of a buffet line or similar. Fortunately, with our small number of guests, we were able to order individual meals for each table. We ordered our food from Maggiano’s catering, and they were extremely helpful and willing to work with us. They packed each table’s order in a separate bag. Our tables were set up to respect household “pods”, so each couple sat at its own table. The food was ordered “family style” but for couples, with a shared salad and two large entrees to share. When the food arrived, it was just a matter of distributing the bags (with the men of the party executed very graciously). We were even able to customize orders so that most of us could order salads without blue cheese (thank goodness).

For snacking during the cocktail hour, my mom put together charcuterie plates for each table. This was also great because she arranged the plates the day before, then just wrapped them in plastic wrap in the fridge. Slices of cheese, prosciutto, salami, crackers, and grapes for everyone to nibble on before the food arrived.

We also gave everyone stacks of Ritter Sport mini chocolates as favors. I was adamant that I would not have wedding favors that created a bunch of waste, so no elaborate boxes or personalized bottle openers or whatever else. Just a stack of yummy, special chocolates, that my mom wrapped in a stripe of pretty cactus wrapping paper.

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Drinks

This was a big highlight of the DIY Wedding. Our original venue had us tied to a caterer who was tied to an alcohol distributor. This was both expensive and prohibited us from featuring something awesome: Papa’s beer. My dad had brewed all the beer for my brother’s wedding the year prior, and to dispense the beer, he built a beautiful wooden bar that hid four small kegs and the carbonation apparatus. It hadn’t had an opportunity to come out of hiding again… until now!

We had four different beers on tap, all brewed by my dad. We also had wine and soda available, but of course the beer was the most popular! Each table also had its own pitcher of water. For toasts, my sister-in-law went around to each table offering pours of champagne or sparkling apple cider, and of course we had more of each of those in case people wanted more bubbly. I love my dad’s beer, but it was my wedding day, and champagne was definitely my drink of choice!

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Cake

Our wedding cake was another item where we were able to embrace our small guest count. We requested Papa’s cheesecake as our dessert. You may be noticing a theme here – my dad loves to make food and share it with people! He made cheesecakes for years, trying to “crack the code” to make perfect, tall, not-too-dense but not-too-fluffy cheesecake. He cracked the code years ago and his cheesecakes are really amazing and special, and now that he’s got the science down he’s always experimenting with new flavors.

We wanted enough cheesecake to go around, and that called for a cheesecake sampler. We narrowed it down to three varieties:

• Bride’s cake: Oreo crust, amaretto cheesecake layer, chocolate cheesecake layer, chocolate ganache top
• Groom’s cake: brownie crust, vanilla cheesecake, chocolate ganache top
• For the Neutral, we chose seasonal Pumpkin: spiced cookie crust, pumpkin cheesecake, white chocolate drizzle

David had bought this Lego wedding set soon after we got engaged ( 🙂 ) and we modified it by adding a few of our own pieces and a lot more Lego plants. That was our cake “topper” but it sat off to the side so as to not mar the perfect ganache finish on the cheesecake. My mom surprised me with this plate, it’s my own version of the “Special Day” plate that we always used on birthdays growing up.

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Flowers

Yes, we DIY’ed the flowers. I’m planning a whole post about flowers because I was just obsessed with how they came out (edit: here’s the DIY wedding flowers post!). I made the bouquets and my mom made the boutonnieres and corsages. It was a lot more work than I expected, but it was also so fun to choose all my own flowers and make exactly what I wanted.

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Hair

I did my own makeup, but I had my hair done professionally and I am so, so glad that I did. I’ve never been one to do much with my hair and it would have been extremely stressful for me to have to do my own hair on my wedding day. It came out better than I could have imagined and I was just thrilled. I had considered wearing some sort of flower crown, but I never quite figured out what I wanted. I ended up just trimming the top end of some Stock (the flower) that was leftover from the bouquets, and the stylist pinned that into my hair. It. Was. Perfect.

Since we live in Florida, and the wedding was in Virginia, I had my hair trial on Thursday for the Saturday wedding. I suppose there was potential for disaster if I hated the trial, but it worked out very nicely. My stylist really enjoyed doing the trial and the event so close together, because she could remember what worked and came up with even better ways to do the final hairdo. If you’re in northern VA, I highly recommend Stephanie from Bridal Artistry.

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