The Wedding Fiesta

For several years now, my childhood friend, Angie, has been working as a missionary in Mexico. I recently had a chance to fly down for her wedding but not everyone was able to make it... so this past weekend, we had a reception for her and her new husband, Pepe, here in town.

When I was asked to head up decorations for the party, I jumped at the chance... Angie and I had already had a chance to peruse reception ideas months earlier, so I had a general idea of what she'd like.

My mom and I have an extensive collection of vintage Mexican stuff, which was a great benefit, and kept the costs down. We kept all the decorations to $130 and all but $20 of that was spent on flowers... which was actually the most difficult part. We wanted to use zinnias because they come in a large variety of colors and are a Mexican flower, but when we started looking for flowers, we were having trouble finding a place that was affordable. (One of my favorite florist told me they'd have to get them from a European market and it'd be $2.50 a stem! "Uh, no thanks; I'll keep on looking." Finally, I had a friend say that we could come and cut her flowers from her back yard because she'd be out of town for the week-- thanks, Janet! and then we found a wonderful lady at the Old Town Farmer's Market who told us she'd give them to us for 50 cents a stem-- between those two sources, we had plenty of zinnias! For filler, we also ordered purple statice, rudbeckia, and feverfew from the Old Town florist and then ordered something called strawberry fields from another gal at a different farmer's market.

My momma was such a help! She loaded up her van twice with all the things we brought out for the party: child's chairs and tables, tablecloths, washtubs, and mexican clothing. And she also ran to both Farmer's Markets to pick up all the flowers while I ran down to Derby to cut more flowers. She helped me through the set up process and with making all the bouquets for the tables... between making the arrangements for everything ahead of time and running back and for for drop-offs and pick-ups, I'm sure she went thru at least a tank of gas! She was one busy lady! Thank you, Momma!

We layered table clothes, bright sheets, vintage Mexican tablecloths, and sarapes on the tables, used mason jars for the bouquets and these baby food jars for tea lights. We used these poms and papel picado flags to add more color.

Mexican sarapes were hung for backdrops... and we used a trunk filled with mexican clothing for our photo booth props!

We included a mirror at the photo booth, so people could check themselves out before snapping pics!

I love how all the photo booth photos turned out... it was so much fun!

It was such a beautiful evening for a wonderful couple. ¡Felicidades, Angie y Pepe!

(Thanks to Colby Turybury, Patty Johnson and my momma for the beautiful photos!)

Here's a picture of me and the little man... he was such a trooper all day; was perfectly content to sleep and play in other people's arms, giving me the chance to put it all together. But when things settled down, I was super ready to hold him again!

I'm joining up with Embrace the Camera (a challenge to actually get in front of the camera with your family--"oh! you mean the kids may eventually want to see pictures of me with them when they grow up?") this week!