highlights... The Bride and groom looked beautiful.
The room was beautiful. The room's walls were white with very tall ceilings. They tables had very high vases with orange colored water and beautiful flowers. They had white table clothes with orange lace overlays. Champange glasses with alternating orange and gold colored napkins. They also had gold chargers on tables. Chairs were covered in white chair covers with orange sashes.
The bridal party looked beautiful. The guys in white suits with orange ties and vests. Girls in Champange with orange sashes. Except for the MOH, she had a weird white dress that looked bride-ish and had ugly champange long gloves.
Co-workers and friends - they really showed they care about the couple. People here (including myself) will say family and friends should not do work. Well tonight showed me that friends really helped make this couples day. The bride is a cook. All of her direct co-workers (all work under DH) helped cook and serve the food. Other co-workers were bartenders, DJ and other things. DH was proud he has a staff that truly loves and cares about each other.
Open bar was great.
Odd and WT? moments: Tables and chairs for 120 people, 200+ showed up for a buffet dinner (I do not normally mind for passed cocktail parties, but dinner with forks, knives, etc, I mind). Not only that, there was no room to stand either. A bunch of people stood outside (which was cooler in one aspect). We scored a spot at the bar. But even that was limited.
There was not even any room for a dance floor, even though the DJ was great.
There was an announcement in 3 different languages telling the men that woman should not be standing and to be gentlemen and give their seat up.
There was announcement in English, Spanish and French that the gold chargers on the tables were not the buffet plates. Also the napkins were not to be used either.
They were not serving any champange or wine at the open bar, so I'm not sure what the glasses on the table were for.
2 minutes into the buffet being open, people loading up to-go containers. This is an addition to getting a plate of food for themselves. I was like WTF? Why are people making to-go plates, when only the bridal party has gone through the buffet line.
2.5 hours after getting to the reception, the line was so long for the buffet, we never got to eat and ended up at Wendy's on our way home.
We were instructed to find a pen to put our names on the outside of the card envelope. I have know idea why, but they looked at us liike we were crazy for not knowing.
Overall we had fun, but were confused also.
What differentiates an average host and a great host is anticipating unexpressed needs and wants of their guests. Just because the want/need is not expressed, doesn't mean it wouldn't be appreciated.