Saturday, August 20th.... The day after the wedding ceremony. Justin and I woke up in downtown Seattle to completely sunny skies. AGAIN. And a prediction for even better (and warmer!) weather than the day before. Awesome.
We left the hotel around 10am to head home to hang out with my family for a while. Of course, we had to stop by Ladro first. After loading up with a couple of coffees, muffins, and cinnamon rolls, we spent the morning with my family... Justin made juice (another post entirely), I ate peanut butter (of course) and we just hung out until around 1:30pm when the day sort of resembled the day before (and by the way? It was SO nice to have a relaxing morning following the ceremony and before the party. Again, this was definitely the way to have a wedding). Around 1:30, I headed to get my hair put up again, Justin and my family went to pick up cakes (plural), salads, cheeses, etc for the night ahead. Then we were all off to the winery to set up!
Since this is the last of the "official" wedding shots, one more HUGE thank you to our amazing photographer Tara of Red Thread Images. Here's how the party went:
We got to the winery around 3:30pm to start the set up (clearly the above is from later... post set up). A few things for this night: we wanted it to include all of the things WE love so that we could share them with people we love. So first up, the venue: Woodhouse Wine Estates.
We absolutely love this winery. It's local and we are wine members. We know the owners, we know the winemakers, we know the people who work there. Honestly, we've never had a bad wine there, even a white- and that's saying something because both of us generally HATE white wines.
We fell in love with this winery after trying their Tempernillo, a reasonably priced bottle of red for $20 that we tried on a whim. We drank it one night and were BLOWN AWAY. I'm pretty sure it wasn't long after (maybe the following weekend) that we went to the winery to wine taste, loved all of the tasting wines and became members. Then we kept going back- to releases, to tastings and grew our relationship as well as our love for their wines.
Their top shelf wines are AMAZING, of course, but even their $10 bottles drink like $50 bottles. It's just incredible. And their winemaker's family has been making wine in France since the 1500s. He's currently on a personal mission to make the best damn Riesling in the nation (and honestly? He's pretty damn close! Sidenote on this one: ask anyone at our party, we served it there... and ended up having to buy more that night, it was that popular. I KNOW, a RIESLING! It's a dry Riesling, really. We couldn't believe it either...but seriously, it was dry. And delicious. And I still can't believe we're talking about Riesling, either).
Anyway, we love the personal touches of all of the wine- how each bottle is named after someone who means something to them, how the winemaker and owners are always there and willing to talk about their wine. We are passionate about this winery, so, when it came down to it? Perfect place for our wedding celebration (also note: not a reception. We did not want any of that typical wedding hoopla. We've both been married before, we don't need to toss any flowers or garters or have some sort of "wedding timeline" for the reception. We really just wanted to share things we love with people we care about in a cocktail party type of setting. Pretty simple).
We spent the next two hours setting up...a huge THANK YOU to my family for helping to set up the venue...even my dad and brother stuff roses in wine bottles to decorate. It was pretty cute. It was also a little chaotic there for a while but mostly organized. Organized chaos? Yeah, maybe that. We had two bigger tables that people could sit at but mostly wine barrel tables that people could socialize around... a cocktail party at its best. Above: the decor on the tables. A wine bottle of woodhouse wines that we drank in order to make these centerpieces (a tough job but someone needed to do it)... in it, we put some black/red sticks, tied a black ribbon around them and put in a white rose. And voila! The material is all due to my mom who graciously got all of the material for both the wedding and reception and brought it in from Kansas City (lifesaver). Also, I bought the above cards and my mom ran to every Hobby Lobby in Kansas City to get the little spiral holders to put them on the tables (again, lifesaver!)
I like this shot of the word cards (what the hell is the right name for those things?) with our rings.
I think this picture is from Friday but I like it so I put it in here... it's a good segway to what happened after the set up: more pictures! Some of me, first. Then, of all of us together before the guests started to arrive at 5:30.
LOVE these doors that lead into the barrel room.
Pictures in the barrel room? Perfect.
Love this shot. Not totally sure what was going on here but it looks cool.
OH, turns out the last shot was the one leading up to him getting on his knees and kissing me. Cute.
Mmm... our first sip of wine. Perhaps the magnum cab franc we got? (By the way- the cab franc is our personal favorite).
A line of up of chocolates from S'chocolat that I mentioned here. And also? All 350 chocolates were basically gone at the end of the night. We may have had 30 left. Impressive, maybe, but not really considering that the things are like little chocolate crackballs. Once you start, you can't stop!
Details- the chandeliers. Aren't they cool?
More details- the wineglasses ready and waiting for guests.
And the wines we picked for the night, all by Woodhouse of course: Kennedy Shah reserve Riesling, Kennedy Shah Chardonney, Dussek Cabernet Sauvignon, Hudson Shah Cab, Kennedy Shah Tempernillo (the newest release-2009- 2008 was better but they ran out... waaah), and Hudson Shah Malbec. Not picture here was the Dussek reserve Syrah and the Kennedy Shah reserve Cab Franc (the magnum we got that I'm pretty sure Justin and I killed ourselves...)
A picture that Lauren drew me the day of the wedding. So sweet.
One of the cakes! And there were three. The place I wanted a wedding cake from "didn't do wedding cakes." WELL. FINE. Then I want three sheet cakes. And they were all, really? Yes. Three sheet cakes, white buttercream frosting. I'll decorate. And I did. With black ribbons and roses and letter initials. About 1.5 hours before the party started. Good thing I didn't really care how it turned out (but luckily it turned out great!)
More details.
A shot of the wine friendly food spread that we had there... cheeses, fruits, salads, various appetizers. It turned out pretty awesome!
Bailey (middle) was our deejay and responsible for the music mixup. Here are the three Valente boys trying to figure out how to make it all work.
About an hour after people started arriving, Justin made a toast. It was very cool.
We went through a lot of wine....
And cheese.
And bubbles?
Oh yes, DEFINITELY with the bubbles.
A shot of the crowd. We ended up with a little over 100 people that turned up, which was perfect but we wished we would have had more time to talk to everyone! We have a TON of individual shots of people at the party so if you were there and you want yours, email me or I'll email you but I'm not posting you on the blog in the case that you hate the picture. And really, that would be a lot of downloading on my end....
Kristi- our woodhouse gal who worked our event that night... she was AMAZING.
More chocolates.
Isla, again, with the right idea....
Bailey doing his deejay thing. He actually did awesome, I was very impressed.
At one point, we decided to cut the cakes because no one was touching them thinking we were going to do an "official" cutting. We weren't really but it sort of turned into one to get people to start cutting away and eating it themselves. Of course, I wanted one specific kind and it was the last one we cut so we ended up with a giant plate of cake. Which I ate...
Nope, not the right one...
"Just a little bit..."
Giving one of the kids a rose off the cakes. She was so sweet.
Here I am eating the pile of cake with Justin's mom. See, I shared!
Eventually, as the party got later, some people started to strip....
And we danced...
As did the little stripper...
And I guess I also ate more cake. Hmm. Don't remember that....
But so did Oliver, so it's all good. We burned it dancing, right?
But some people just had to work...
This is a little random for this post since it's not in sequence but I LOVE this shot of Justin's brother's family.
I also love this picture of Ryan and Lauren...
As well as this one.
This shot, taken towards the later end of the evening... empty wine glass and all. All in all, it was a fabulous event and everyone seems to have had a good time. We've even had requests (and have gone out to Woodhouse) with some of our friends that came that wanted to try more of their wine since then! More importantly, WE had a great time celebrating with everyone who joined us... and sharing all of the special things we love- food, wine, friends, and of course, each other. A big THANK YOU to everyone who came to our events, shared with us in some way and who made these two days everything they were, incredible, full of love, perfect, more than we could have hoped...we cannot wait to share the rest of our life together with all of you as an instrumental part of it.
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