The Reception
Morgan Street Brewery
I came across our reception venue by accident. One of my friends got married last summer and had recommended their photographer to us. This was when we were searching for venues and the photographer's website listed their sample galleries by venue. They had a ton of venues listed, so I started looking at the client photo galleries to get ideas for venues. I came across this amazing wedding at Morgan Street Brewery. I didn't even know you could hold parties or banquets there- I had always known this place as a restaurant, and on late Friday and Saturday nights a dance club/bar. So I started to check the out and found out their food prices were very reasonable, and we already knew the food was great because we'd eaten there in the past. A major plus- this will be our back-up location in case of rain. If it rains, we will have the ceremony set up in the banquet room, and then afterward the guests will move into another room for cocktails while they switch the room setup for the reception. And they don't charge any extra for this! So far working with them has been great, and I'm really looking forward to the great party we're going to have!
Here is a little information about the history of the venue:
The restaurant and brewery where the reception will be held is located on historic Laclede's Landing near the Mississippi River. The area known as Laclede's Landing is named after the French explorer Laclede who landed at this area in 1764 and established St. Louis. Morgan Street Brewery is located in the old Schoelhorn-Albrecht Building at 721 N. Second Street. This property was cleared in 1791 and was the site of the freeing of the first Mulatto slave, Esther. The building was constructed more than 120 years ago and is one for the oldest buildings on the Landing. Originally it was used by the Schoelhorn-Albrecht Machine Company, where they manufactured capstans for the Mississippi River barges. As you walk up Morgan Street towards Third Street, you will notice that the sidewalks are uneven, concealing a room underneath Morgan Street Brewery which was used to hide run- away slaves.
Centerpieces
We want to keep our decor personalized, but to save a bit of money we're going to use the venue's centerpieces for half of the tables and bring in our own centerpieces for the other half. The venue provides pillar candles in glass hurricanes, which we will enhance by surrounding them with scattered rose petals and amber colored votive candles. On the other half of the tables we're using three glass cylinder vases in graduated heights (6", 9", and 12") and submerging faux orchids, faux calla lilies, and twisted copper wire in them. Round candles will float on top.
Here's some photos of what our submerged centerpieces will look like:
I purchased the 9" and 12" glass cylinders from Hobby Lobby when they were having a 50% off sale. The 6" tall cylinders came from Candles4less.com. I got the copper glass gems from Michaels and the river rocks from a local dollar store. The faux orange cymbidium orchids were also from Michaels and I used one of their 40% off coupons. Actually, I just bought one orchid stem and cut each of the flowers off with wire cutters. The faux mini calla lilies and the faux purple cymbidium orchids came from Afloral.com. The calla lilies were labeled as "wine" color but were more of a dark purple in person (I was specifically looking for eggplant but this was the closest I could find). I found the copper wire in the jewelry-making section of Michaels. The floating candles came from Quickcandles.com. I also bought 72 amber glass votive holders and white votive candles for $36.99 from Candles4less.com. I wanted to add some extra color to our dinner tables plus I thought the amber color would cast a warm glow on the room. Here's a complete mock-up of what our table settings will look like:
Card Box
I bought a wire birdcage on impulse from Joann Fabrics because it was on sale for 50% off and we have bird accents in our wedding. I believe I paid $17.50 for it. However, it was a wrought iron color which didn't fit in with our color scheme, so I bought metallic copper spray paint from Michael's for about $6 and painted it copper. I added a sign made from leftover metallic cardstock from our invites and attached it with eggplant ribbon. If I could do it over, I would have used a primer to paint the birdcage before I applied the copper paint, however I'm an amateur when it comes to spray paint so I didn't know any better. Since the spray paint was being applied to metal, any time you scratched the birdcage the paint would just scrape off. I don't think this would have happened if I had used primer first, but oh well. Not too bad for about $25 total.
Escort Card Trees
I fell in love with this idea after seeing it on a wedding blog- either Style Me Pretty or Wedding Bee. The copper urns came from Michael's and I bought them on clearance for about $5 a piece. I bought the manzanita branches from Nettleton Hollow. I believe they cost about $50 for the three branches. Then I bought plaster of paris from Micheal's, river rocks from a dollar store, and moss from Old Time Pottery. I filled the urns with the river rocks, played around with the placement of each branch until I had it where I wanted it, and then poured the plaster of paris around the rocks. I held the branch in place for a couple minutes until the plaster firmed up, and it was completely solid in about 15 minutes. I used a hot glue gun to glue the moss on top so that the plaster was covered up. My original plan was to have some rocks showing on top, but I had never used plaster of paris before and I didn't realize that most of it would show at the top of the urn. In the end I liked the moss look anyways, because it repeats the moss accent that we used in the buckets for the ceremony canopy. We printed our guests' names and seating assignments on metallic copper cardstock and cut them into diamond shapes. Then we punched a hole into each corner, tied a loop of ribbon, and added an adhesive rhinestone for a little sparkle. I love how they turned out!