Our reception music

Our playlists from the reception:

Reception Special Playlist

1 Bridal Party Entrance
Austin’s Theme – The James Taylor Quartet

2 Couple Entrance
Theme from “Mission:Impossible” – Against the Beat

3 1st Dance
It’s not for me to say – Johnny Mathis

4 2nd Dance (for Bridal Party and Couple)
At Last – E. James

5 Cutting the Cake
That’s Amore – Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra & Sammy Davis Jr.

6 Father / Daughter Dance
She (Tous Les Visages de l’Amour) – Charles Aznavour

7 Mother / Son Dance
Have I Told You Lately – Rod Stewart

Reception Dinner Playlist

1 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes – Nat King Cole

2 Witchcraft (feat. Anita Baker) – Frank Sinatra

3 Saturday In the Park (Remastered Version) – Chicago

4 I Get a Kick Out of You – Frank Sinatra

5 I’m So Proud – Curtis Mayfield

6 Happy Together – The Turtles

7 Young at Heart – Frank Sinatra

8 Son of a Preacher Man – Aretha Franklin

9 Straighten Up and Fly Right – The Andrews Sisters

10 Ain’t Misbehavin’ – Louis Armstrong

11 My Baby Just Cares for Me – Nina Simone

12 What a Wonderful World – Louis Armstrong

13 All I Need to Get By – Aretha Franklin

14 I Only Have Eyes for You – The Flamingos

15 I’m Beginning to See the Light – Ella Fitzgerald

16 Comes Love – Billie Holiday

17  Walking on The Moon – The Police

18 So Nice (Summer Samba) – Bebel Gilberto

19 Meu Destino (My Destiny) – Thievery Corporation
20  Sex On Fire – Kings of Leon

Reception Dance Playlist

1 My Girl – The Temptations
2 Beyond the Sea – Bobby Darin
3  Barbara Ann – The Beach Boys
4  Fun, Fun, Fun – The Beach Boys
5  Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Babe – Barry White
6 Into the Groove – Madonna
7  Brown Eyed Girl (Single Version) – Van Morrison
8  Woo Hoo – The 5.6.7.8’s
9 You’re the One That I Want – John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John
10 Canned Heat – Jamiroquai
11 Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough – Michael Jackson
12 Kiss – Prince & The Revolution
13 Push It – Salt-N-Pepa
14  Bust a Move – Young MC
15 Hip Hop Hooray – Naughty By Nature
16 Holiday – Madonna
17 American Girl – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
18 Groove Is in the Heart – Deee-Lite
19 Boomshackalak – Apache Indian
20  Vogue – Madonna
21 Thriller – Michael Jackson
22 The Rockafeller Skank (Short Edit) – Fatboy Slim
23 1999 – Prince
24  Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ – Michael Jackson
25 Disturbia – Rihanna
26 Boom Boom Pow – Black Eyed Peas
27  Circus – Britney Spears
28 The Way You Make Me Feel – Michael Jackson
29  Just Dance – Lady GaGa & Colby O’Donis
30 My Love Is Your Love – Whitney Houston
31 Fire Burning – Sean Kingston
32 Open Your Heart – Madonna
33 Beautiful (Valentin club mix) – Christina Aguilera
34 Rock With You – Michael Jackson
35 Right Round – Flo Rida
36 Burning Down the House – Talking Heads
37 We Like to Party! – Vengaboys
38 Use Somebody – Kings of Leon
39 Float On – Modest Mouse
40 I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas

Reception Backup List

1 Raspberry Beret – Prince
2 All or Nothing – Cher
3 Dream Lover- Bobby Darin
4 You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Loves You – Dean Martin
5 Almost Like Being In Love – Gene Kelly
6 They Can’t Take That Away From – Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
7 Angel – Jimi Hendrix
8 Don’t be Cruel – Elvis Presley
9 I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing – Aerosmith
10 Samba Tranquille – Thievery Corporation
11 Les Nuits – Nightmares on Wax
12 Someone to Watch over Me – Etta James
13 Missy/Fatman Scoop/Pharrell – The Break
14 Mercy – Duffy



Cheap do it yourself wedding invitations – 50 for $20!!

I couldn’t believe it either. In my opinion, invites are not *the* most important part of your day as the stationary shops want you to believe. They are an accessory that sets a style and theme for your wedding, an accessory that most people will throw away.

I wanted an invite that was pretty and went with our theme, but I did not want to spend hundreds of dollars. I *really* wanted an enclosure, as I knew I would have to put some additional details in our wedding. EBay to the rescue! I found this great invite on eBay for less than $20 for 50 invites & response cards – and it included a pretty band to enclose the invite and additional pieces!

When I got the set in the mail, I saw some things that are hard to tell in the picture on eBay. First, the band had an iridescent glitter that I hated. I also wasn’t a fan of the chintzey bow. After brainstorming ideas on how to achieve a more elegant look, I decided to flip the band inside out, having the glitter face inside and pretty design still show up outside. (Notice the header on my blog is a scan of the same design….very cool!)

Here is what it looks like:

It’s hard to tell but the enclosure band has an ivory printed design that is also on the border of the invite and the response cards.

I printed them on my computer which worked great. I found a pretty font I liked and used the free Wilton print Word templates to build my invite. Here is what it came out looking like, minus a few details we cut from the picture:

The outer band covers all the text and also encloses the additional information sheet (which is an 8.5″ x 11″ resume paper folded in half with print on both sides, also made with Word) that fit perfectly with the invite.

The response cards and envelopes have a similar look and are also tucked inside the band. Finally, I hand addressed the envelopes with my own calligraphy pen to give it an additional enhanced look and used see through printed labels for the return envelopes and return address labels.

Since I did the envelopes by hand, I messed up a few too many and ordered an additional kit from eBay. With all the additional paper and enclosures, I used the material to build our favors as well.

We decided to go with a CD of our favorite mostly romantic songs. We have a Lighscribe enabled DVD burner, which we used to make these neat scribed labels on the DVDs with our picture and playlist:

We got 50 of them for $35 online, and the Lightscribe template software is free. This takes awhile, as each DVD is about 15 – 20 minutes to burn. Then, we burned our playlist, including a custom greeting we recorded and added to to beginning thanking our guests for coming.  We created pretty enclosures using the invitation kit from above and cheap white CD envelope sleeves (we got 100 for under $10 online also).

As you can see here, I opted to keep the iridescent glitter on the outside to make the set more fun and I did use the chintzey ribbon here to add detail. We used the round gold labels that came with the embosser we bought previously here. Due to the glittery surface, we needed to use a little Elmers glue to keep the sticker on properly, but in the end they look great. We did need to trim parts of the enclosure, given they aren’t the same size as the  invitations, but it worked great. We’re going to use the remaining blank invites for placecards, which I will also write out myself.

Save big money by DJing yourself

After hearing someone tell me $2,000 was a reasonable amount to pay for a good DJ, I decided we were going to DJ this wedding ourselves. First of all, we’re music junkies and have tons of digital music. Second, I used to occasionally DJ in a bar. Third, I’ve been to tons of weddings where I don’t remember the DJ saying much more than the wedding party intros and some general events through the night. So our plan of attack is to use the piped in stereo system our reception center has to offer. It sounds easy at first, but there are many considerations to this approach:

• Developing a dinner playlist and a dancing playlist. This is the fun part – getting to choose all your songs! We really can’t predict the exact moment our dancing will begin, so the playlists we are creating are large enough to cover the time. I suppose we could also loop a playlist as well.
• MCing reception activities. We’re recruiting an outgoing friend to announce our entrance to the reception. We’re hoping he won’t mind performing other MC duties, like “And now ladies and gentlemen, the cutting of the cake…” kinds of stuff.
• Switching music. We do plan to have an entrance song, a first dance, and then mother/son, father/daughter dances. In order to do this, we’re creating a 3rd special songs playlist which our MC will switch to when we’re ready.
• Test run. We will listen to our playlists in full before the wedding to ensure the music is issue-free. We will also get into our reception site beforehand to test our iPod docking and playing skills.
• Backup. What to do if the iPod croaks night of? Luckily the reception site also has a 5 disc changer which means we’ll be prepping those in advance as well!

So, it is a lot of work, but in the end it saves us $2000 and that is fabulous. Plus, we plan to use the music to make CD favors for our guests with personalized messages! Well worth it I think!

Our song: Summer Samba (So Nice)

After much thought, we decided Summer Samba (the Bebel version, not the Astrud version) is the song for us. We have history with the song and we love bossa nova. Not to mention our wedding is in the summer, how fitting! Now, to find a band that can play and sing it like Bebel and her band!

Summer Samba (So Nice) Lyrics

Someone to hold me tight
That would be very nice
Someone to love me right
That would be very nice
Someone to understand
Each little dream in me
Someone to take my hand
To be a team with me
So nice, life would be so nice
If one day I'd find
Someone who would take my hand
And samba through life with me

Someone to cling to me
Stay with me right or wrong
Someone to sing to me
Some little samba song
Someone to take my heart
And give his heart to me
Someone who's ready to
Give love a start with me

Oh yes, that would be so nice
Shouldn't we, you and me?
I can see it will be nice…