CL's durham reception

I didn't really have an indoor contingency plan for CL's reception here. We were going to have the food inside, and put the line & the tables outside on this lovely patio. The clubhouse that we rented was really beautiful, but the inside layout is a bit strange. I had looked at the pictures over & over trying to decide how I could do it inside, and I never did figure anything out. But I didn't think it would really be a problem. Remember--we've been in a drought for some time now.

So Jason & I went over to the clubhouse at lunchtime and met the guy delivering tables & chairs. We set them up on the back patio, but decided not to put the tablecloths on until later. After everything was set up and we'd moved some things around inside, we came back home & I had a nap. Apparently it rained, and hard, during my nap. When we got back to the clubhouse there was a ton of water on all of the chairs, and lots of standing water on the higher patio. It became quickly obvious that more rain was indeed likely. Fortunately for me Ken (Alisyn's husband) and 2 friends from the ward had come to set up different things. They kicked into high gear and figured out how to make the inside of the clubhouse work. It was amazing. On my own I would have sat & cried probably. But they just kept moving things and working with what was there, and in the end it was beautiful. We ended up putting the line in a big room with french doors (out to the wet patio) all around.

You can see the food area in the last picture--the one with Jared strutting his stuff. We moved the furniture away from the fireplace and moved in tables for food, and it worked great. Then we had a few tables for people to sit at in the room past this one, but we don't have any pictures. I was really pleased with the way it turned out--everyone seemed to have a lovely time. The food was amazing (thanks to friend Nancy) and there were 2 chocolate fountains (thanks to the difficult seminary teacher!) with lots of goodies there. (Thanks to friend Sherry.)

Now that it's alllllll over my house is a mess and I am EXHAUSTED. But I figure--it took a while to get this way, it's probably going to take a while to really recover...