From classy to casual, your wedding’s menu needs to be something you and all your guests enjoy! Here’s some of our favorite dinner ideas along with some fun snack bar ideas for cocktail hour.
Dinner Ideas
Our first bit of advice is to choose a meal that the bride and groom love, it is their celebration after all! Buffets are a fantastic way to get all of your guests fed quickly and can be more exciting than you make think at first. A meat like Prime rib has the option of so many sides, like mashed potatoes or cheesy scalloped potatoes, green beans, broccoli, corn on the cob rolls, or side salads. Being a North Carolinian, we love pulled pork with coleslaw, mac and cheese, rolls and green beans as a more casual buffet option.
Setting up a bar type dinner can be fun and add variety for your guests. For a winter wedding you could set up a soup or chili bar with several options to choose from, a side salad and bread/grilled cheese/cornbread. This is a tasty and often very cost effective dinner option!
Sandwich bars are a great light option for a lunch reception, there are so many varieties that is can be really fun to plan and enjoyable for your guests. Combining the soup and sandwich bar ideas could also be an excellent winter or fall dinner.
Create-your-own-pasta dish is another fun way to ensure each guest enjoys their dinner. We’ve seen this best set up with a buffet of different kinds of noodles, a red sauce, Alfredo sauce, vodka sauce and grilled chicken, meatballs or ground beef for the protein. Having a side salad and rolls or Italian bread is a nice addition!
Our all time favorite dinner bars are tacos, breakfast for dinner and Hibachi. All three have so many topping options, sauces and taste delicious. Again, choose a theme that the bride and groom love and then make it customizable and delicious for the guests.
Grazing Bar & Cocktail Hour Ideas
Charcuterie Boards are all the rage for good reason! They are delish! For a large event, there are several ways to incorporate a snack bar with charcuterie ingredients. The first is to make a beautiful board, the presentation is beautiful, but some people are uncomfortable with hands touching all the pieces. Even if you have tongs on the board, some guest will invariable use their hands. One way around that is to have skewers with a pieces of cheese, cheery tomato, pepper, olive, meat… etc. then you can have sweet skewers with various fruits, allowing guests to put a skewer on their plate and get all the goodies without touching everyone else’s snacks.
Another way to go around the board set up, is to make small cups with a rolled deli meat slice, some cheese and fruit so each guest can grab a cup and munch while they visit with friends and family.
Other appetizer ideas include kebabs, meatballs, fruit and veggie, spring rolls, dumplings, cranberry and brie bites and shrimp cocktail. You can also set up sweets for cocktail hour, a cupcake or cookie bar is a fun way to let your guests get something sweet before the big cake cutting event on the evening.
Never be afraid to mention ideas to your caterer, or ask them if they can make a favorite family recipe! It’s your big day and the food is a huge part of the reception celebration, so make sure you choose something you’ll look back on and fondly remember!
Love,
The Timber Rivers Team
Whether you have lost a close friend, grandparent or parent that you know would have been thrilled by your wedding day or have a family member in the military stationed far from home, there are so many ways to involve them on your big day. The best part is the visual for you to know that they are part of the wedding, but it also lets your guests have a chance to know the people who shaped you into the person you are today, making these vows to your spouse. Here’s five of our favorite ideas:
#1 A Photo Table
This idea works best when you have several people to honor, or lots of photos of one very special person in your life! We’ve seen whole photo walls of a parent who passed away young that was incredible and again, gave the guests who hadn’t gotten the chance to know them well during their life to get a glimpse of how much they meant to the bride and groom. It’s an extremely special way to honor them and is a good reminder of why they were so crucial to know!
The style you display the photos can be modern, colorful, polaroid style or in antique frames depending on the themes of your wedding decor. I’ve also seen wall hangings with photos attached to keep the furniture at the venue clear for foods, drinks, gifts and favors. Could be a great option if you’re tight on space!
#2 Burning a Candle
A fantastic way to honor your lost and not present loved one is burning a candle for them. I love these from Etsy because you can customize the text to make it personal for your family!
#3 Decorating a Chair
I think this is the most commonly seen tradition, but there are so many creative ways to go about it that you can truly personalize this and make it your own. I love these acrylic frames on Etsy because it allows guests to see a face with the name of your loved one and you can look out and see them smiling at you during the ceremony! Win, win. Florals, fabric and other decor can be added to their chair to make it more of a memorial along with a photo or a sign to make it more noticeable and special.
#4 Their Memorabilia as Decor
Something really special in certain situations, is using your loved ones’ items as decor. Some things to consider are embroidered tablecloths, china, crystal candlesticks, lace, or picture frames. But you could also use some outside of the box items like old wooden tools from grandpa’s barn made into mantle decor with florals arranged in them. Grandma’s scraps of fabric from sewing could become part of your head table arrangement or cut up and made into the flowers in your bouquet! Your Father’s cowboy hat collection could be hunt on a wall as a photo backdrop with some greenery incorporated. There are so many ways to repurpose items, especially if they mean a lot to you and your future spouse.
#5 A Small, Personal Photo
If you’re not looking to create a memorial or something large, this might be the idea for you. Etsy makes small locket-like photo charms that you can clip onto your bouquet or boutonniere. This is a great way for you to have your loved one close in a personal way that’s not for everyone else to see. And for the men, they make photos into patches of fabric that can be attached on the inside of his tie.
The small photos in a locket, a photo charm or a tie patch are such sweet items that you can have as a keepsake after the wedding day! It’s both a way to honor them, while also having something you can remember them by for many years to come.
I love this idea if the bride and groom have siblings in their wedding party, they can get the tie patches or bouquet charms for themselves and their siblings if they lost a parent or grandparent. It’s a sweet wedding party gift.
As always, we hope that these ideas inspire you planning for your wedding day. And if you’re planning a wedding at our venue, know that our decor team will work with you in any way to honor those people most important to you on your wedding day! Those who are able to attend and those who aren’t.
Happy planning,
The Timber Rivers Team
Choosing a color scheme can be one of the most overwhelming parts of a wedding, but it is also a detail frequently overlooked for smaller events. From baby shower to wedding day, having a tight-knit color scheme will help your event look put together, elevated and unique.
For a wedding, we always suggest choosing colors that feel comfortable to both parties, coordinate with seasonal flowers and are colors that YOU like! Any event’s host is the most important opinion on the colors chosen for the event. But, colors also go in and out of style, so here are 5 of our favorite trending colors schemes for the spring and summer of 2024.
#1 “Summer Sherbet”
Blends of pink and orange are coming back into the wedding scene but this addition of green and silver grounds the bright colors a bit while still keeping bold florals in the mix!
#2 “No Blues Around Here”
Monochromatic color schemes are a trending bold choice. Blues and purple tones against a white wedding dress and black suits create a dramatic contrast that is truly breathtaking!
#3 “Unabashedly Bold”
Another growing trend is bold and rich color tones! These colors again contrast against white and pop with a loud statement. They are perfect for any event that wants to stand out.
#4 Vintage Elegance
The vintage wedding style is still a strong trend. These colors have a timeless beauty that can be made new by the way the flowers are arranged and the decor with them.
#5 “Spring is Here”
The natural floral tones of pink, purple and orange give any event a natural, fresh-cut garden look. This color scheme is perfect for the bride or soon-to-be mother that loves being outside or working in her flowerbeds!
Your color choices say so much about your personality and the things you love in life. No choice is wrong, so explore your options and choose something that feels personal for your next event and watch everything come together beautifully!
-The Timber Rivers Family
Love those weddings where the bride and groom’s personality is everywhere you go?! We do too, and as a venue we’ve seen so many creative ways to add personal details! From our experience, here’s 5 ways to add those sweet details that really make your wedding feel special to the two of you.
1. Include all the people that matter to the two of you!
We all get to our wedding day and some people that we love can’t be there. If they’ve already passed away, are in the hospital, live too far to fly or have some life complication, it happens! Framed photos are a wonderful way to have them present when life has kept them away. We loved this couple’s idea to set them all on a table behind the ceremony, making their loves ones close to the heart of there commitment. But some couples opt to put the photos on chairs and leave spaces for the people missing or set up a whole memorial at the wedding reception! All these ideas are a way to cherish those lost, but also to still include the people who have made you who you are today. If they matter to you, they should be at your ceremony.
2. Choose a fun guest book or memorial of guests!
We have seen so many creative guest books through the years, but this one took the cake! Signing a record was so true to this couple’s antique styled wedding. They love old things, their record player and so this guest book was true to their personalities and relationship.
The phone booths where guests can leave a message are super fun and unique, as well as the blank canvases that each guest can add a bit of paint! No matter what you choose, the more unique and personal to your story, the better. It can become a keepsake that you’ll love looking back on for years, and how you choose to go about it will add a lot of personal touches to your reception.
3. Be True to You!
If you’re the fairytale girl, get a horse and buggy! If you love shopping for antiques together, surround your wedding decor with fun finds! If you two met in NYC, make your decor and reception city skyline themed. IF you’re laidback and love playing music together, have your reception be around a campfire with musical instruments ready to grab and smore’s for the guests. Don’t be afraid of what your guests think, instead fully embrace your personalities and your story and let it show during your wedding and reception. It’s more fun for the guests in the end, even if you present them with the unexpected.
4. Choose a menu of your favorite foods!
If you two love pizza, turn your reception into a pizza bar! This charcuterie snack bar was beautiful and a blast for guests. But honestly, there are no rules for food, you get to choose! Ice cream bar?! Coffee bar for a winter wedding?! Thanksgiving food, or make-your-own sliders cook-out type dinner. The possibilities are endless, but choose something fun and something that you two love to eat. It is your day after all!
5. Add lots of photos of the two of you!
Whether you just met or have been dating since you were kids, include photos of you two falling in love, going on trips, trying new things, gigging and all the little moments where you fell in love. People love seeing your story and knowing that these two people they’re witnessing commit to life together are truly in love!
No matter what details you decide to include and leave out of your special day, enjoy the process! Have fun choosing, planning and decorating and keep your love for each other the center of everything in the process.
Happy Planning!
Timber Rivers Team
