Last Saturday we hosted seventy people in our yard for a garden party! It was "a perfect romantic evening" as one guest said, complete with some old time music, a barefoot contra dance, bountiful fireflies, candles in jars in trees, and Sonar's cookin'! A "real hootenanny" as Laurence called it. I second all of the above and say, I can't believe we pulled it off. Sonar agrees. My is it a lot of work to host and cook and prep and decorate and get an old house and crazy yard clean. We're crazy, but it was worth it to celebrate with our good friends heading off to NYC to pursue their dream. We've been dreaming with them for almost three years, mostly sitting around our patio talking about food and opening restaurants and gardening, and now they're off to culinary school, hopefully to return to Knoxville one day:)
A few lessons I learned from hosting a party people usual hire help or caterers to have:
1) Ask for more help
2) Ask for help to arrive earlier
3) Don't expect to be able to take photographs :(
4) Pound cakes really do fall if you're jumping around the oven too much!
5) Good keg of beer = happy people; good food = even happier people
6) Ask for help cleaning up the day after too!
7) Sit down some, eat, enjoy the company, and take your shoes off to dance!
Here are a few photos I snapped quickly. We had a few friends taking photos, so hopefully I'll have some better ones to post on here for you all to see.
The arbor Laurence decided to build for the party:
The chef with his assistant:
Ha! This cracked me up when I walked into the kitchen and saw Megan had been divvying up left-overs, perfect!
The guests of honor retreating to the bedroom during the after-party:) The night before we were all excited making a dance mix for our after-party:
Day after activities included loading up tables and chairs, finishing off some beer, and target practice with a plastic cup, of course:
I hope to have lots more photos to share with you, and I'll post soon about the yummy lemon pound cake we had for our garden party dessert!
2 comments:
I've been trying to explain how wonderful your garden party was to everybody and just haven't had the words to describe it. It was such a fun evening and your house and yard looked so beautiful! Thanks so much for hosting! It was great to see you and L and to hear your happy news! Hope to see you again soon! DL
Thanks Dara Lynn! I'm so glad you all could make it to the party! It was great to see you all. Maybe we'll get to see you again this summer, with Sam too!
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