the party and, by way of explanation...

the night before our wedding we had an open house at jon's parents' home in saint johns.  everything turned out beautifully and the sky didn't fall on us even after all of the mind tricks it had played on me earlier in the day.

if i'm being completely honest, i was the most scared/nervous for the open house out of everything.  lots and lots of people are the exact opposite of my jam, and on top of that, when they're all there to meet and congratulate you... yikes.  cue the apprehension, awkward small talk, nervous laughs, and the exhausting effort to do everything to keep from running away.

from the very beginning i was all, no party.  just temple.  let's elope.
and jon's thoughts on my ideas were, ummm no.

so we had A LOT of compromising to do (and i mean a lot!), and in spite of all of the not-wanting on my part, it ended up being everything i wanted.  and dare i say it, it was so good that it made think for just a second that i wanted to do one at home in pennsylvania, too. (all i had to do was think, imagine all of this PLUS FIREFLIES and only HALF of the number of people here!)

i definitely want to thank jon's family for all of the work they put into preparing everything for the open house, especially his amazing parents who were incredibly accommodating to our ideas and needs.  i hope everything met their expectations and the night turned out the way they wanted!

lastly, we had quite a few people comment on/ask about the timing of our open house.  that is, on the fact that it was held before we were actually married.

there were a lot of things that factored in when we made our decision, but the main reason had to do with how we felt about our upcoming marriage ceremony.  in having any kind of party/reception/open house, i was most afraid that the importance of what was actually happening would be lost on us after all of the planning and worrying about relatively silly things.  in planning all of our activities before the wedding, we were able to finish them and then forget them when it was most important.  on the day we got married we didn't have to think about anything but each other, and it was a wonderful blessing to be able to do that.