Wedding Recaps - Welcome Bags, Engagement Pictures and a Rodeo

One year ago today...Ryan and I woke up in a crappy hotel room in Teton Village to absolutely perfect weather and only three days left until the wedding.  We were already exhausted!  Neither one of us could sleep the night before due a combination of nervousness and excitement, but we got up early and started tackling our To Do list, running on pure adrenaline.

First things first, we checked out of the craptastic hotel and checked into our beautiful townhouse.  We were spending the weekend, along with most of our guests, at the Moose Creek Townhouses in Teton Village.   We had a beautiful 4-bedroom townhouse, which we were sharing with friends. 

We were up late the night before finishing our Welcome Bags and were excited to be delivering them to all our guests that day.  If you've never been to a destination wedding, a Welcome Bag (or Out of Town Bag) is a nice way for the bride and groom to welcome their guests to the area with some local information (maps, brochures), a few favorite items and anything else you might need.  I had SO much fun dreaming up things to put in our Welcome Bags!  I couldn't do enough!  

Our Welcome Bags had a "moose" theme to match our venue and were filled with:

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  Moose soap
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  Moose notepads
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  Koozies
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  CDs of our favorite music
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  Crossword Puzzle about our guests
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  Moose chocolate pops
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  Weekend event itinerary 
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  Note to each guest
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  Photo upload card and instructions
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  Transportation, rehearsal, brunch, altitude information
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  Jackson Hole maps, brochures and pamphlets
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  Jackson Hole postcards 
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  Bottle of water

This is the whole package!

All of the local information (maps, magazines, postcards, brochures, etc.) we got at the Jackson Hole Visitor's Center for free!  I also put together a one page info sheet on Jackson, which included: our favorite places to eat in Jackson, information on transportation and the events, info on adjusting to the altitude, info on sending us their pictures from the wedding, etc.

And then we had a bunch of personalized items.

I found a free program online that let me make my own crossword puzzle.  I had at least 2 trivia questions about every single one of our sixty guests!  It was a great icebreaker and a way for all our guests to get to know a little bit about each other!

I printed the itinerary on Western bandanna paper.

I'm a big believer in making To Do lists.

It runs in my blood - thanks Dad!

So, I had an Etsy vendor make notepads - "Things I Moose Do."

We also had koozies made with the heart from our invitation.

Ryan and I also picked out a few of our favorite songs ("Favorite Moosic") and made CDs for everyone.

(I got this idea after visiting in February and not being able to find a single radio station in Jackson that wasn't country.)

Another Etsy vendor made and packaged some homemade shea butter soaps for us - the scents were Chocolate Moose, Naked Moose and Musky Moose. 

I saw chocolate moose pops in a store for about $4 each.  Ouch.

But I had to have them!

So, I just bought chocolate molds and made them myself!

For about $0.25 each!

I think they turned out really well!

And I put it all in a brown paper bag tied up with twine!

Next up was a visit to our venue to go over the wedding day schedule and determine location for the ceremony.  The only time we'd seen the Lazy Moose was back in February and it was covered in 15 feet of snow.  It looked different in the summer, even more spectacular, if that's possible.  By the time we left I was so giddy I could barely stand it.  I didn't know how I could possibly wait three more days! 

At the end of the day, it was time to meet the amazing Carrie Patterson and take our engagement pictures.  Originally, I didn't know if I wanted engagement pictures, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of having pictures of the two of us in the mountains we loved. The Tetons are too incredible to pass up.  And since the peaks weren't visible from our wedding venue, we figured engagement pictures would be a perfect opportunity for us to get some pictures in front of them. Carrie took us to the Moulton Barns in Grand Teton National Park, just outside of Jackson. We went at dusk and the lighting is beautiful. I think they turned out to be some of the prettiest and romantic pictures I've ever seen.

After we were finished, we headed back into town and went to the Jackson Hole Rodeo!

Robin, the owner of the Lazy Moose was a volunteer at the rodeo and got us VIP back-stage passes to all the action.

It was so exciting!

Yee haw!

But even more exciting...our guests were starting to show up!!

So we finished out the evening having drinks with these hoo-rahs at the Silver Dollar Saloon. 

 

It was a pretty fantastic day.

And it only gets better...