Welcome back to wedding week! We are officially to Friday now, which means it’s Welcome Party night! If you haven’t been following along, we’ve been recapping the last year of events leading up to my (Greta’s) wedding. We’ll link the rest of our wedding posts at the end of this one, but for now… let’s get into it!
During the day on Friday, the girls spent the day boating on Gull Lake. It was so perfect, and the weather was amazing! We had to load up on the sunscreen and watch our swimsuit straps to ensure we weren’t going to have any sunburns/weird tanlines for the wedding the next day. While the girls were boating, the boys were golfing. It was a fun, yet relaxing day and I loved having some quality time with my wedding party before the busy weekend.
We didn’t take too many photos on the boat, but my sisters made me insert this one to show you what I was wearing, haha. Anya & Niki gave us these cute hats, and my swimsuit was a gift from my sisters! The suit and skirt are linked below.
After a fun day in the sun, it was time to get ready for the evening. Andddd in case you were looking for some outfit inspo, here’s what we wore:
Click to shop our LTK!
We always knew that we wanted to have a welcome party. Given that our wedding was a destination, we knew guests would be arriving on Friday and we wanted to provide them with something to do that evening. Our welcome party was held at Quarterdeck Resort on Gull Lake. We looked at a couple places for our welcome party, but fell in love with this venue for a number of reasons. It was right on the water, has both indoor and outdoor space, and is newly renovated. Plus, there is a huge outdoor patio area with high-top tables, picnic tables, and a bar… it was exactly what we wanted!
We reserved the space from 5:30-8:30, because we wanted it to be an earlier night. We provided cocktails and a mixture of passed apps and buffet style apps. Our signature cocktail was a blueberry mule, which was aptly titled, “Hey Babe,” a little nod to Minnesota (Babe the Blue Ox, IYKYK) and our dad’s Chris Craft (more on that in a moment).
One of our favorite elements of the night was our welcome bag station. Instead of providing welcome bags in every cabin/room (not really feasible since many people stayed off property), we decided to do have build-you-own welcome bags. We had an old canoe filled with items for people to fill their own bag! We had snacks, an itinerary, and of course – Liquid IV. We thought this would be a great idea so guests could just take what they want, and we could avoid wasting things they didn’t care for. It was such a cute and unique take on welcome gifts. Some other fun elements we incorporated were a photo booth, live music, and a s’more station!
One special part of the evening was when Grant and I boated over to the welcome party. We towed our Dad’s Chris Craft, Babe, over from our cabin for this special moment. We had a driver, so we could just sit and relax and enjoy some time just the two of us. The weekend goes by so fast, and we hadn’t had much time alone, so it was a really special moment that I am so thankful for! Towards the end of the night, we did a little “send off” and Grant and I boated home. We took a slow cruise around the bay and just took in the moment before our big day!
I am extremely happy that we did a welcome party, it really couldn’t have gone better! It was so great to be able to greet our guests and thank them for making the trip. We loved that we were able to speak to the majority of our guests before our wedding day, it made things on Saturday way less stressful, because we didn’t feel like we needed to make our rounds and catch up with everyone.
Finally, here are a few cute photos of some of our guests. <3
Again, shoutout to Jordan Joseph Photography for capturing these amazing memories!