I planned the time between our ceremony and reception very carefully, because I knew we didn’t have much with which to work. First, we sped off as soon as possible from the church. Philip and Tanja rode in the car with us (John driving!), and MacKenzie and Tia followed in their own cars. Second, we took a slight shortcut to our venue while directing guests to the slightly longer route to buy us a little extra time. The goal was for Tanja and Inkspot to have time to record the cocktail hour and reception details in daylight, before they were enjoyed by our guests. While they worked on that, John and I headed down the hill to our pre-selected tree. Our caterer, A Thyme to Cook, assigned us a special friend for the night, Dina, and if we’re being honest, I’m pretty sure that was one of John’s favorite parts of the wedding! He thought it was the coolest thing. Anyway, Dina brought us a picnic basket of goodies and two glasses of something to drink, and we enjoyed the next twenty minutes or so chatting about the day and sampling our cocktail hour snacks. Perfection! It was so fun looking up the hill and watching our guests arrive for cocktail hour, too! By the way, this was their view out to the ocean. Glorious! I could stare at that every day. Our guests were greeted with raspberry lemonade and prosecco with blackberries as they arrived. We offered a limited bar on the porch, and then opened it up to a full bar once under the tent. We paid our bar tab on consumption, and I think this was something that helped us keep our costs down! Aside from passed pigs in a blanket with violet mustard (trying to class