Wedding Recap: Part 10 – Potato Moon

Monday, November 22, 2010

Without question, Potato Moon rocked the house at our wedding reception! I never thought I would have the budget to have a live band at our wedding, but fortunate for us, when they are family they come very reasonably priced. Like, on the house, kind of pricing. If not for that, we would have never been able to have live music of this caliber getting everyone movin’ on the dance floor.

For those of you, who may not be Potato Moon followers, let me tell you a little bit about the band. Potato Moon (sometimes known as the Lonely Jones) is made up of the Stancil family, Ben, the “Master” of the band is the oldest son, sisters Jane and Laura and father Phil on bass along with adopted Stancils Mikey on guitar and Jimmy on drums. Evan’s Aunt Grace, the Mom, manages the band and the youngest cousin, little Phil, will join in on occasion. Not only are they talented musicians, but they are also a very very good time.

We asked them to play their original music and they threw in some great covers as well. Jane serenaded with a soulful performance of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, that has been known to bring sentimental Evan to tears. They did a rockin’ interpretation of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison. And they kept the party going with their own original songs like Hey Yeah and House on the River.

A quick side story about House on the River…when Evan and I first started dating, he was living in a duplex with a good friend Fletcher in Richmond Virginia. One night I came over late. The guys had been sitting on the front porch drinking run drinks listening to Old House on the River on repeat for who knows how long.
One of the best parts about having your family perform at your wedding is that everyone can get in on it. My stepfather has been known to play the harmonica with various bands and goes by his stage name, Rico. Potato Moon was more than happy to have him play with them for a few songs and it was a riot. He did great on the harmonica, but also had a secret weapon planned that no one knew about…THE SPOONS. That’s right friends, Rico Jones pulled the spoons out of no where and they were a hit. The next day when we were scouring through left-overs, he announced, “These spoons have never been washed because they are a musical instrument, but I will make an exception to eat chocolate cake.”


Link to some more Potato Moon videos.

Wedding Recap: Part 9 – The Fun!

Monday, November 15, 2010

Without question the best part of our wedding was our entertainment. One of the main goals we had when planning was for everyone to have FUN at our reception. Creating fun is a lot harder than you think. You need a lot of things to fall in to place in order for guests from across the country, young and old, drinkers and sobers (although not that many of our guests were sobers) many who do not know each other, to all get together and have a really fun time. Here are the key components that created fun on our wedding day:
1) No sit down dinner – too formal for us, we wanted the whole evening to feel casual so that people were comfortable meeting new people rather than forced to converse with who happened to be sitting at their table. We strategically placed food tables throughout the space so that people would have to walk around to taste everything. We also had a mix of tall boy tables and seated tables so that everyone wouldn’t all be seated at once.
2) Extra Activity – let’s face it, not everyone is going to get crazy on the dance floor, so in order to give those guests something fun to do. We had a Photobooth where guests could get a little silly and we could get great shots of our friends and family.
3) Splurge on the booze – in actuality we got a really great price for our bar service and were just lucky that they were trying to get rid of the top shelf stuff. Our bartender kept the line moving even while mixing up anything our guests could think of. Even my mother was taking shots of who knows what.
4) Provide transportation – the big reason that we were able to go so heavy on the booze was because we had reserved a Trolley service to take guests to and from the hotels in the city. Less than half of our guests came by car which made it easy to safely transport the drunks back to Coney Island and then the hotel.
5) Awesome Entertainment – I married in to one talented family. Evan’s cousin’s band, the Lonely Jones, performed at our reception and they rocked the house! My step-father got in the action and played the harmonica and the spoons! While the band took a break, his other cousin, DJ Hubbs, kept the crowd dancing. More on the entertainment in my next post…

Wedding Blog

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Is a wedding blog like a wedding gift? What I mean by this, is do I have a year to update in order to still be on good terms with the happy couple? I sure hope so because I have so much more to share and finally have some time to put together some more posts!

Stayed tuned this week...