Food truck, check! Sailboat-turned cooler, check! Best-dressed guests, check! You’re going to love every detail of our Blogger Bride Mackenzie’s Nantucket backyard wedding welcome party.
Hi! I’m Mackenzie from Design Darling and I’m excited to share pictures from our welcome party with you today. Will and I got married this past Labor Day weekend on Nantucket and had a welcome party in my parents’ backyard the night before our wedding. You can also check out pictures of our rehearsal dinner here!
You might be asking why we had a welcome party and how that’s different from a rehearsal dinner. Since we had a destination wedding and nearly all of our guests were coming from off-island, many of them decided to make a mini vacation of their time on Nantucket and enjoy the long weekend there after our wedding. So in addition to our rehearsal dinner for our bridal party and closest family members on Thursday night, we decided to have a more casual welcome party on Friday night that would include all of our wedding guests.
It was so nice to see all of our family and friends the night before our wedding and welcome them to our favorite place — and it meant that we had no guilt spending our entire wedding reception on the dance floor because we’d already greeted everyone the night before!
The first thing we did after deciding to have a welcome party was book the food truck from Millie’s, one of our favorite restaurants on the island and a place many of my cousins and all of my siblings have worked in at one point or another. The Millie’s crew parked their truck in my parents’ driveway and guests lined up for fish tacos and steak quesadillas. We figured everyone loves Mexican food (and a good margarita!) and we knew it was the perfect way to welcome our family and friends to Nantucket.
My mom, my bridesmaids, and I collaborated on the welcome boxes that we handed out at the end of the party. Inside were two bottles of Nantucket Nectars half & half (my favorite!), two bags of Cape Cod potato chips, a packet of aspirin, a mini bottle of sunscreen, and a monogrammed cookie made by my mother-in-law Reggie of Highland Park Pie Lady.
I also decided to ask our guests to wear white, and I was thrilled that nearly all of them remembered to pack an all-white outfit! There was really no reason except that I knew it would make for amazing photos and all my married girlfriends are always looking for excuses to wear all the white dresses they’d worn at their own wedding events. It was fun to have a little theme to dress up for — everyone looked so chic!
After ordering half a dozen white dresses over the course of the summer, I fell in love with this Kate Spade New York dress a week before the event and knew it was the one. I had it overnighted to Nantucket and thankfully it was just as pretty as I’d hoped! I love the floral detail along the neckline and the T back.
I gave my feet a break between our rehearsal dinner and our wedding day and wore my everyday Jack Rogers sandals. They were perfect for standing and chatting with our guests all night long!
My favorite detail from our welcome party is the incredible sailboat my sister Reilly and her friend Andy built for us as a gift at my bridal shower earlier in the summer. We used it to house beers from Cisco Brewery during the party, but it is so beautifully made that I can’t wait to find a place to properly display it in our home. My sister is far and away the most thoughtful person I know and I cried when I saw that she’d incorporated the monogram from our wedding invitations. Such a special personal touch!
Sharing our welcome party means we’re one step closer to the main event: our wedding day! I couldn’t be more excited to relive all my favorite moments and share all our pictures in my next post!