For our reception, we've decided to go with the Flanders Hotel in Ocean City. Located right on the boardwalk on 11th Street, it is only about a block away from the pirate store where we got engaged. We will be having our ceremony at around noon followed by a reception that will go until five, which means that the party will finish just in time for guests to enjoy an evening on the boardwalk. This is also the perfect time light-wise for pictures, and we plan to take many of them on the boardwalk. It's going to be pretty terrific.

The picture on the left is one I took of the room we will be using for our reception. It's just the right size for 85 people not to feel lost in too much space or cramped in too little, which was one of my main concerns. The decorations are also pretty awesome, from the gilded ceilings to the two paintings of ambiguous iconography on the far end. The chairs are gorgeous, so we won't be needing any silly chair covers, and the room will look great with only minimal decoration. It's pretty much everything I could want.

Here is the center hallway. Our room is off to the right. We'll use the table in this hall for our seating assignments and any other displays we might have. I'm a big fan of the vaulted ceilings.

This is the space that we will be using for the cocktail hour. This hallway features a baby grand piano (not in this picture), which is giving me some ideas about possibly retaining our accompanist from the ceremony and enlisting my brother to sing some torch songs. We'll see how this works out - there is plenty of time to think about it.

Our first dance song will be "The Way You Look Tonight," as sung by Frank Sinatra. I looked high and low for a version of it on YouTube, but unfortunately found only craptacular cover versions tagged with Sinatra's name but bearing no resemblance to his interpretation of the song. "The Way You Look Tonight" can be tricky, because sung slowly with only a little piano accompaniment, as heard in Tony Bennett's version, it is both beautiful and heartbreaking. Sinatra gets around this, however, by picking up the tempo a bit and placing the melody over a swinging foxtrot beat that is absolutely infectious for dancing. I'll be teaching Charlie the foxtrot, and I think this is one of the parts of the day that I am looking forward to the most.

One other song that we will be using at some point in the reception is "On and On and On" by Catch 22. Listen to it and see if you can figure out the joke. Hint: it's the only rendition of this wedding cliche that will be allowed at any point during the day.