Thursday, March 2, 2017

Our Wedding - The Reception

Well, after three months of blogging about our wedding, I finally have the last post for you today – the reception.

In my previous posts you may remember that our wedding ceremony started at 7:30 so the reception started late – around 8:15.  Since it started so late, we had already taken all of our formal pictures, so we were able to get right down to business at the beginning of the reception.

B and I waited until all of our guests were settled in and then we made our entrance… this is actually one of my favorite pictures from the whole reception because – look how joyful we were!  


The First Dance

As soon as we entered the room, the DJ started playing our wedding song – Love Song by 311.  Surrounded by all of our family and friends, we danced our first dance as husband and wife.




Father/Daughter Dance

Once Brian’s and my dance was over, my Daddy came out and took my hand so we could have our father/daughter dance.  We danced to Butterfly Kisses by Bob Carlisle… makes me cry every single time I hear it.


Mother/Son Dance

Brian’s mom joined him on the floor next, and they danced to In My Mother’s Eyes by Willie Nelson.  If you haven’t heard it, you should check it out.  It is so sweet.


A Special Surprise

Unbeknownst to me, my mom and my uncle had planned a special surprise behind my back, and they had coordinated with our DJ and our photographer to arrange it.  Y’all, I am such a planner, so I knew what was going to happen every single second on this day, so for them to pull that off was something serious! 

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned on the blog or not that my mom is a song writer.  She is incredibly talented and I’m just waiting for the day that someone huge picks up one of her songs!.  My uncle is a singer/songwriter in Nashville, and they often collaborate, my mom writing the lyrics and my uncle writing the music and sometimes singing or playing the guitar.  Well, they put together the most beautiful song to surprise us on our special day, and after our dances my uncle performed it on stage for us.  The song is called If I Can’t Let It Go… there was not a dry eye in the whole house.



The Menu & Other Details

Once the performance was over and I had dried my eyes, it was time to eat.  Since the reception was during dinner time, we wanted to feed people really well.  We didn’t want a big fancy sit-down dinner, though, so we opted for heavy hors d’oeuvres.  Shrimp, finger sandwiches, chicken fingers, pigs in a blanket, meatballs, an assortment of fruits and veggies, a cheese board, and all the beer and wine that you could drink.









The Cutting of the Cake

After a quick bite to eat, it was time to cut the cake.  We wanted to get all of the traditional wedding things out of the way early so we could party for the rest of the night!  B and I had a five-tier wedding cake and it still holds the record for the best cake that I’ve ever tasted in my entire life.  Each layer was a different flavor – the top and bottom layers were traditional vanilla, one layer was chocolate, one strawberry, and one lemon.  And of that huge cake, there was not one bit left at the end of the night… aside from the top for Brian and I to save for our first anniversary, of course.

After cutting the main cake, we cut the groom’s cake – a University of Georgia cake, naturally – it was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and it was surrounded by homemade chocolate covered strawberries.  After we tasted that cake, we had our champagne toast and then we indulged in a couple of the strawberries.  B and I fed each other daintily because he knows I would have killed him if he had messed up my makeup!  Haha.








The Bouquet & Garter Tosses

After the cake was passed around all of the single ladies were called to the front for the bouquet toss and my friend Adrienne caught it.  The single boys came to the front next, and B removed my garter… guess what kind of garter I had?  Why, a University of Georgia one, of course!  ;o)  My friend (and bridesmaid) April’s boyfriend ended up catching it and they ended up getting married ten months later.  :o)





Candids

Once all of that was out of the way, it was time to par-tay!  Our wedding will go down in the books as one of the biggest throw downs I’ve ever been to!  People talked about it for years after we had it because everyone had so. much. fun.  The beer and wine were flowing (as you can see from some of the pictures) and everyone danced and danced and danced until late in the night.  As I mentioned in my previous wedding posts, we got married in 2007, which also happened to be the year of the Soulja Boy song.  It was all the rage, so yes, we learned the dance just for my wedding, and yes, I Soulja Boy’d in my wedding dress.  We have video of it somewhere.























The End to a Perfect Day

My wedding day is still to this day my very favorite day of my entire life.  I married my very best friend in the whole world and we got to spend it with every single person who we loved.  I am so thankful every single day of this life that B and I have created together and I will never ever take a single second of it for granted. 

Now one day when I have some time I'll have to recap our honeymoon... it just so happened to be the exact opposite of our wedding day... a complete and utter disaster!




15 comments:

  1. I wish I would have been a guest at your wedding ;)
    Looks like a good time!!
    Love all the candid pics! HA

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a fun reception! I'm a huge wedding cake fan and there's nothing worse than getting a piece and it tasting horrible!!! Love that every layer of yours was a different flavor! And now that you've finished your wedding, it's making me want to work on my wedding posts during spring break haha!
    Sarah at MeetTheShaneyfelts

    ReplyDelete
  3. Girl, your Georgia Bulldog pride runs deep! Love the hints of sparkle in your veil, and that last picture is gorgeous!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes it does! I was born into a Georgia family (my grandfather graduated from there) and I married into another Georgia family (hubs graduated from there, too). We love our Dawgs!

      And thank you! XO

      Delete
  4. This looked like the best reception!! When everyone is dancing you know it was a good wedding! How sweet of your Mom & Uncle to surprise you!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. All of those empty beer bottles, bahaha! I LOVE it. It looks like the party of the year girl.

    ReplyDelete
  6. What a fun looking party! I love the red and black lined up while you danced. I love that your mom and uncle wrote you a song. The snowflakes on the tree are awesome. And that last send off picture gave me chills!

    ReplyDelete
  7. So much fun! Love the idea of fruit and cheese boards and of course wine <3
    Green Fashionista

    ReplyDelete
  8. What a special celebration! That is awesome that your Mom had that song written for you (or wrote it herself as it sounds), I would have been flat out balling, haha. So incredibly sweet. And, your cake is beautiful. Where did you guys honeymoon? I need to know of the disaster now! I loved our honeymoon even more than on wedding. Our wedding was beautiful and awesome and all, but I was so nervous, ha. The honeymoon was just a great time to relax, explore the city and enjoy. So funny how it's so different for everyone.

    ReplyDelete
  9. What a fun wedding reception! You guys seriously do not age!

    ReplyDelete
  10. That's son awesome that your uncle and mom paired up to write y'all a song, how thoughtful <3 My mom loves writing too. Your bridesmaids look they had a great time too with all the beer bottles on the table lol, I bet it was a wedding that everyone talked about for years! What more can you ask for. That's awesome that everyone had such an amazing time. You looked gorgeous, and that food looked delicious!

    ReplyDelete
  11. So fun!! You can tell that everyone had a blast. Love all the details - the snowflake, the pretty cake (I have always wished I would have done a groom's cake!) and the sweet song from your mom & uncle.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Looks like it was a fun and memorable evening. That wedding cake is very pretty, and I like that it had different flavors for every layer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! Yes, we had a lot of guests so we needed something big, and I figured if we were going to have something that big we might as well have lots of different flavors!

      Delete
  13. Your reception looks like it was a BLAST! I absolutely love the picture of you guys leaving - perfect ending to a perfect night!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to comment... I read and respond to each and every one! However, if you are a no-reply blogger (meaning that your email address is not connected to your Blogger account), I will not be able to reply to you directly via email... you will have to check back on the blog post for a response!