Love Week Part 5

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Upon announcement at the reception, the hubs and I immediately started our first dance, we were pretty nervous (mostly about my dress staying on for the whole dance) so we were glad to do that first.

We started off in a slowish swing style to Up Where We Belong.



About a minute and a half in, our music switched to Michael Jackson's The Way You Make Me Feel. I found a dance instructor who taught us some of Michael Jackson's more impressive moves because we decided if we were going to do a crazy dance, we were going to go all the way. We choreographed (with the instructor's assistance) an awesome "rock the reception" style dance. I would also like to point out, we did this BEFORE it became the "in" thing to do. This was one trend that we actually were ahead of the game on. I created a special mix of our music and gave it to the DJ. Other than giving a heads up to the photographer to expect something crazy, not a single person had a clue what was about to occur. :)











The dance ended with the hubs dipping me and then us moon-walking off the floor. :) It was super fun and when we watch the video now, it's so fun to hear people's gasps and cheers, as they begin to realize what is going on. We had A LOT of camera's flashing around us. It was so fun.




My dad started off the reception with a beautiful prayer and toast.





My dad and I then shared a beautiful father-daughter dance and I still remember our special conversation to this day. My dad LOVED our wedding and my whole family was on a high for weeks afterwards on how fun it was, how perfect it went and how they could never have imagined such an awesome event. We apparently set the bar high for all the future weddings. :)



The hubs best friend and best man gave an entertaining toast.



We had a small token wedding cake to cut and then the 20+ apple wedding cakes that I baked right before the wedding were cut and served to all the guests. We saved the wedding cake and ate it with our families at the "after party" after the reception was over. It was good cake!





We struggled a little bit on the whole feeding each other the cake bit, apparently we need a little practice on that one. I was worried that the teal frosting was going to end up on my dress!



For our last dance, my brother played and sang Journey's Faithfully and he wrote a special third verse for us that made me cry and had us all in shock because we are big Journey fans and had no idea he was going to be singing much less singing something he wrote. I believe the whole time we were dancing, we were saying to each other, did you know about this?



The photobooth was a HUGE hit. We had 400+ people invited to the wedding and had about 300 people there, this included kids. I have many cousins and siblings and we wanted to avoid all the drama over which kids would be invited and which ones wouldn't so we instead created the guest list first, invited families, and then planned a family friendly wedding around the guest list. The kids were so all SOOO well behaved and kept the photobooth packed the entire reception. We had the second copy of everyone's photobooth strip put into a guest book and plenty of markers for people to write us notes and decorate their page. It was so fun looking through the guest book after the wedding was done!









We snuck out briefly at the end of the reception to take some gorgeous sunset photos, I'll share those and our day-after "celebrate the dress" shots in the next post.

Love Week Part 4

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

On the way down to the reception we stopped at a very special park to capture a few shots. I took hubs to Centennial Park the first time he came to visit and we enjoyed a very romantic stroll that first evening. We've shared many special moments there since and so it was definitely a place we wanted to stop for a few pictures.

This was one of our Christmas card photo contenders for last year...except we never got around to sending out Christmas cards.... :) Oh well! There's always this year!

This was one of those moments where you wish you have a floor length veil for one of those really dramatic veil shots. When I was designing my veil, I was super tempted to have a beautiful floor length veil but in the end I couldn't bear to cover up the gorgeous back of the gown, the sash or tucks along the bottom.

Next up, the reception and a little Michael Jackson!

Love Week Part 3

Here we are at the ceremony! If you missed the first couple recaps see here:

Part 1
Part 2

I think one of my most favorite parts of the first look was the fact that I got to ride to the church with the hubby. I remember scrambling around with my family trying to figure out if all the cars had left, everyone at my house had made it into a car and we hadn't left anyone behind. :) We didn't hire a limo or rent a car or anything because we had planned so many stops throughout the day that it was easier that way. To be honest, I was so happy we saved the money and I have no regrets about it to this day. My maid of honor chauffeured the hubs and I to the church and then our photographers chauffeured us to the reception (we stopped on the way to the reception to take pictures where the hubs and I had our "first date" in MD), a family member drove my car to the wedding and reception and then we took it from there.

I'll never forget walking down the aisle with my dad. If you knew my dad you would know that he NEVER gets nervous or anxious about anything. He's my super hero. But he was nervous walking me down the aisle! The walk seemed so short yet so long down the aisle. I was just trying to remember to walk slow, BREATHE, and smile. I wish the photographer had captured the look on the hubs face when he saw me walking down the aisle. It was one of my top requests on "the list" of shots or whatever but unfortunately it never came to fruition. Oh well, guess we can always have a do-over, right honey? ......honey?

For the ceremony, we had a very special person officiating. Growing up, he and his wife were like family to me (and my family). They are really good friends of my parents and he and his wife have a special place in my heart. To say it meant a lot to me for him to do the ceremony is an understatement. Both hubs and I felt very honored for him to do the ceremony. It was only his second wedding! The only other wedding he had done was for one of his kids, he was very nervous that he was going to mess it up. My dad didn't help that process either, the entire previous evening my dad kept saying the hubs and my names over and over again to the officiant, but switching the first letter of my name with the first letter of hubs name to try and mess with his head. The poor guy was so worried that he was going to mess it up the day of the wedding that the first thing he did was confess it to the whole congregation, just in case he messed it up! Haha, it was so funny to hear him sound out our names so carefully!

Hubs and I wrote our own vows to each other. We loved the traditional vows but still wanted to make it our own so we actually incorporated our own vows into the traditional ones so we could still say, "until death do us part". :)

My dad and sister are very talented singers but neither likes to perform in public, particularly solo. My dream ever since I was a little girl was to have my father sing and play guitar at my wedding but my dad had always said he wanted to be enjoying the wedding from his chair, not sitting in the spotlight. When it came time to pick the music out for the ceremony, I didn't say a word about him or my sister singing because I already knew he didn't want to and I knew my sister would be a ball of nerves and not get to enjoy the wedding at all! Unbeknownst to me, my father had already informed my sister that she had to sing and he told her he would sing back up for her. I nearly cried when my dad and sister told me. We picked Annie's Song by John Denver and there wasn't a dry eye in that church by the time they were done singing. They wouldn't let me listen to them practicing the entire time before the wedding so it was a complete surprise at the wedding to everyone. Everyone was coming up to my dad, sister and I at the reception saying, "I had no idea you/they could sing!" "I mean, I knew you could sing but I didn't know you could SING!" It was definitely a moment I will cherish forever!

We did our send off from the church, rather than reception. We knew some people could only attend the ceremony and that some weren't staying for the full reception and so it made the most sense to do it at the church. Next up a trip down memory lane at our first date spot!

My 10%

We temporarily pause Love week to bring you this week's Wedded Wednesday Post! I'll have the next Love Week post up shortly.

Wedded Wednesday is a collaboration
of married bloggers sharing their inspirations,
anecdotes, struggles and thoughts regarding
the amazing union of two separate people, as one.
Check out the other Wedded Wednesday bloggers at Marital-Bless

Today's post is a bit of a quickie, more of a thought than a full post but I read this story the other day in an email from Dennis Rainy co-founder of Family Life and had to share!

Early in our marriage, my wife Barbara and I started the habit of praying together before we fell asleep at night. But one night, it wasn’t so easy. In fact, we lay in bed facing in opposite directions, a chasm between us.
In my conscience, that still, small voice whispered, "Are you going to pray with her tonight?"
"I don’t like her tonight, Lord," I replied.
"I know you don’t. But you're the one who tells people you pray with your wife all the time."
"Yes, Lord. But you know she's 90% wrong."
"But," God reminded me, "your 10% started this whole thing."

Ohhh boy! It's always so easy to lay the blame on the other person instead of facing facts and realizing that while I might not have felt I was to blame in the beginning, I took the bait and I was the one who turned it into an even bigger problem. Taking responsibility for "my 10%" is definitely an area that I continue to work in. So much easier to point out "the speck in someone else's eye" and ignore the "log" in my own.

Love Week Part 2

Yesterday I reminisced over the getting ready photos, next up is the bridal party shenanigans! But first this photo, it cracks me up every time I see it!

I was just seeing my bouquet for the first time and it was nothing like what I discussed with the florist. I think we'll label this incredulous, absolute surprise and slight disbelief, but all in a good way, haha! Don't worry, there were no bridal melt-downs, tirades or anything of that sort that day! Meanwhile, the hubs just looks on smiling, not realizing that his boutonniere also looked nothing like what I had ordered or the florist and I had discussed. I had mentioned to the florist in passing that I thought the look of feathers was really fun in bouquets and look at what she surprised me with! At the end of the day, the flowers weren't exactly what I ordered but they smelled lovely and they weren't ugly, just different than what I was expecting. I believe I specified no orange! lol...

We had an uneven bridal party, the hubs had a lot of people in his life that he wanted to honor, so we had double groomsmen for the bridesmaids, my sisters didn't mind!

My best friend is all the way on the left as my maid of honor, my two sisters are on the right, it was FREEZING that morning!

The hubs and his men

A quick portrait or two

my sexy beast, *smooches* babe!

Next up, the ceremony!