Wedding Recaps: The Honorary Flower Girl

Although we didn't think it would be a good idea to have Nenya walk down the aisle, the venue coordinator was nice enough to let her stay in the men's changing room during the wedding so she could be in photos.

When she first saw me the morning of the wedding, she didn't recognize me. She was interested in me, but she didn't get excited and whine like she normally does when she hasn't seen me in a while. After Nathan and I had our first look and we went back inside to take photos with Nenya, he told me to put my hand down for her to sniff, and then the happy moaning began. It was a really great moment. Apparently all the layers of fabric that didn't smell like me threw her off.

The Family

We brought her outside for the family pictures after the wedding as well. She was pretty well behaved, considering how many new people and smells were out there.

But she did manage to get distracted...

And eventually got bored and sick of wearing a bow.

She spent some time with my uncle John, who also took care of her during our honeymoon.

I'm really glad we were able to have her there. As I wrote about previously, Nenya has been a part of our lives almost the entire time Nathan and I have been together, and she's definitely important to us.

Wedding Recaps: The Details

I didn't quite make my goal of finishing the wedding recaps before our 6 month anniversary (which was 2 days ago), but they should be done by the end of this week. Here are a few shots of various details of our wedding day.

This is how the centerpieces looked in action. As small as they were, with a couple votive candles on either side and some scattered silk petals, the tables were as decorated as I felt they needed to be.

There were two corner china cabinets behind our table at the reception, which we filled with photos of Nathan and I at different ages on our respective sides.

One job I did not want to tackle myself was making signs and placing them around the park to direct people to our wedding. Nathan put his brother Tim in charge of them a couple days before the wedding, and he did a fantastic job. He just happened to have some thick poster board lying around that was our wedding color.

For those of you who are planning weddings or will be some day, make sure whatever container you use for cards is a lot bigger than you think it needs to be. I thought our card box would be plenty big for cards, but someone gave us a card that was actually too big to lie down flat inside the box and the corners ended up getting kind of mashed.

If you've looked at photos of our gigantic bouquets and corsages and wondered how much we spent on flowers, it's probably not nearly as much as you think; our final total for flowers was actually a few dollars less than I'd budgeted. I was shocked when I saw how big the bouquets were. Our florist is a friend of Nathan's family, and he wanted to make sure we got our money's worth.

I wore my paternal grandmother's diamond and pearl necklace. It's been worn by several brides in the family, and as I shopped for my dress I thought about how the dresses would look with the necklace. The dress I ended up choosing matched really well.

 

Our hands with our new rings

Wedding Recaps: Eating, Drinking, and a Moderate Level of Merriment

After the ceremony, Nathan and I wanted to take the time to greet each of our guests. We wanted our bridal party to be the first to get in line for the food and not have to stand out in the sun in a receiving line greeting people they'd never met before. Our hope was that we would walk into the reception without any big announcement and find most of our guests already eating.

Well, I don't know if the food wasn't ready yet or if someone decided that we couldn't just sneak in, but we ended up being announced at the reception.  It was unexpected but not the end of the world.

Instead of enjoying the food, our guests were all staring at us, waiting for us to do something.

 And we had no idea what to do.

Nathan said that we just wanted everyone to eat, but it was suggested that we have a prayer first. This was fine, just not something we had planned on doing. Thankfully, the best man was fine with leading a prayer, and then we were all able to eat.

I've heard that some brides don't even get to eat at their own wedding, but Nathan was adamant that I get to eat at our wedding. It's pretty difficult for me to skip meals, so since all I had to eat before the wedding was a bowl of cereal, I don't know how I could have made it through the day without eating at the reception. (Nathan and I did get some Bob Evans at about 9:30 that night too.)

Since we had cupcakes instead of cake, Nathan and I just kind of ripped apart a cupcake.

Of course Nathan ended up with the bigger piece and tried to shove it all into my mouth.

I got some icing on the tip of my nose, so I whispered to Nathan to lick it off. And he did, but no one got a picture. We got plenty of laughs though, and a laughing "Ewww!" from my mom.

Then we enjoyed some sparkling grape juice.

I hope our guests enjoyed the reception even though it ended up being very different from how we planned it. We had a tent set up outside for additional seating, but since it was so hot, everyone crammed inside in the air conditioning. A lot of people left really early, probably because it was a little uncomfortable in there. We had also planned on having dancing under the tent, but since we couldn't get the sound system we'd rented to work, that didn't happen either. Fortunately, my bridesmaids, brother, and cousins were able to find entertainment though since some people had left up a bounce house nearby (I don't have the photos of that, sadly, but they're hilarious).

Our reception at least had one redeeming factor: the FOOD!

Nathan's brother and sister-in-law planned out and prepared (with a little help from various people) all the food for our reception. I was amazed when I saw the results before the wedding. I couldn't believe that was the food for our wedding!

Fruit assortment with dip

Veggies with ranch dip, dill dip, and red pepper hummus

Bacon and cheddar cheesecake

Herb cheesecake

Not pictured: spicy garlic meatballs and sweet barbecue meatballs

I ended up baking all the cupcakes myself and freezing them. Including the trial runs, I probably baked close to 200 cupcakes total. Sister-in-law Betsy came up with the decorating technique. She made all the petals and sugar pecans and shipped them to me before the wedding, and she and our videographer did all the icing and decorating.

If nothing else, our reception was certainly an excellent culinary experience!

Wedding Recaps: We Do

Our ceremony was fairly short, which was a good thing as hot as it was on our wedding day.

 

I'm not entirely sure what Pastor Joe said in his opening remarks; I'm looking forward to watching our video. My bouquet was a good five pounds and I was holding it one arm, so I was mainly waiting for the part where I got to pass it off to my volleyball player cousin.

Ah, relief.

A funny thing happened during the vows. I had told Nathan repeatedly that he wasn't allowed to cry during the wedding. I figured as long as he didn't cry, I would be fine. I knew if he did cry I would start too. Well, although Nathan cried when he first saw me before the ceremony, he made it through his vows just fine. Me...not so much. As I vowed to love him in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, I was overwhelmed as I thought of everything we'd been through already in the short time that we'd been together. What can't we  handle together? Bring it on!

Then it was time for our very nontraditional unity ceremony. Nathan wanted to do something unique - not candles, sand, or water. I found some Aqua Gems at Jo Ann Fabric and decided we could use those. They did work well for the purpose, but since Nathan poured a little faster than I did, a lot of my beads ended up on top. We laughed about it, as did some of our guests. The ceremony was a little silly, but so are we.

Next, David, Rachel, and Pastor Joe signed our marriage license.

Before we gave each other our wedding bands, Pastor Joe spoke about their significance. He said that although a lot could be said about the symbolism of the rings - how they're made of precious metals, how they're never-ending circles - they're most importantly a reminder of our covenant. Nathan's ring is a reminder that he is in a covenant with my family, and my ring is a reminder that I am in a covenant with his.

After a final prayer...

We were married!

As we were presented as husband and wife, Nathan turned to me and asked, "Are we really going to do this?" I just gave him a devious grin. Oh yeah, we were doing it!

And we skipped back down the aisle!

Because we're crazy like that.