Wedding Recap: The Reception – Part 2

The entire second half of our reception was a bit of a blur…not a blur as in “I don’t remember one bit of what happened”, but I would say it was a “fun blur”. We were having such a wonderful time and enjoying all of our friends and family around us!

Of course there was LOTS of dancing! The band that we hired, The Dickens, was ABSOLULTEY amazing. Seriously -- another one of the best decisions of our entire wedding event. Our band had all of our guests out of their chairs and on the dance floor. I danced with M., I danced with my family, I danced with my friends and bridesmaids. We danced the entire night away and I wouldn’t have it any other way! :)

M. and I actually had a little laugh after the evening was over because we hadn’t had but one drink each and we had the most amazing evening of our lives! In between all of the fun swirling and twirling on the dance floor we had “events” like the cake cutting, the maid-of-honor/best-man toasts and the bouquet toss.

When you’re having so much fun at your wedding you kind of forget about all of the little traditions that you wanted to incorporate into your event (so good thing we had wedding coordinators to remind us or we would've just danced all night!) When it was time to cut the cake (which I thought turned out ABSOLUTELY beautiful!) I had the chance to say a few words to M. and to my family. With it being Father’s Day the next day I also had something special to say to my dad. M. also took the mic for a minute to thank all of the people who had gathered around us that day and those who love and support us. We were nice to each other with the cake -- to be honest; I didn’t really want to be one of those brides wiping messy cake off of my face. Of course the cake was delicious and we even had a moment to enjoy a little sip of champagne. One of my favorite details of the ballroom were the different levels of candles that we placed on the mantle behind the cake table. We also included single blooms in little vases in between the candles. I thought it made that “section” of the room look beautiful.

The toasts given by my maid-of-honor (my younger sister) and M.’s best-man (his younger brother) were really wonderful. My sister kept it short and sweet because she knew she would get emotional quickly – which she did – but her words were touching and beautiful. M.’s brother had really put a lot into his speech, which was also just wonderful. They’re both so special to M. and me and we’re excited to have our new “families” together.

The bouquet toss was also quite entertaining. Originally my plan was to toss the bouquet as M. and I exited from the reception, but in the moment we decided it would be better to toss the bouquet in the ballroom. The band signaled all of the “single ladies” to come out onto the dance floor and so all of the gals positioned themselves, but it turns out I threw the bouquet a little too high and it hit the chandelier and made it’s way right into the hands of M.’s youngest cousin, Sarah. She was pretty excited though, so it turned out to be a super cute moment. In fact, one of M.’s other young cousins came up at one point during the evening, tugged on my dress and asked me “when are you going to throw the scrunchie?!?!” Such a cute moment, but M. and I had decided not to do a garter toss so I had to unfortunately inform Lane that I wasn’t wearing a “scrunchie” that evening! :)

At one point during the reception my Aunts also had a funny moment! My Aunt Jill and Aunt Deb “surrounded me” and each picked up a corner of my train and we all danced together – as the music went on they lifted and dropped the skirt of my dress! It was super cute and a great memory I have with them!

Someone also had the great idea of starting a little “train” around the dance floor which was super fun too! I was just so thrilled that everyone was enjoying their time. When you’ve worked so hard to put together an event it’s nice to feel like people are enjoying what you’ve put together! :)

Another great memory, and one that’s pretty funny too – M.’s law school friends (who at the time SEVERLY needed a break from studying for the bar exam) were definitely enjoying their time at our reception. At one point we actually looked over and weren’t sure whether or not we may have had wedding crashers!! Two of M.’s friends were so hot from dancing they had taken off their dress shirts (with undershirts on of course!), tied their ties around their necks, and had a little “dance off” in the middle of the floor! They were so “heated” from enjoying themselves that their knees were sweaty! I have never seen sweaty knees in my life, but those boys certainly kept the party going! :)

Finally, a special memory with my girlfriends – it’s a tradition in our sorority to sing to the bride at her wedding and that’s just what my “sisters” did! They surrounded me unexpectedly (again, with some many fun things going on you forget about some of these “things” you think might take place) and sang one of our sorority’s songs. It was a really sweet moment and the sorority is one of the reasons I found so many amazing friends. It’s one of my favorite moments captured by our photographer. It meant a lot to me that so many of those girls traveled to be at my wedding and also that they served as my bridesmaids. I was so thankful to have such wonderful friends there that day.

My favorite parts of the evening were dancing with M. and dancing with my girlfriends/aunts/cousins/bridesmaids/mom and sister. I had an absolute blast and I know that M. also had a wonderful time dancing with me and with his law school friends. It was a great party (even if I am a little biased in my opinion! :))!!!

Towards the end of the evening the band actually had us up on the stage singing with them to the “crowd.” And we were definitely enjoying ourselves! It’s safe to say that both of us felt like “celebrities” that day and it was too fun! At the end of the song the band leader actually asked M. “Do you want to do your last dance song?!,” and M. told him that “that was a good way to end it!”. I guess I didn’t do my part in letting M. know that for our “last dance” before exiting we were going to dance to Michael Buble’s “Save the Last Dance for Me,” so the band said goodnight, and exited the stage and had put on some recorded music while they grabbed a quick drink of water.

What ended up happening was all of our guests who were still with us by this point (it was around 12:00 am) started belting out the words to the recorded song that the band had put on while they were “breaking” (or at least we thought they were just breaking…and it was a Journey song so of course people were singing!). So what we thought was a “break” ended up being the end to their playing for the evening…and we were technically only supposed to be at the club until 1:00 am.

While making our way to the door for our “exit” my dad found me and told me that he had just paid the band to stay for another hour! Of course I was super excited and we all got back out on the dance floor to enjoy another set. Turns out the miscommunication was that because M. didn’t know about the “last dance” song I had picked out, he thought that when the band leader asked him if he was “ready for our last dance song” ending it on the high note of the song they had just played would be the best and the band leader took it as the finale. So thanks to my dad we had another whole hour of dancing and we got to do our “last dance”

I loved having a “last dance” song. It was so fun having the floor to ourselves one last time before leaving and of course this dance was a lot looser than our first dance. We were super relaxed, had just enjoyed an amazing evening with family and friends and were so excited to be newlyweds.

We ended up staying at the club until about 1:15 am and finally exited around 1:30 am. We walked out the club doors again to rose petals being tossed and jumped into the vintage blue car. We had made luminaries accented with a big pink damask sticker (which actually looked great when they were all illuminated!) to line the circular driveway near the car. We waved goodbye and hopped in the car. Of course it couldn’t be that simple though with such an old car! It took us a few minutes to get that puppy going, but when we did, we made our grand exit and said goodbye to our guests! Truly memorable and we loved EVERY MINUTE OF IT! The club had actually packed us two dinners in the backseat of the car (**Unfortunately we didn’t realize that there were two whole meals back there for us until the next morning so we had left them in the car overnight. BOO! I was so sad since I didn’t get to fully enjoy my meal at dinner time I totally would have LOVED to eat that back at our suite!**), a bottle of good red wine, and some delicious truffles. Our wedding planners also made sure to include two of our Krispy Kreme favors in the backseat for a late night snack and when we arrived at our hotel suite they had also set up a gorgeous table with a yummy bottle of champagne and a plate of delicious truffles!