The hard part of the wedding was finally over . . . or so I thought . . . it was finally time to just sit and enjoy. Maybe even dance a little!
It was VERY important to me that my guests not wait (another reason we took pictures before the wedding). I’ve been to many and been in many where the guest had to wait an hour or more – I was in one that we took pictures for 3 hours after the ceremony, while the guests sat at the reception hall. There was no way you were getting me to do that. . .I had a welcome table, gift table, and the seating chart all set up where our guests would walk in so they could sign our book and place their gift before they found their seat. By the time that was thru, they could grab a drink at our drink station and then it was almost time for dinner to start. Pictures of those are to come.
Mr. & Mrs. Stark walking in
After about 10 minutes of alone time, and unwrapping 1 very special present (thanks uncle bob!), we got our bridal party all lined up again for introductions. Instead of doing the normal song and silly dance out, Scott and I had written 2 or 3 sentences about how we knew each member of our bridal party for the DJ to read while they walked out. They were funny, silly things – for example : “Next is the maid of honor, Bekah’s niece, Elizabeth. She’s known the bride since the day she was born, has blessed us with our flower girl and ring bearer, and if you’d like some ranch with your chicken she’ll have a bottle.” Or “ Escorting Tiffany, is her husband Drew who in 1995 asked Scott what he thought about ‘The Simpsons’ on the bus ride for the 1st day of 6th grade and they’ve been best friends ever since”. No one knew what we were saying except Scott and I so it turned out really well. We got to see everyone’s reactions as they walked out, and they all had HUGE smiles on their faces. We didn’t plan for our flower girl and ring bearer to be introduced, but they insisted on walking out with Scott and I. They stole the show, of course.
O! And everyone walked out to ‘California Love’ by Tupac playing in the background. Why? Because that’s our song, of course.
Another thing that was very important to me, was that our bridal party get to eat. I knew if we weren’t first to go thru the buffet line that Scott and I probably wouldn’t eat, and they might not get to either. So once we were introduced, our DJ welcomed everyone to dinner, my brother said a short speech about the day I was born (he was 14), I cried for the first time that day, brother prayed for our meal, and the bridal party went thru the buffet. After all that planning, I didn’t even eat. I was too excited, but the bridal party got to eat and that was the main goal. They told me the food was delicious, which I expected since I had only the best caterer ever. Our wedding was catered by Sweet Things Cakery. It’s a small cake shop here in Indianapolis that also sometimes does catering, and I’ve known the owner since the day I was born – consider her more like a grandmother to me so it was an easy decision to have her cater the wedding. She served her specialty of sesame chicken, cheesy potatoes, green beans with bacon, 7 layer salad, and dinner rolls. Our wedding was actually her last wedding, she announced her retirement to me after I got done eating. I’m really sad for all of you that missed out.
me and -gma sue
Once the bridal party and our families were thru the buffet, the rest of our guests got to go thru. Scott and I had recently been to a wedding where the buffet lines were extremely long. So we decided to not have that at our wedding. We did 2 things. 1. We made two lines – 1 on each side of the buffet. 2. Each table was listed under the name of one of our favorite songs. When the DJ played one of the songs, our guests at that table got to go thru the buffet. My thought was that it would give each table about 5 minutes to go thru the line – which should be plenty of time for most of them. It actually worked out too well . . . my sister had to dismiss a couple tables before their song played.
You’ve probably noticed by now that we didn’t have a receiving line. I just didn’t have any interest in standing in a single file line and hugging everyone. I know that sounds kind of rude, but I’ve always hated doing it at other weddings – so many germs, and you usually don’t know half of the bridal party anyway. I really just want to say congrats to the bride and groom. There were certain people I knew we needed to greet,of course, I wanted to talk everyone, but even with a receiving line I’d still only get to say hi to everyone. So once we were done eating Scott and I walked around and greeted everyone while they ate. We also had 4 empty chairs at our tables with a sign that I made for our guests to come and sit with us while we had dinner. That way if they wanted one on one time they could come and chit chat with us, and we also got around to talking to most everyone. There were only 4 people that I don’t remember talking to, but Scott remembers talking to them so it worked out perfectly.
After about an hour of eating and walking around to talk to our guests, we had our speeches. My favorite was our groomsmen, Daine, who explained our love perfectly by saying that he knew Scott had found the one when he stopped listening to aggressive music. So true – even though I still occasionally get to hear some Opeth, yay. My bridesmaids did a speech all together – each one told a different part of our relationship and explained how they were a part of it. Rachel was there the day I came into work saying I met the man of my dreams, Shanna was my roommate while our relationship grew, Tiffany was there when we got engaged, and Beth helped plan the wedding as my moh! Loved it!! And my dad made jokes like he usually does to suppress his emotion, but still made me get teary eyed like he usually does. My sister was the last to go, and she made me cry again. I didn’t look at her while she spoke, and she said the sweetest thing about the first conversation we had after I met Scott which I didn’t even remember. She also said that I was the favorite sister 🙂
brother’s speech
bridesmaids
my papa
Now it was really time to party . . .
*I will be posting the details of the décor with where I got things, etc in a couple weeks*
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