Focus on the Stories: Our Wedding: The Reception

Phew! I think this is the last of the wedding posts, although later I plan to do a post about where and how I display the photos (but that will be quite a while off) and another of the photobooth when I get all those images. We were fortunate in the decor department, because the art in the gallery was wonderful and we only really needed to focus on the tables and other small things. My mom and her Cricut as a team made most of the cute paper goods, from place cards to gift boxes, and my mother-in-law wrapped stacks of heirloom books in beautifully matching ribbon as centerpieces. The library I work at gave us library cards that I used to create seating cards in a card catalog at the entrance just to amp up the book theme. Both our families wrapped up strips of paper at Thanksgiving to fill the glass ornaments; our nod to when Bear proposed Christmas 2010 and the recent holiday. With the lights out in the grounds and the gigantic toy exhibit, the gallery was truly magical!!!

THE CAKE. My brother's best friend and my good friend from high school's mom made the cake. It was amazing. The bottom tier was chocolate, the middle tier was Funfetti, and the top was Red Velvet! I loved how she incorporated our themes in it so well, and some guests even thought it was part of the art exhibit! The cake topper was carved by my dad, and I LOVE it!

Every table was named after a place in a book that either Bear or myself or both of us loved. I am pretty detail oriented, so I wanted all the little pieces to make a big picture that told everyone "this is us and this is our great love". Yup. I am THAT girl. We are pretty lucky in terms of vendors, too. We tried to keep everyone involved in our friends and family status. Our photographer was my aunt, our photobooth photographer a friend of ours from MDRF, our DJ a friend of ours, the caterer became like a friend, the videographer a friend from the college I work at, our cake master a family friend, our brilliant wedding planner a friend, our officiant a friend... we really wanted to keep everything authentic and wonderful and as down-to-earth as possible. I think we managed to do that. Everyone really seemed to enjoy themselves and each other, so I consider that Mission: Accomplished. We did follow a bit of a traditional formula with the evening, but added in our own ideas too. We had the father/daughter and mother/son dances, and we tossed in a mother-in-law/son-in-law and father-in-law/daughter-in-law dance too. We wanted to honor all of our parents (after all, we are lucky enough to have wonderful parents who are still married, which seems to me to be something to honor). We weren't messy with the cake like we originally planned, because I was still so nervous I was afraid I would throw up. We had karaoke and hilarious dancing, toasts and dinner. I am not listing this in order, but in all honesty the day felt like it was all over the place for me! Anyway, here are a ton more photos!

My Grandma and Pop were the last dancers on the floor for the Anniversary dance, and we presented them with ornaments. My Oma and Opa share the same Anniversary year and were also presented with ornaments!

Heather! Our wonderful wedding planner!

All of that was the "Dollar Dance". Every time I saw Bear, he was dancing with another man! And usually in a pretty hilarious manner. I didn't want to be rude to my own dancing companions, but it was hard not to laugh... frequently.