The Wedding, pt 8 - cutting the cakes

Cutting the cake! yay! the best part!  ... and most nerve-wracking... everyone staring, not really sure what were supposed to be doing, posing for the photographer... at least the ribbon was made of frosting, lol.

"smile!"  ... *thinking - can we eat it yet?*

... we were very nice to each other... small bites, trying so carefully not to spill... *yawn* a bit boring, I suppose, lol.

... mmmm. that was such good cake.

On to the second cake! :D

... we gave each other much bigger bites this time ... in hindsight, it probably would've been a heck of a lot easier if we hadn't tried to feed each other at the same time.  oh well, live and learn.

yay! no spilling on expensive dress or borrowed tux! :)

The Wedding, pt 7 - the toasts

After a few moments to eat some food from the buffet (... one downside to the day, my dress fit... but barely... I was so snug in that top that I felt immediately full and couldn't eat another bite after only a bit of food off my plate... all that good food and I couldn't even eat it. :(  luckily, the staff made us huge doggie bags that we got to take with home with us! yay!), it was time for the toasts.  My maid-of-honor (Lisa, my roommate) went first, followed by Danny's best man (Brant, his roommate), then my dad went last.  The toasts were sooo sweet, not too long, not too short, some funny stuff, some sentimental stuff, and really they just said such touching things about us and for us.  Even our photographer came up to us afterwards and commented that in all the weddings she's been to, ours were some of the best toasts she'd ever heard ... I only wish someone had taped them.  Oh well.

Lisa - Maid-of-Honor

Brant - Best Man

Father of the Bride

(... don't worry, it's sparkling cider, lol)

The Wedding, pt 6 - our first dance

The way we planned the events of our reception put the first dance as soon as Danny and I made our entrance.  For our first dance, Danny and I danced to Shania Twain's You're Still The One.  We never really had the whole "our song" thing, we just had a lot of songs we liked in general.  So when it came to picking songs for our playlist, that was easy, we had tons of songs we liked and wanted.  Picking our first dance song? Not so easy.  I made a list of typical first dance songs along with some our favorite songs, narrowed them down with Danny to ones that would work for a first dance, and then when we finally had it down to two songs, we flipped a coin... literally.  And Shania Twain won, haha.  All in all, I'm glad that one won, and I really do feel like it fit for us.

... some technical difficulties getting the mp3 player to work at first.

... and end it with a twirl and a kiss.  :)

The Wedding, pt 5 - family and friends

... fashionably late arrival of the bride and groom.

Our friends and family got to have appetizers and fill out our guest pages while waiting for us to arrive.

... filling out guest book pages and having fun with markers! :)

... there was ... well, quite a bit of waiting throughout the day, as you can tell.

... and of course, it wouldn't be complete without a full buffet!  We had bruscetta and crab cake appetizers, and for lunch there was pork, lasagna, vegetables, breads, cheeses, fruit, crackers, and all sorts of good food.

The Wedding, pt 4 - the reception

After our 9 am ceremoy and pictures at the temple in the morning, we held a luncheon reception at TPC country club at Craig Ranch in McKinney, Texas.  When looking for a place to hold a reception, it was almost by luck that my parents found this place, and it turned out to be amazing.  The place itself is gorgeous, feeling both elegant and cozy (unlike many of the places we saw that just felt like they were trying too hard to be glitzy, or worse just looked cheap), and the location had lots of beautiful landscape and flowers, right on a golf course, but away from businesses and such (one we looked at was behind a chicken express ... yeah, really formal).  The decor inside was very nice, not too glitzy but seemed to fit me very well.  Plus, the food was great and the staff were super friendly.  The event coordinator practically became our wedding planner for free, helping plan out the day, coordinate our cake and photography, and answer any questions or concerns I had to help make it the best day it could be.  I'm so glad we chose to have our reception here.

 

They left open vases on the tables for my bridesmaids' and my bouquets to act as centerpieces, and stay fresh.

... I stole this idea from Amanda's wedding, just because I thought it was so neat, and way better than just a plain guest book with signatures that you can't read.  Each person got individual pages with blanks for things like How Do You Know The Bride and Groom or Advice For The Bride and Groom or Memories of Today.  It was so much fun to go back and read what people wrote.

I knew that trying to plan the wedding would be really hectic to try and add craft projects, but when I saw this idea for favors, I knew I wanted to do this, so I made personalized candy wrappers for the hershey miniatures candy in my wedding color blue.  The front says our names and has pictures of wedding things on them (a different picture for each flavor: bride and groom for mr. goodbar, wedding rings for milk chocolate, wedding cake for krackle, and flower bouquet for dark chocolate).  The back has hearts and says "Thanks for celebrating our 'sweet' day with us! August 14, 2010".  This was one personal touch to my favors that I'm glad I didn't let myself get talked out of doing.

... one other smaller craft project I did, I knew I wanted bubbles for our grand exit instead of rice or confetti, so I bought some small bottles of bubbles and then tied ribbons to match my colors.

(detail of my brooch on my dress ... didn't really have any other category to go under, lol)

... of course, the centerpiece of the decor, the wedding cake!  We went with a small bakery in Plano who were very friendly and helpful, and had really delicious cake.  I've always known I wanted yellow roses, so I really loved the outcome of this three-tiered white cake with bavarian cream filling.  I really liked the subtle white piping and the blue stripes (which they color matched to the bridesmaids dresses!), and of course the yellow buttercream roses.  ... I never could find a topper I liked, so we just went without one.

We also got a groom's cake - two tiered mexican chocolate with strawberry filling, with chocolate dipped pretzels to look like the Aggie Bonfire (... and yes, at the time, we were figuring that Danny would be attending Texas A&M in the spring, so we'd be both alumni from the school, so of course it'd make sense that he'd have an aggie themed groom's cake, no ? ... haha, the irony that he never will have gone to that school.  oh well.  it was still a delicious cake :)