Wed-cap: The Introductions

After all the guests were seated for dinner we did the wedding party introductions. We had a tough time coming up with a good song for everyone to walk into but then Kristian suggested a great "strut" song- "Pick up the Pieces" by Average White Band.

After introducing the parents it was onto the bridal party-

*First up was the jr. groomsman escorting his two sisters, our jr. bridesmaids*

*Michelle and Jason*

*Kelli and Matt*

*Kelli and Matt again*
*Colleen and Best Man Bryan*


*The MOH Krista and other Best Man Kevin...I believe they tried to do a little dance into the room*

We decided to enter to a different song than the rest of the wedding party. Again it was hard to pick a good song but we ended up going with U2's "Beautiful Day". Not the most creative song choice but it got to the point where I just didn't really care what we walked in to. We came in right as the Chorus of the song started.

*The new Mr. and Mrs.*
*Kristian was very excited*
*Awww*

Good Luck

I just found this in my purse from the weekend and had to do a quick post on it. When we saw Kristian's nieces and nephew at the beach this past weekend his youngest niece (and one of our jr. bridesmaids) gave us this card with two 4 leaf clovers she had found. Click to enlarge to read the card she wrote. How sweet is she?!

**Sidenote--she has the prettiest handwriting of any 11 year old I know (her writing is way better than mine!)

Wed-cap: Food and Drinks

After the ceremony our guests went next door to the mansion for Cocktail hour which consisted of not only booze but some apps as well. There was a selection of fruits and veggies as well as a fabulous crab dip. Our caterer was nice enough to bring Kristian and I both a small plate with some of the apps to eat after having our pictures taken. We never made it over for the cocktail hour however we did receive some pictures of it from our photographer and it looked like everyone was having a nice time and the food setup looked pretty as well.

*The cocktail hour setup*

We had a buffet style meal which included- pasta with shrimp, pecan crusted chicken, beef medallions, Parmesan mashed potatoes, green beans with walnuts and a pear and walnut salad. Kristian and I were served directly with a little bit of everything on our plate so that we could start eating right away.

I will admit that I did not eat very much, not because there wasn't enough time but because my stomach had been in nervous knots all day and it was still tough to eat even after the ceremony. I did however sample a little bit of everything and it tasted wonderful. After we quickly ate we made our rounds to each table to say hi to the guests and I noticed that everyone had cleaned their plates and some even went back for seconds. We received many compliments on the food which made me happy.

The best part was that the catering staff wrapped up all the leftover food and sent it home with one of the groomsmen who brought it over for us the next day. Even warmed up a day later it was awesome and by then I had my appetite back so it was much appreciated!

*The reception food setup*

We provided all the booze for the wedding. We had beer, wine and two signature drinks- "The Kris" which was Sweet Tea Vodka and Water and "The Shannon" which was Sweet Tea Vodka and Lemonade. We had Corona, Miller Lite and YuenLing for the beer and Riesling, Chardonnay and Cabernet for the wine. I had made a drink menu sign to display at the bar listing the drink options which I think was a big help for everyone.

We were also able to bring home all the leftover alcohol and I was surprised by how much was actually leftover. Apparently we over-estimated, which is better than running out. The Sweet Tea vodka seemed to be the most popular of all the drinks and I don't think anyone went home thirsty or hungry.

*The booze chilling on ice. We did have bartenders to serve the guests. They didn't have to pull the beer out of the tubs themselves. Unfortunately there weren't any shots of the actual bar setup which was really cute with the drink menu and candles on it.*

I really didn't drink much at the wedding. I'm not a big drinker to begin with however I really didn't get a chance to drink. It seemed everytime I had a drink I had to put it down to take a picture, hug somebody or go dance. I was terrified of spilling on my dress so I didn't want to do any of those things while holding a glass in my hand. By the time I would remember about my drink it had disappeared or gotten warm. Even Kristian (who is a big drinker) didn't drink that much at the wedding. We were both running around so much, talking and dancing we just somehow forgot.

To be honest I'm glad neither of us got drunk at the wedding. The day goes by so quickly and is such a blur anyway that if we were drunk we would have an even more difficult time remembering everything. We made up for it on the honeymoon anyway.

Did/Will you get drunk at your wedding?

July the 4th

We had a great holiday weekend, however I do not have any pictures at the moment since they were all taken by my in-laws who are still chillaxin at the beach while I prepare to return to work tomorrow. Blech.

-Friday: our friend JD stopped by to bring over a belated wedding gift. He bought us the awesome toaster oven we registered for at Crate and Barrel...I swear this thing can cook anything.

-Saturday: got up early and caught the morning showing of Eclipse. I'm learning to love morning movies...they are half the cost, way less crowded and you still have the whole day ahead of you when you're done. I dragged Kristian with me and he's officially Team Alice. I thought the movie was great, definitely the best of the three so far.

After the movie we baked some 4th of July inspired cupcakes (red velvet with white icing and red/blue/white sprinkles) and headed down to my in laws beach house to spend the holiday with Kristian's parents, sister and boyfriend and nieces and nephew.

-Sunday: spent the day laying out and playing in the water, eating a ridiculous amount of crabs and shrimp, drinking margaritas and sweet tea vodka and watching some excellent fireworks.

-Monday: headed home early to beat the traffic and spent the day laying on the couch and trying to finish the book I started at the beach.

**In other exciting news I received the wedding photo album I made and ordered through Shutterfly and I couldn't be happier with the result...more to come on that in another post.

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend!

In Honor of the 4th--Wed-cap: The Grand Exit

Since this weekend we will be celebrating the 4th of July with hopefully lots of good food, good friends/family, good booze and great fireworks I decided to skip ahead in my wedding recaps to our grand exit at the end of the night since it has something in common with this weekend's holiday...SPARKLERS!!

I've always loved the pictures of couples leaving their wedding down an aisle of sparklers. At first I didn't think this would be a possibility for us since sparklers are prohibited at our venue. However after talking with our venue coordinator and promising on the life of our unborn children that all the sticks would be picked up and we wouldn't cause any damage we were allowed to have our sparkler exit!! **Tip- it can't hurt to ask for things that may be against the rules. The worst they can do is say no.

As I mentioned before, Kristian initially thought a lot of my ideas were cheesy and/or lame and this is no exception...which I found odd considering he loves fireworks....or anything that has a potential danger to it. Well I pushed and we agreed to the sparkler exit and I'm so glad I did. I love the exit pictures we got and as you can see from the smiles on our guests faces I think they did as well.

I hope you enjoy the pictures below and that everyone has a VERY Happy 4th of July!!

*This last picture is courtesy of my friend Emily*

Vanity Plate

Kristian decided that he wanted to change his license plate. His current plate refers to his old job of selling swimming pools and he wanted to update it to something more current and fitting to him. Since his favorite thing in the world (besides me) is fishing he decided to buy a vanity plate with a fishing theme. We came up with a few different ideas, all of which were available according to the website that you order plates through. See if you can guess which one he picked.

FSHNEKD

HOOKFSH

EATFISH

MSTRB8R (my personal fav)

FISHLVR

FSHNROD

SOFISHY

BIGBAIT

SHRPHKS

SMELFSH

CRZEFSH

and in case you can't translate any of these they are:

Fish Nekkid

Hook Fish

Eat Fish (duh)

MasterBaiter

Fish Lover

Fishing Rod

So Fishy

Big Bait

Sharp Hooks

Smell Fish

Crazy Fish

So which one would you pick?

SeamSTRESS

As with any wedding ours did not go off without a hitch. There were issues and not everything went according to plan. Fortunately none of these things negatively affected the overall wedding but that doesn't mean that I wasn't a bit of a basket case in the days/hours leading up to the big event.

Two of the issues that we encountered involved my seamstress who not only did the alterations on my dress but also my mother's and one of my bridesmaids. In addition to the alterations she also made my veil (this was after the veil I ordered on Ebay never arrived...long story) and she made from scratch the two flower girl dresses.

Needless to say she had a lot of work on her plate for my wedding. And this was all while her daughter was going through testing and surgeries for being newly diagnosed with breast cancer. First let me say that I really do like my seamstress, she put a LOT of work into my dress and I know it wasn't easy with my continuous weight loss. She also basically re-made my mom's dress after my mom gained weight (we seemed to have the opposite problem). I also realize that she was under tremendous stress with her daughter's health issues. With that said two of my most stressful moments the weekend of the wedding were due to her.

We first discussed the flower girl dress design back in February I believe. She said it wouldn't take very long to make them and she wanted to get my dress finished first. Worked for me. What I didn't find out until the day before the wedding when my mother called me (while I was having my nails done) was that the flower girl dresses hadn't been finished until that morning. The morning before my wedding. My poor mother had been so stressed out and concerned the night before when she learned that the dresses hadn't been made yet that she ran to the mall and bought two little dresses she thought might work. Because of the last minute creation of the dresses it didn't allow time for the girl's to actually try on the dresses until after the Rehearsal dinner. So the night of the Rehearsal I still didn't know if the dresses for my flower girls would fit, nor was I able to see them until after dinner.

Fortunately both dresses fit and the girls looked really cute in them, even though the youngest didn't end up walking down the aisle.

The second issue was my veil. I really wanted a veil similar to the $500 one I tried on in the bridal store that was Cathedral length with lace around the bottom edge. After the one I ordered on Ebay failed to show up I asked my seamstress if she could make something similar. She said no problem. She did have some trouble finding the lace for the bottom but was able to use some she actually already had. It wasn't exactly what I wanted but figured it would work well enough especially since I only planned to wear it for the ceremony and a few pictures.

As with the flower girl dresses she ended up not making my veil until the last minute. Since she's an hour away my mother picked it up for me and I wasn't able to see it until the morning of the wedding. When I first took it out of the bag and spread it out I was NOT happy. The lace on the bottom only went part of the way around the bottom of the veil. When it was completely spread out both sides were missing lace and it just looked very strange. She also said she would put some subtle lining on the edge of the entire veil and that was not done at all. The edges were not cut straight and the whole thing just look completely unfinished.

I basically freaked out and called my mother who was in another room at the hotel. I took the veil down and tried it on for her. Basically we figured out that the seamstress had intended for the sides at the bottom to be tucked under rather than have the whole thing completely spread out. My mother calmed me down and said it would look okay. As you can see in the pictures below it looked okay while walking down the aisle however when it was spread out for the formal pictures you can really see how the lace doesn't go all the around the bottom which really irks me.

*You can see how both sides of the veil are tucked under rather than completely spread out and the small trim of lace on the bottom*

*In this picture my veil is more spread out and you can see on the right side how the lace doesn't go all around the bottom edge. I know it's not super noticeable but it irritates me to no end when I look at this picture*

As I said neither of these issues ruined my wedding and to be honest with the exception of a very small group of people no even knew about these issues but it didn't make them any less stressful at the time. Though considering all the things that could have gone wrong, last minute flower girl dresses and a not exactly perfect veil aren't too bad.