Weddingbee Blog

As a guest, one of my favorite parts about a wedding is the toasting. It’s fun to when the BM and MOH give you a little more insight into the couple getting married and often tell embarrassing stories. I sort of wish everyone at weddings would do a toast—but of course that would eat into dancing time!

My father gave the first toast and welcomed our guests. I think the day was more emotional and nerve racking for my dad than I ever imagined it would be, so his toast was short and sweet but full of love with a dash of nerves! A rare sight to be seen!

His toast was followed by the BM’s. Mr. Sunbeam and his BM, James, had met their first day of college. He began by recanting how Mr. Sunbeam would introduce himself—either, “Hi, I’m Mr. Sunbeam.” or, “Hi I’m Mr. Sunbeam. I have a girlfriend who lives in PA and we’re going to get married.” And, he continued, “ten years later, here they are.” He also remembered Mr. Sunbeam sold a guitar in college and said it was for his wedding ring fund. To this James said, “It needed to collect interest!” I though the hazing was more than appropriate.

He also gave some witty explanations for how I’d come in handy, relating myself to his wife. One remark was, “When you’re at an awkward business function and don’t know how to socialize, don’t worry, your wife will jump right in, and when you’re out to eat and they don’t seat you right way, don’t worry. Your wife will take care of it…” James did a great job and left us laughing.

He was followed by my MOH. She had a tad more embarrassing things to say! After telling one of my most embarrassing stories about tossing them out of a car when they had hidden in the back seat during a date with Mr. Sunbeam, she read some of the advice our guests had written on the back of their response cards.

Let’s just say she favored the ones that talked about copulating.

It’s never easy to get up in front of a room full of people and speak, but our friends’ and family’s loving words are long lasting memories from our wedding! I would definitely not skip out on the toasts if possible. And if your MOH or BM is too nervous, see if anyone else would like to say a few words in their place.

If you remember, we asked a friend to be our DJ and rented a sound system for the reception. To help him out we had playlists on our Mac for each event like cocktail hour, entrance, dinner, cake, etc. At the end and beginning of each playlist Mr. Sunbeam chose some songs to transition the music into the next phase so you weren’t listening to jazz one minute and Lady Gaga the next. Our friend had next to zero practice dealing with the music before the ceremony, but everything went smoothly.

On to cake, shall we!? After a consultation, several sketches, and many emails, our cake had made it to the reception safe and sound, and IMHO, as beautiful as ever. Drum roll please…

The patterns you see on the cake mimicked the lace in my dress and I was so happy with how it turned out. And maybe I was a little bit cake-crazy!

*caaaake*

The flavors were chocolate cake with egg yolk buttercream, and a spice cake with rum buttercream. I was so looking forward to digging into that thing. However, we forgot to get a cake knife! We had to use a big honkin’ knife from the kitchen. *How romantic*

Because our bottom layer was sort of huge, we had no idea how to cut it! So we ended up taking a tiny piece off of the top of the layer.

Then, we popped it into each other’s mouths.

Mr. Sunbeam’s face is so great! And of course the cakey smooch is a must.

While they took our sweet beauty downstairs to be divvied out, we took to the dance floor to razzle-dazzle everyone… or something! That’s up next!

Photos were taken by RAD photography with occasional additional editing by me, unless otherwise noted.

Previously with the Sunbeams:

• A Feast for the Eyes and Stomaches
• Warm Reception
• The Heirloom Photos
• Sunny I dos
• Here comes the Sun
• Love, Anticipation, and a Trip Down the Isle
• The Lovely Bridesmaids
• Quintessential Portraits
• Chemistry
• Love in the Stacks
• Bride Meets Groom
• Bridebeam
• Old, Borrowed, & Blue
• Groombeam
• The Dress, Shoes, & Rings
• Let’s Get Beautiful!
• Papery Details
• One last busy night
• Dessert and an impromptu photo shoot
• Pasta & practice makes perfect
• Sunbeam final fling!
• Five days and counting