Weddingbee Blog

After the ceremony ended, Mr. Jelly and I were ushered into our reception space where we got a sneak peek of the setup and shared a quick toast to our new marriage.

We also rehashed parts of the ceremony, and Mr. Jelly told me about his stressful pre-ceremony scramble: he thought we didn’t have a projector for our slideshow and almost paid $300 to rent a last-minute projector before our DOC caught on and told him we already had one. Phew!

While we toasted inside the reception room, the cocktail hour started and guests feasted on delicious appetizers like heirloom tomato and Gruyere sandwiches.

Photo courtesy of Ax2D Photography.

Although we’d hoped to be able to take advantage of our cocktail hour by doing a first look before the ceremony, we ended up spending most of the cocktail hour taking pictures anyway. But it was worth it—we got some gorgeous images. First, we did family portraits. I won’t bore you with too many of those, but here’s my favorite shot of my family:

And my favorite shot of Mr. Jelly’s (huge) family:

After we wrapped up family portraits, our photographer took us into the vineyards behind Casa Real for some more bride and groom portraits. These ended up being my favorite shots of the day.

This was the image we used on our 2010 holiday card.

Before we knew it, our cocktail hour was drawing to a close and we had to make our way back because the reception was about to start. I went back to the bridal room to freshen up and get a few photos with our pup.

Excited to finally be in my arms, he went straight for the sneak-lick attack!

Then, Mama Jelly and my MOH helped get me bustled up and ready to go for our reception.

Up next, I’ll share the details of our reception!

*Photos in this post are courtesy of Cliff Brunk Photography, except where otherwise noted.