Hello, hive!
This past Sunday night I finally gave in to Mr. Dalmatian’s pleas to bust into the top tier of cake in our freezer because…it was our one year anniversary! The past twelve months have absolutely flown by (I know that is what everyone says, but I can’t help it—it’s true!).
As the calendar pages have flipped, we have moved houses twice (we moved to one Chicago suburb right after our honeymoon and just moved to another suburb a few weeks ago). We have started new jobs and new business ventures. We have traveled to Mexico, Hawaii, and Wisconsin. And we have loved facing each of these adventures as husband and wife!
While we were taking photos, our guests were arriving.
They stopped at the front for a program and ring blessing card for the ceremony. (More on that below!)
We were nervous—unaccustomed to being photographed, used to being behind a camera and not in front of it. I learned a trick: shut your eyes for a moment and just be together.
Or make little comments so that your lady can’t keep a straight face.
I interrupt these recaps to bring you this moment of reality during our first look.
While we were planning our wedding long distance, the mister had it pretty easy—there was only so much he could do since we were in separate states. But when the day was upon us, he took over and made sure everything was going according to plan. The reason he was late for our first look was because there was a helium shortage and he was handling it.
I love that this was caught on tape.
I waited at the top of the aisle, my photographers with me. Mindy peeked between the doors, there was some whispering, and Phil ran off, in search of my groom.
Turns out he was busy handling some reception-area setup. I took this moment to relax and breathe.
I started to move down the aisle and realized: I couldn’t see his face! We had not thought this through.
There’s something to be said about being surrounded by friends and loved ones throughout the day. We had only a couple vendors due to budget, but in the end I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
I have the utmost respect for previous bees who blogged their recaps so timely! I used to think that I wouldn’t be able to wait to tell you all about how it went down, but nobody warned me about what would happen post wedding.
Which is this: I was suddenly hit with the feeling where I was just OVER it all. It happened while I was on the beach during our honeymoon—I didn’t want to take a look at anything wedding related. I didn’t even try to sell the stuff left over! They went into boxes and out of sight, out of mind. I was emotionally ready to move on and begin this new chapter in my life.
And then, just as quickly as that feeling came over me, about a year later it was gone. Lifted, just like that. I’m going back and catching up on all the blogging bees’ recaps, enjoying their special days, and am finally ready to share mine with you all.
So to reintroduce myself, I’m just going to do a super brief overview of the planning process here:
I can’t believe the time has come for me to write this post. I’ve thought a lot about what I want to say, but the joyful memories of our wedding day and the gratitude I have for the support and friendship Weddingbee has brought me are hard things to capture and put into sentences. So for the former I will turn to the old “a picture is worth a thousand words” motto and share with you this montage I made of our wedding story.
For the latter, all I can say is thank you. Thank you to every single member of Weddingbee who makes this site what it is. You have shaped my understanding of the meaning of a wedding, of a bride and, most importantly, of a community.
I feel blessed to look back on my wedding day and be genuinely happy, proud, and thankful. I feel blessed to look forward to my future and feel excited, hopeful, and once again genuinely happy. These feelings are what I wish upon every member of the hive.
You may recall that way back when we had planned a sparkler exit. Our venue offered a choice between sparklers, bubbles, and flower petals, and Mr. D and I were on the same page with our order of preference (the order in which I wrote them). Well, you may also recall me mentioning that our wedding day was filled with scattered storms. Rain + sparklers = not so much. BUT the coordinators at our venue were excellent about ensuring that we had everything we wanted—as proven by the fact that we squeezed in our outdoor ceremony in between the rain clouds. Enter the half-bubbles, half-sparkler exit.
Because our reception was on the covered but wall-less patio, the guests were able to line up cohesively half under the ceiling and half outside. So they were given the option of staying dry and blowing bubbles, or being truly hardcore and getting a little damp (luckily the rainfall was light at this point) while waving a sparkler.
Sorry for the brief hiatus over the holidays, but I am back to share the last few posts about our big day!
There is one tradition, or cluster of traditions I suppose, that I have not addressed. The tosses! As in, of the bouquet and the garter of course. Mr. Dalmatian and I agreed from the beginning that we would only be including one of these in our wedding day. The toss that got the axe was the garter toss. There is just something about them I find awkward and uncomfortable (call me crazy but I did not have an overwhelming desire for Mr. D to stick his head or hands up my dress in front of my extended family). Again, this is not to say that they can never be fun or funny, it was just simply not for us. The bouquet toss on the other hand I do think is quite fun!
I have already shared how much I adored my beautiful bouquet. Luckily, when the time came for the bouquet toss, I was equipped with a smaller tossing bouquet so I did not have to part ways with my lovely blooms.
When our DJ asked for out list of “must play” songs, my response was probably a little more than he bargained for. I will openly admit that I was the overbearing bride who attached a multi-page Word document to my reply email, and I’m not sorry I did! I knew that the music selection would play a huge role in establishing the tone of the reception, and I was going to do everything in my power to ensure we ended up with photos like these:
Having the major sweet tooth that I have, I knew that we would be jumping on the trend of having a dessert option at our wedding in addition to our cake. After a significant amount of research (I think at one point “wedding frozen yogurt bar” was my most popular google search), we landed on mini gourmet ice cream sandwiches. As if I wasn’t happy enough when I saw the adorable cart that the Sugar Wagon offers, I was completely sold after we had our tasting with them. I nearly melted when I tried the gingersnap cookie with lemon ice cream. That immediately made the menu. We also went with chocolate chip with salted caramel ice cream (their staple) and brownie with peanut butter ice cream for my chocolate and peanut butter loving hubby.
Needless to say, I was very excited when the sugar wagon pulled into our reception.
I can truly say that many of my dreams came true on our wedding day. From marrying a man that I love with my whole heart down to the cake, it was perfect. Since you have heard plenty about Mr. Dalmatian, let’s talk a little more about the cake! You may recall that after sifting through A LOT of cake-spiration I landed on my dream design of a pink ombre cake.
Well, Patty Cakes did an unbelievable job bringing this inspiration to life. Words cannot describe this dessert masterpiece so I will now turn to pictures.
One of the many things that I adored about our venue was the fact that it had a room solely for displaying the wedding cake—chandelier and all! Now let’s get a little closer…
As I scrolled the folder on my desktop that contains the photos from our reception, I was amused to find that the further down in the folder I got, the more out of hand the photos became. They slowly moved from beautiful smiles and structured poses to fist-pumping, lyric-belting madness. Before we sink too far into the craziness, let me share a few of the classier pics from our reception. From a shot of the beautiful Mama Dalmatian:
To the Vanderbilt Crew representing:
Before we could pump up the jams and get the party started, there were a few dances that we had to get out of the way. The reason I put it like that is that the men involved in these dances were not exactly super excited about partaking. Don’t get me wrong, both Mr. Dalmatian and my dad were complete gentlemen and did wonderful jobs moving me about the dance floor, but neither is a fan of the art of dancing, especially when it is just them in front of a large crowd of onlookers. But despite their possible lack of enthusiasm, they stepped up to the plate and played their roles as groom and father of the bride quite handsomely. First up, our first dance as husband and wife.
After much contemplating, we selected Brad Paisley’s “Then” for our first-dance song. I know this has become a popular choice, but with good reason! I love how the lyrics capture the past, present, and future of a relationship, and as I have mentioned I am a huge sucker for Brad Paisley (props to anyone who noticed the Brad Paisley connection in the title of this post).
