The Wedding, Cont....

I scanned some wedding pictures to the laptop before I left home, so I could do my "Kelly's Korner: Show us your life Friday" post this week. This week's post will be the last of the wedding series and is about the reception and honeymoon.

Our wedding was at six o'clock in the evening. We debated having it earlier, since we would be serving dinner at the reception, but 6:00 was as early as we could have it, as I wanted "in the evening" on the invitation... anything before 6:00 would have read, "in the afternoon"...These things would only be important to a bride! Ha...

The reception was held at DW's family's lodge. I wanted an outside reception and the lodge was the perfect location, not to mention the sentimental aspect of it.

The week of the wedding, both of our families worked at the lodge to get everything ready for the big day! The fence was painted, fresh flowers planted, new mulch brought in, everything pressure washed, the grass mowed and the yard raked...then my Georgia family arrived on Wednesday and the "transformation" began! My Aunt still owned her bridal shop then, and she was a wedding planner! A little more southern and small town than the J.Lo version, though!


Here's everyone working to get the reception site ready:

/p>The family doing a few finishing touches at the lodge the day of the wedding.
See all the luminaries on the walkways? I had seen them in the Martha Stewart wedding magazine and wanted them everywhere! They were white luminaries with scalloped tops and had white satin ribbon that ran through them to group them together. At night, they were beautiful and I loved them!

I also wanted the luminaries hanging from lights in the big oak tree that hung over the drive at the lodge. That's my Dad & cousin in the bucket hanging the lights and DW's dad on the ground holding the cord.

These are just a few more snapshots of the reception site before they all left to start getting ready for the wedding.

When my parents and I went to the rental place to pick out all the things we were renting for the reception, I saw this "stone" bridge that I had to have. I thought it would be beautiful at the lodge, so we rented it, too....
The tables...our favors were already on the table. I wanted something to do with a "rock" since DW proposed with a limerock... we decided on ordering custom colored rock candy (it was sage green to match the wedding color) and when you opened the box, it said, "Love's road is rocky..." (then you unwrapped the candy and the message read, "with a sweet ending.")

The cake

The Groom's Cake
The table was decked out in Gator stuff. His cake also had chocolate covered strawberries and chocolate gators all over it. On top, was the gator bride and groom.

The Food

As guests arrived, they helped themselves to fruit, cheese, crackers, tea, water, and the best slushy-like punch EVER. LOVE that punch!







We asked several of my aunts and uncles to help serve at the wedding. It was very special for me, because it was like all of the family helping "host" the reception. Hospitality is huge in the south and especially in big families like mine. So having some special members of my family help play host/hostess just made sense to us. This is my great aunt (my Papa's sister) and uncle who we asked to serve the punch.












After we arrived, and my Dad welcomed everyone and thanked them for coming, and the preacher had blessed it, the meal was served.
I dont have any pics of the main food, but it was great... steak kabobs, green bean bundles, pasta salad, heart shaped biscuits, and I cant even remember what else!


I'd always wanted to have dancing at our wedding. The first wedding I remember going to that had a DJ and dancing was my cousin, Sara's. Her wedding was so much fun and I remember dancing with my other little cousins... too funny, seeing as how I was probably about 8 years old at the time. DW and I neither one are big dancers. In fact, I have the coordination of an elephant on roller skates. I just can't dance. I don't remember dancing much that night, other than our first dance and dancing with my Dad. But, I do remember a few of the girls in my family dancing and I remember laughing so hard and loving that moment.




My Granny and Me dancing
(*I so wish I had left my veil on....I regret that everytime I look at the reception pics! I had even chosen a short one so that I could leave it on...but for some reason insisted on taking it off...)

As the reception was coming to an end, the birdseed was tossed and DW and I hit the road! We made a stop at his house, which had just become OUR house a few hours earlier, to change before heading to Orlando. There had to have been 10 lbs of birdseed that fell out of my dress when I changed, and we STILL (6 years later) find birdseed sometimes in Devin's truck!

It was late when we hit the road to Orlando.

We checked into our hotel close to the airport and had a late night picnic that had been packed for us. We had little containers full of the wedding food and wedding cake....

Our flight was early the next morning. We flew out of Orlando and caught a connecting flight in San Juan, Peurto Rico to St. Lucia, where we stayed a full week at Sandals. DW did a great job planning our honeymoon and I'd go back ANYTIME he wants to take me!

This was the tiny airport in St. Lucia. You should see the landing strip. It's right on the water. Super scary when landing, it looks like you may not stop in time and run into the water! There were also guards with big guns at the airport and after I snapped this picture one of them told me to put my camera away-- no pictures at the airport. Oops!

Our first week as husband and wife was such a great one.

We spent the week enjoying the sun, floating in the pool, snorkeling,

exploring, and eating!

The grounds at Sandals were gorgeous.

So many beautiful flowers! St. Lucia was the most beautiful place I've ever been. To have the mountains and the beach in one place was gorgeous.

We don't have many pictures from our honeymoon. I wasn't as good back then at taking pictures. Plus, I always feel bad asking people to take our picture for us. You know? I always try to offer to take pictures of other people when I see someone taking the picture of their spouse or their group and they arent in it, since I know it's something that I hate asking people to do....

Since we were worried we wouldn't have any good ones of us, we caved and bought the $100.00 CD of all the pictures that the Sandals photographer had taken of us over the week. They'd pose us and tell us to look and point or kiss or whatever... it was too funny... We look like babies in these pictures. It's hard to believe that six years have gone by. Three houses and two babies later here we are. We certainly had no idea what our future together held back then. Nor do we now. One thing's for sure, I'd say "yes" again in a heartbeat.

For the first part of our wedding post: Wedding Part 1

For more wedding posts: Kelly's Korner

~annie~