The Wedding Part 3: The Reception
Well folks, it's been a bit. As of today it has officially been 10 months (!!) since Tashia and I got married, and I'm just now getting to describing the reception. We've been busy doing fun things like LARPing, going on vacations, visiting with family, planning to buy a house, and the normal hustle and bustle of life and never remembered to sit down and work on this blog. In order to get the ball rolling and keep these posts flowing, I made a resolution to set a timer every Monday and write for one hour no matter what. Except the first Monday after I decided on my new plan we were in Pigeon Forge. And the Monday after that was my birthday. But I'm here now! I set my timer, picked some music to play, made sure I didn't miss anything on Facebook... so I guess it's time to get on with it!
As we mentioned in Part 1 and Part 2, it was quite chilly for mid-May, so we ended up having the entire reception inside, despite all the work (and expense *cough*) we went through to set up an outdoor area. This made us sad.
But in the end, it worked out well. It solved the problem we had of figuring out how to get people from dinner to dancing, even if we were a little cramped on the dance floor.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First we made our grand entrance as Mr. and Mrs.!
Then while we were stuffing our faces with the wonderful food and drink from Hilver's Catering, the toasts began! First my new father in law told a simply hilarious story about when I asked him for permission to ask Tashia to marry me. Hilarious.
Next up: toasts from our bridal party.
And last but certainly not least, we got a touching serenade from GMa!
Bring on the dancers!
Once everyone was fed and toasted, it was time for the happy couple to take our first dance. Tashia had tasked me with coordinating the music with the band. For our first dance, she wanted me to get them to play Mean to Me, by Bret Eldredge, the song I used in my proposal video.
She should have known better.
Instead, after the band gave a special introduction, they started playing a recording. It wasn't the original Bret Eldredge version, but a piano-based cover... played by yours truly! A few weeks earlier I had gotten the boys (and girl) of the band back together and we went to Soap Floats Recording to cut our very first record. It took Tashia a minute to recognize the voice on the recording, but I think she liked her surprise :)
Next was the father-daughter dance. Tashia was surprised again, when the band played the song her dad picked for them: My Wish, by Rascal Flats.
The last of the special dances was the mother-son dance. We started off all nice and cliche with one of mom's favorite songs, Over the Rainbow.
But we couldn't just let it stand at that! After the first verse of Over the Rainbow the band broke into Pharrell Williams' "Happy", along with a dance choreographed by my mom!
Finally, we opened up the floor to everyone and The Fun Size helped us boogie the night away. They did a phenomenal job, and knew how to work the small space we had.
The rest of the night was a blur of pictures and thank you's and good to see you's and the whole shebang that is a wedding. We of course took a few breaks for the wedding traditions.
And then we got right back to it!
Reflections
As cliche as this is to say, it's hard to believe that it was only 10 months ago that we got married and celebrated with all of our friends and family. The thank you cards have been sent out, all the leftover cheesecake has been eaten (mostly by me and my dad), and we've settled back into life as usual.
We were and continue to be ever grateful for all the help and support from our friends and our families, without whom our wedding may well have gone off without a hitch (haha get it? hitch? have I made that joke before already?). While that day will be ever-etched into our memories (even Bryan's faulty one), we are just as much looking forward to what the future holds.
For one thing, it holds more blog posts, so stay tuned!
