The Wedding: Our Reception PART TWO

Welcome to the fourth installment of our wedding series! If you are just now joining us, you can catch up here. If you are dying of anticipation and you're about to cry out of excitement for the fourth installment, get a hold of yourself! It's here! Now, get to reading.

FAIR FUN

Outside under the arbor, we had several fair-related games and activities for guests to take part in like the can toss the guys are playing with above. The only item we purchases for the can toss was the king sized sheet that was wrapped around a piece of plywood. Even then, it was a $4 sheet from Goodwill. The other items belonged to family and were borrowed.

We also had a ring toss which the groomsmen are all modeling here:

I'm sure you are wondering why Clay, the best man, has no pants. While taking pictures, Clay discovered a hole in his pants by his pocket. While this picture was being made, my mother was mending his pants and he was wearing his basketball shorts instead. Lesson to be learned here: have the foresight like my brilliant mother to bring a needle and thread on the big day to avoid wedding attire disasters. [She also used it again to alter the straps on my sister's dress to make it fit better.]

Anyway, back to the ring toss! My father-in-law crafted together the ring toss with some wood he had laying around. After he built the frame, he painted it red and my mother-in-law added the words. So stinkin' cute, right?! And to give R.J. his due credit, he provided the green bottles. He had to drink a lot of Yuengling.

We also knew we were going to have a lot of kids at the wedding. We wanted our reception to be family friendly and fun for everyone which meant we had to find a way to entertain the kiddos. My mother-in-law put together activity packets for each child which contained a pack of crayon and a wedding-themed activity book which she found online for free! The kids had their own activity table set up outside with the packets and huge bubble wands to play with. Here are some picture of our flower girl/junior bridesmaid, Aaliyah, playing with a bubble wand.

    

You can also see the bunting and streamers we used to decorate the arbor in the picture above as well.

As I showed you in a previous post, we also had a photo booth outside that guests could jump in. Of course, R.J. and I had to jump in to it too!

THE FAVORS

We decided to do a candy bar for favors. I kept seeing them on Pinterest and just fell in love with them. Plus, I thought a candy bar would fit the theme nicely. It was a really big hit with our guests too! There wasn't hardly anything left.



My mom found the blue fabric on clearance at JoAnn's. Her and my granny both worked together on the yellow and white eyelet bunting that was pinned to the table. Once again, the milk glass and crystal on the table holding the candies was all found in granny's house. I'm seriously in love the milk glass. The sucker arrangement on the top is sitting on a stool we picked up off of the curb one day while making a trip to the Hobby Lobby for wedding related goodies. Granny had some sheer fabric we used to  drape over it. The two Pixie Stix arrangements are simply sitting on top of three books wrapped in freezer paper with the sheer fabric over it.

The pom poms floating over the candy bar were made by yours truly. I talked about them in this blog post here. Each pom pom only cost $1.89 to make and they make such an impact! Seriously though, they are super easy to make.

I bought the robin's egg blue candy bags on the left side of the table at Michael's for $1 for a pack of 12. Then, I stamped them all with a bunting stamp! The red foam in which the suckers are stuck in is floral styrofoam that we painted red.

You may have noticed there is no chocolate on our candy bar. Neither R.J. nor I like chocolate! I know! We're not human.

Dance Party

Normally, I'd have some secret, special story to tell you about our first dance, but I don't. After the down pour that occurred outside, the DJ's computer with our original first dance song ["Me and You" by Kenny Chesney] was fried. It wasn't until halfway through our first dance song, R.J. and I realized the song that was playing DEFINITELY wasn't the song we picked out. But, it worked and we danced along anyway. 

At the suggestion of the day-of coordinator, we had our family and bridal party line the dance floor in front of the DJ booth. It was an excellent idea because it hid the ugliness of the booth and provided the perfect backdrop for this picture!

After the first dance, we jumped into the dances with the parents. Most of my father/daughter dance pictures are of me making horrified faces from my dad having a totally AWKWARD conversation with me. [Trust me, you don't wanna know!] However, I did find one I liked. 

Aren't we cute? I will share with you part of our conversation which has stuck in my mind. As we danced, my dad told me that this was only the second biggest day of my life, I just didn't know it yet. The first biggest day will come when I have a little angel come into my life like he did. Way to make me try to cry dad!

Next up it was the mother/son dance. I really loved the pictures from it because you can see the love and emotion in all their faces. While most of us only have one mommy, R.J. is lucky enough to have two. Of course, he had to dance with both. 

If those pictures don't make you a little dewy eyed, then I don't know what will. We had one last special dance in honor of two very important people in our life. The Saturday before R.J. and I were married, my granny (the one with the house full of treasures and who did my bouquets) and pap celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. 

To honor this major milestone, R.J. and I presented a framed painting of their home in Tennessee on behalf of our family. I could not be more honored to share an anniversary month with these two. R.J. and I look up to them both as role models in our marriage. 

After we presented the picture, we had an anniversary dance. 

The anniversary dance requests all married couples come to the dance floor. As the song plays, the DJ asks couples married less than 5 years to be seat, then 10 years and so on until the longest married couple is left on the dance floor. Low and behold, guess what couple it was?

This next one wasn't planned, I swear. I'm being serious too! It seemed like when my bridal party all simultaneously jumped on the dance floor when "The Wobble" came on, we had planned it perfectly.

Picture by Dennis Elkins

 

This was probably one of my favorite moments from the reception without a doubt. 

GUESTBOOK

Instead of a traditional guestbook, we had guests sign quilt squares. I am embroidering the signatures now with red thread. After the signatures are embroidered, the squares will be pieced together with other scraps of fabric from our big day like the bunting and my wedding dress to make a memory quilt. 

For myself, this keepsake means more than a book filled with signatures. When we purchase a home, my plan is to have the quilt properly displayed. 

Of course, at the rate I am going now, it'll be our five year anniversary before I'm done with it!

THE GETAWAY

Before we knew it, it was time to jump in the getaway car and venture off on our honeymoon. Our getaway car was Model A owned by a friend of R.J.'s who was gracious enough to let us use it. How perfect, right?

Our guests lined the path to the car waving the flags and ribbon wands that had previously decorated the tables inside. 

Of course, R.J. and I had one more trick up our sleeve as we left!

I love the look on everyone's face in the picture above. You can tell they weren't expecting that last kiss!

 With a wave and a smile, we drove off to our happily ever after!

Before I bid you all adieu on this post, I have one last picture to share. It is my absolutely favorite out of all those I've shared with you. This is a picture of my hand, my mother's hand and my grandmothers' hands with our wedding bands. I cannot even begin to describe how sentimental this picture is to me. My granny (maternal grandmother) has been married for 50 years. My grandma (paternal grandmother) was married to my paw paw for more than 50 years before his passing. My mom has been happily married to my dad for almost 30 years. I am so blessed to have such excellent examples and to have been raised by such strong women. I can't help but to get a little emotion every I see this picture. 

Before I start bawling, I will conclude our journey through the ins and outs of our reception. My next post will divulge secrets and stories about the bridal attire worn by myself, R.J. and our bridal party. That said, be sure to stick around and check back soon!

Love always,
Miranda

The Wedding: Our Reception PART ONE

If you are just now joining us or have missed an installment of our wedding series, you can catch up here. If you are all caught up and excited to get to the next installment, you're in the right place! 

All pictures in this post were taken by Braden Cruise Photography unless otherwise noted.

Because the reception was the biggest part of our wedding, I've decided to split it up into two parts! There is just so many details and excellent pictures to share! For ease of reading and to keep my sanity, I've organized this post into sections. We're going to start with one of my favorite sections: the grub!

THE FOOD AND DRINKS

If anyone knows anything about R.J. and I, they know we love food. That would explain why we received some much kitchen stuff at all of our showers! Boy, have we used it all too. Because our love for food is so well-known, we knew we had to offer up a delicious array of food at the reception.

Having a country fair theme made deciding on the food easy. Of course, we HAD to have our fair food favorites: popcorn, cotton candy, corn dogs and tater tots! 

How fun, right? We rented the popcorn machine, cotton candy machine and the kits (and 100 chairs for the ceremony) from Coweta Equipment Rental.  The corn dogs and tater tots were catered by H.J. Wings and Things in Summergrove which was fitting because R.J. has worked there since high school. 

As for the drinks, what fit better than old fashioned sodas in glass bottles? Especially in my father-in-law's antique Coca-Cola cooler!

The bottled drinks were definitely one of the items that we spent a small fortune on. My mother was dead set on having three drinks per guest. With right at 180 expected guests, that meant we had to have 540 drinks. While about 200 of these were waters, the other 340 were a random assortment of bottled sodas. We could have saved by purchasing plastic bottled drinks, but it wouldn't have been near as cute!

                                           

        

    

The antique cooler rested on the end of the drink table. Three galvanized buckets of my granny's were filled with ice and used to hold waters. Straws and bottle openers lay in front of the buckets for guests to grab and use at their leisure. At the end opposite of the antique cooler, an old Pepsi Cola wooden crate (which belongs to my dad) was used to help display the beverage choices. It is hard to see from the picture, but each of the flowers above are arranged in old cola bottles which my dad and father-in-law had collected over the years. 

                                             

HOW SWEET IT IS: THE DESSERT TABLE

Once again, our wedding was out-of-the-box in our selection of wedding cake and the groom's cake. However, it totally fit not only the fun theme of our wedding, but reflected our personalities as well. 

R.J. is not a big fan of cake - mostly not of the icing. However, he is a big fan of pies - especially apple pies. 

Also, while we were both in college in Atlanta, The Varsity became a usual date night stop for us because we could eat out on a college student budget. 

Instead of the traditional groom's cake, R.J. had groom's fried apple pies from The Varsity. He picked them up from the restaurant the day before the wedding. I ordered 100 pies, but when R.J. delivered them to me there were only 99 pies. I'll let you figure out where my one missing pie went...

The pies are arranged on crystal and milk glass pieces that also belong to my granny. [I know! She had all kinds of hidden treasures in her house that turned up at the reception!]

By now, you may have noticed some of the coordinating signs like the one above. These were all designed by me and were made to resemble our wedding invitations. Mom and I wanted to carry the carnival flag theme used on the invitations throughout the reception. The signs were one way of doing that. When I get to the decorations section, you'll see the flags pop up again. 

Next, comes the wedding cake. Or in our case, the wedding cupcakes! I am a huge fan of cupcakes - especially red velvet ones! My waistline is getting bigger and my tummy happier just thinking about how delicious these cupcakes were. 

Local baker, Christi Polk, better known as the Betty of Bakeshop Betty Cupcakes, crafted these scrumptious cupcakes. Sometimes, you'll find her on the downtown square on Market Day dressed like this:

She even delivered my cupcakes dressed like this! How stinkin' cute, right? Seriously though, many kudos to her also because I literally called her four times in one hour asking a range of crazy questions - like is it possible to cut a hole in the bottom of a cake?

You see that 8" cake round on the very top? It's real cake but it had a two inch hole dug out of the bottom of it. One challenge we faced was the cupcake stand (which we rented from Bakeshop Betty) had a piece on top that stuck up about 1.5 inches. Therefore, the cake had to be made to sit on top of the stand so it wouldn't fall. You should have seen the look of confusion and bewilderment on the baker's face at Publix when I was trying to explain I wanted the bottom of my cake dug out. But, it worked!

We had four flavors of cupcakes which we each differentiated with different colored flags. The flags that went on the cupcakes were made of card stock and flat toothpicks. I punched out the flags with a triangle punch and hot glued them to the toothpicks. It seems easy enough, but it did get really tedious punching and gluing 200 of them. I hated those stupid things by the time I was done. But, I have to admit, it did look cute when it was all put together.

As for the cake topper, I made it. It was my favorite thing I made for our wedding so I'm going to show it off.

Initially, I did not want a cake topper at all. I thought they were tacky, especially the plastic ones where the bride has the runaway groom by the collar. Not cute. I considered a simple "W" initial at the top, but the only ones I could find were blinged out with cheap looking rhinestones. Not to mention, do you people know how ridiculously expensive those ugly cake toppers are?! It's ridiculous. 

I had pretty much given up on having a cake topper until I was poking around on Pinterest and found a picture of a couple holding a row of bunting that said "Mr. and Mrs." After some brainstorming, I came up with the cake topper you see above. The best part? It didn't cost me an extra penny. I used supplies left over from wedding crafts we had already completed. 

I spray painted two of the wooden dowels leftover from the ribbon wands. The spray paint was leftover from painting the nut cups. I used my triangle punch and card stock left from the cupcake flags. Using stamps and ink from my scrapbook supply stash, I stamped a letter on each flag. The red and white twine was left from my window frame display that you will see later. With some patience and hot glue, my cake topper was born!

We cut our cake round with a sterling silver cutting set given to us by my mom and dad at an engagement party last April. On the cake server, our names and wedding date are engraved. The plate in which we placed our cut piece of cake is a dessert plate from the china my granny gave me. The china is her pattern. When my sister and cousin get married, they will also get a set of granny's china. 

THE DECORATIONS

Once again, I have to pause and say a huge thank you to my mom and granny. For decoration, we had bunting which hung over the dance floor, the tables, the arbor outside and even the bathrooms. My mom and granny hand stitched ALL of it. We bought the fabric from Hobby Lobby and with the help of Tessa and my sister-in-law Amanda, cut out fifty million triangles. After that, my mom and granny stitched the fifty million fabric triangles on some cording one by one. 

We also used about 100 of the fabric triangles we cut to make flags to be waved when we escaped to the getaway car. In addition to the flags, we also had 100 ribbon wands to wave as well - all assembled by us. Out of a fluke, the flags and wands ended up being placed on the tables which added so nicely to the tables when it was all said and done. We simply forgot about having something to hold the flags and ribbon wands. The solution? Lay them on the tables! Regrettably, I don't have a good picture of them, but you can sort of see them on the closest table above. They're the pop of color on the white tableclothes. 

 I found two old windows in the barn at my parents house. I put a photo in each window pane and used leftover fabric from the bunting as a background. Both windows were missing a pane on their sides. I tied some red twine between the two windows and used little clothes pins from my scrapbook supply stash to hang pictures of R.J. and I from the six years we'd been dating. 

The table decorated by the window frames doubled as our gift table and our registration table. As you can see on one end we did have a memorial candle. 

Through our years together, we have lost many loved ones who we wanted to remember that day. We did so by having a memorial candle which (unfortunately) never got lit. However, the sentiment was still the same. 

Also, instead of a traditional head table, we had a sweetheart table situated in between two reserved tables for our bridal party and their significant others. 

We placed our sweetheart table directly in front of the dance floor. Three streamers, like those that lined the arbor outside, hung behind our sweetheart table. [Thank you Mrs. Gayle for patiently hanging those and the bunting up!]

That wraps up PART ONE of the reception! In PART TWO, I'll cover our favors, our dance party, wedding activities, our guest book, the getaway and a picture that makes me tear up every time I see it. STICK AROUND! It'll be hitting the blogosphere soon. I promise!

Much love to my readers!

Miranda