The Wedding Posts....the reception

Time for post number three for this week of wedding posts.  The wedding was so pretty, wasn't it.  I'm a little bias, but what can I say.  Now it's time for the party.  We had our reception at our home church.  It was such a pretty room, with lots of space.  Since our wedding topped out at over 400 people (I know I know crazy right?) we needed the room while making it cute still.  We did minimal decorations, because frankly who needs them?  And who really thinks about them, or cares?  People are more apt to remember sentimental and special things then the $100 flower arrangement in the giant clear vase in the middle of your table.  When people walked in they could view the wedding pictures of the two people who had previously shared this wedding date.  Our center pieces were a simple white rose, a picture of Christopher and I throughout our dating history, which by that time had already been like five years if you can believe that.  There was also a wedding picture of one of our family members on the tables.  It was so cool and I got so many comments, even years after the wedding was over, including many friends who followed suit..which is the biggest compliment as far as I"m concerned.  We did a lot of special things that day.  Our music was carefully picked to reflect our personalities and stuff.  We had a special dance to honor those in the service - military, fire, police...which was really meant to honor my husband's best childhood friend who couldn't be a part of special day because he was deployed with the Marine Corp.  We had a dance to figure out who the couple was that had been married the longest and presented the woman with a bridal bouquet of her own.  We had two who had been married for 46 years!  Such a testament to beauty of marriage.  Still makes me swoon with romantic thoughts.

One very cool and sentimental part of our wedding was the food, if you can believe that.  I had known the caterer since I was twelve.  I became very close with the family and ever since I was twelve he'd been saying I'm doing the food at your wedding.  So nine years later, after having passed the business on, we hired the company for our special day.  I walk into the church and who do I see....he had come back to run the catering that day.  I totally bawled my head off.   Every person we had at our wedding meant something to us.  None of those attendance were people that were random friends of our parents, which is crazy to think about it because it was so many people.  But Christopher and I had been involved with so much - volunteer work, boyscouts, dance, two churches over the years, different jobs, family friends that remained close to us over the years.  I even had a kindergarten teacher who my family went to church with as well.  We played a slideshow during our first dance, which happened to be the first slow dance we ever danced to on that very first date to junior prom - Angel of Mine by Monica...which incidentally I had engraved on his wedding band.  Mine says, "My Princess" and then the date in military form of course, LOL - 14AUG2004.  Such a nerd.  Our cake topper was my parent's cake topper, with a couple things added to it like purple roses and some green ribbon.

Now onto some pictures......

hubby's best friend 

 my sister telling the hubbs to watch out, and me pointing to my guy friends that will beat him up, LOL!

you can see a picture of my parents cutting their cake over there 

my husband's second parents, the parents of his friend who was deployed 

 getting down

 can you tell it was a good time?

pictures of my aunt and uncle and grandparents on their wedding years (August 14) 

sparklers,another friends friends have used since then!