Reception Detail #4: The Cake

Our wedding cake was DELISH!  Thanks to Edible Designs by Jessie, we were able to design a cake inspired by my wedding dress. She mimicked the lace at the top of my dress and then the pleating and twisting throughout the rest of it. At the bottom was our monogram and at the top were some lovely ivory roses. The cake had an ivory pearl finish to it, as well. We decided to go with one flavor for each of the tiers. We sure liked all of the flavors that we got to taste, but thought it would be nice to be uniform and share the same cake with all of our guests. Our flavor was this absolutely delicious raspberry cream cheese. It was our favorite out of all we tried and was quite a hit with our guests.

At the reception, the cake was set atop an antique looking buffet table. It was one of the focal points of the room, because it was set a little high up and it also was lit with some pin spots for dramatic effect. It looked absolutely gorgeous and we received tons of compliments on it!

 

 

About to cut the cake!

Posing

 

Cutting... mmm.... raspberry cream cheese

Hacking into it

Feeding

Yummy yummy kissy kissy

The cake was quite lovely and we enjoyed every second of it!

Six Months

We survived. 
We've crossed our first milestone.

Together.

We've been married six months.

Six months is not something to brag about.
Six months is not that long.
But this six months means something to me.

Nothing particularly exciting happened.
We haven't gone anywhere fancy.
But, we've been married six months
and this six months means something to me.

For me,
it's been the best six months.



Love,
Megan

Reception Detail #3: Special Dances

There was a lot of dancing at the wedding. Lots.

Our dance floor

For our first dance, we started out with "Beautiful" by Me'Shell N'degeocello. And we surprised our guests by "Rick Rolling" them and dancing to "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley.

Well, I have absolutely NO professional photos of that. That irritates me...um, yeah. Here are a few from facebook that I got tagged in (and none are from the 'serious' first dance)....

Rick Rollin'

Never gonna give you up!

When others joined us!

I just love this picture of Greg's grandmother

Since I have divorced parents, we thought it would be fun to incorporate everyone into the father/daughter/mother/son dances. We played snippets of songs for each couple and each set of parents danced with us during their songs. For my dad and stepmom (Olga), we danced to "Y Es Por Ti" by Juanes. For Greg's parents, we danced to "Here and Now" by Paul Baloche. For my mom and Daddyo, we danced to "Hero" by Mariah Carey.

Olga and Greg

Me and my dad

 

Me and Jay

Greg and his mom

Me and Daddyo

Greg and Mom

We also incorporated a traditional Lebanese dance into the reception, also! Greg's paternal side of the family is Lebanese, so it was nice to pay respects to their heritage. Plus, it's fun! It's called a "dabke" and is usually done at weddings and big celebrations. It's basically a huge line dance and everyone participates! It was tons of fun and we had most of our guests on the dance floor! (Here is what a traditional dabke looks like in action, if you're curious)

Dabke!

Our last dance was a hit. We chose "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond. Not only is this song just so much fun, it pays homage to Greg's roots to Massachusetts and the Boston Red Sox! Everyone was so into it, they even picked up candles off of the tables and waved them in the air!

"Reaching out.... touching me.... touching youuuuuu"

 "Sweet Caroline... BAH BAH BAH!!!!"

"SO GOOD! SO GOOD! SO GOOD!"

It was so much fun to incorporate tradition and innovation into the special dances of our reception. I mean, who else could do a traditional Lebanese dance but also "Rick Roll"?! I also think that our family, friends, and guests enjoyed them just as much as we did!

Reception Detail #2: Toasts

There were many toasts/blessings at our wedding. It was awesome. I'm glad our family members were able to speak to us and they were so eloquent. There was never an awkward moment and we truly appreciate all that was said.

Greg and I were just handed our champagne flutes and we are enjoying them :)

 

Greg's mother, Mary, welcoming everyone to the reception and telling us that Jay (his dad) was hoping to share a few words and a prayer with us

 

Jay had such a wonderful speech and a beautiful blessing prayer

 

Mom's turn. She thanked everyone for coming and blessed us as well!

 

Josh's best man speech. It was awesome. He definitely had some comic touches but was also touching!

 

Russ's best man speech. Same thing with him - he was funny and also touching. We appreciated it!

 

Colin hadn't originally planned to speak and didn't prepare anything, but my mom insisted he talked, which ended up being awesome. He had some wonderful things to say, especially how the boys in our family weren't outnumbered anymore!

 

Us enjoying the toasts

 

Christine's maid of honor speech

toasting flutes

She included my favorite quote from the Real Housewives of New Jersey: "Happy Wife, Happy Life!"

Salud!

I really enjoyed every aspect of the toasts/blessings. We have such an incredible family and feel so blessed to have them come together to make one big happy family!

Reception Detail #1: Our Arrival & Dinner

I've decided to break up the blog posts about our wedding reception into specific details. There are way too many things to talk about in one post, and that way I can focus on small things and talk about the memories and the feelings that go along with these details. As I've said before, I tend to have a bad memory, so this would be a great thing to go back and look at (provided that blogger doesn't crash and take my memories with it).

The first detail of our reception I'd like to focus on is our arrival and dinner Maggiano's. After the group portraits were finished at the church, we stayed behind to take some portraits with John. After those photos were finished, Greg and I hopped into the limo and spent a short ten minutes alone as we rode to the reception. The day was already going by so fast and we couldn't believe that we were already married!

Upon arriving at Maggiano's, we took a few more photos with John and the walked upstairs to our lovely reception area.

 

Boy, was it beautiful! We had custom lighting and the works!! Candles! Flowers! Music! We were ushered into the side room where the hors d'oeurves were set up for cocktail hour, which had just ended. Our wedding party was also gathered in the room, and my wedding planner and her assistants were lining them up to be announced. Once we smelled the food, we quickly realized that we were both hungry! We immediately tore into the bruschetta and artichoke dip. Our wedding party members were giggling at us as we were hunched over the buffet tables stuffing our faces. After what seemed like one second, our bridal party was being announced. We heard the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (if you click on that link, listen at 3:07) blast through the room as they were walking into the room.

Cami and Brandon

Alexis and Colin

Caitlin and Kevin

Katie and Ken

Anne and Russ

Christine, Catherine, and Josh

Our entrance music began blaring, "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana. The crowd cheered as we made our grand entrance. It was epic. I will also have you know that Greg was the one, surprisingly, who chose both entrance songs. They definitely sound like songs I would have chosen, being a symphonic choral singer and all, but nope! He did such a great job!

(Random Side Note: This is hilarious if you are familiar with Carmina Burana.)

We went straight to the head table and rested our feet for a bit. Dinner was served. They brought what seemed like endless amounts of food to our table, all delicious, and all we could not finish.

John also took our rings and took some pretty pictures with them, like this:

Yum

 Mmm... open bar. I think I went up once for some more champagne for my flute. That's about it.

I guess they liked the open bar

Mmm... foooood, and lots of it!

I approve of the food! See all those plates?!?

Tiramisu that I know is amazing but I didn't get to have

Dinner was... awesome. We still get compliments about how much everyone enjoyed the food. I guess that's one thing we didn't want to skimp on for this reception. You can get rubber chicken anywhere and forget it, but you'll always remember a great meal!

Here is our menu for the evening:

Cockail Hour

Artichoke and Spinach Al Forno

Bruschetta

First Course

Tomato Caprese

Chopped Salad

Second Course

Four Cheese Ravioli

Ziti Pomodoro

Salmon with Lemon and Herbs

Chicken Parmsean

Third Course

Tiramisu

Wedding Cake

Can we just say AH-MAZING?!