Happy Friday!

After not working for almost a month, this workweek felt sooooooo looooooong.  And exhausting.  Or maybe my body clock is still adjusting to American time?  All I know is that I fell asleep on the couch at 8:45 last night, so I for one, am happy to see the end of the week.

I had thought our reception pictures would be the easiest to pick and choose from, but I was so so wrong.  I wanted to post them all!  I kinda sorta narrowed it down but there were just so many details to share and happenings to show.  Here goes!

Instead of doing the normal send off photo (our photographer would’ve been gone by then and we wanted to stay for the whole reception), we set out streamers and did a “send in.”  I feel like the picture didn’t turn out as cool as it looked from my own eyes.

A short note on our reception space… it’s called The Studios at Overland Crossing and it is GORGEOUS.  When we were venue shopping, we realized pretty quickly that we wanted something bright, urban and out of the ordinary.  And as soon as we walked into The Studios we knew it was the one.  Also, the price was so reasonable and you reserve the space for the entire weekend.  We were able to do all our set up on Thursday and the two gals who work there rocked!  They are a well-oiled wedding set up machine.  We did very little actual decoration because we loved the space as it was.  I’m so happy with how it looked 🙂

We knew from the beginning that we wanted this at our wedding.  So funny!

We did all the menu cards, place cards and the seating chart board ourselves and it actually turned out to be a really fun project.  Except that part where I had to feed the place cards through the printer one by one…

This was the live band we picked.  They were crazy affordable and they ROCKED.  The dance floor was packed all night long.  Let’s just not discuss the part where they missed the “we need an emcee” memo and had Joey and I momentarily freaked out until they showed up right before we started the toasts.

Yes, my ring does basically fit inside Joey’s.

We had mugs and glasses with cute name tags for our wedding party and that picture of Joey and I makes me smile so much!

Sadly, this is the only food photo I have.  I know, how unlike me!  But we got a ton of good feedback on the food and I couldn’t have been happier.  Also, our caterer (Catering By Design) had the most amazing coordinator.  I didn’t expect him to have such a hand in anything past the food but he basically became our wedding coordinator and was taking such good care of everything that was going on around us so we didn’t have to do anything at all.  Seriously, I cannot say enough good things about he and his catering team.  Plus he sent us home with so many leftovers!

Our photographer got a bunch of shots of our guests during all the toasts and I seriously love them.  I don’t know how to explain it, but you can see the love in their eyes as they watch someone else pour out a loving speech and it’s all just one big lovefest that makes me feel all kinds of emotional.

I only cried once…

All of the toasts were AMAZING!  I’m sure we’ve all been to weddings where the best man/maid of honor were so clearly not prepared and gave an on-the-fly “I just like love you and stuff” toast, but all of our speakers were prepared and said the most beautiful and touching things.  I’ve never felt so loved 🙂

I am so thrilled with how our cake design turned out.  Our baker (Indulge Bakery) did an AMAZING job.  I had given her a picture of what we wanted and she executed it perfectly.  That piece Joey put in my mouth was all I ate at the reception but we had tons leftover and we enjoyed a piece as soon as we got back from our honeymoon and it was SO GOOD.  Red velvet is the way to my heart.

First Dance: “Make You Feel My Love” by Adele

Father-Daughter Dance: “In My Life” by the Beatles

Mother-Son Dance: “My Wish” by Rascal Flatts

How great is my dad’s face in that picture of us spinning?!

Party time!  We brewed all the beer for the reception — The Bride’s Had to Be You Hef & The Groom’s I’m So Lucky IPA — and we got lots of compliments!  I was worried when they were already switching out the first two kegs before dinner had even begun but we ended up with just the right amount.  Also, there was a signature strawberry margarita on the menu 🙂

True Story: I LOVE to dance.  Always have, always will.  I knew that’s what I wanted to be doing at our reception so I was the first one on the floor.  There was a brief moment (when Joey and I were dancing by ourselves) that I worried no one else wanted to dance.  But…

^^^ Epic!

^^^ More epic!

I think EVERYONE was on the dance floor!  Our band just kept pumping out fun songs (who knew everyone loved Mayer Hawthorne as much as I do?!) and everyone was out there all night long.  Even Hannah, who had a broken leg (!!!) was out there for a little bit!  There was many an epic dance circle and at one point I looked over and saw my mother-in-law with a drink in her hand, one of the boys’ ties and vests on and I was so happy.  Also, it’s seriously the best when someone you never expect to see dancing hits the dance floor.  I would know because that happened about 50 times that night.  I’ve never seen my own parents dance like that.  Just so amazing.

We had quite a few people advise us to be present and take it all in and I’m happy to say we did just that.  We held hands and looked out at the crowd before we walked back down the aisle and we leaned into each other and looked out at all our guests during dinner and it was so surreal and amazing.  It’s not often that you get to sit in a room filled with all the people you love.  It is overwhelming in the best possible way.

Now that it’s all over, all I have to say is that our wedding — from engagement, to honeymoon — was so perfect.  I keep thinking “Did that really happen?”  “Was it really that perfect?”  It was everything I had dreamt it would be and it lived up to every single outlandish expectation I had for it.  I wouldn’t have changed a single thing.  It was magical and so much fun and the memories are going to fill my heart with happiness for the rest of my life.  I know it.

P.S. I’m so ridiculously excited to be married to Joey 🙂

I’ll be honest, writing about our wedding almost a month after the fact is a little weird (and difficult).  My brain is still in honeymoon/vacation mode and it’s making it a little hard to transition back into things and to take myself back to wedding day frame of mind.

I feel like there are so many details and memories I want to write about but I’m having a hard time getting them out.  They’re not as crystal clear as they were the day after the wedding!  But I figure the only way to really get myself into wedding mode is to write about it, so here goes.  It’s ceremony talk time!

I so badly wanted wedding programs but we kinda exhausted our stationary budget on invitations (which I totally meant to bring so we could have a professional photo of all the pieces and we both forgot…) so we went the Etsy route.  Basically, there are a bunch of templates you can choose from then the designer can customize the colors, graphics and text.  They send the file and you can print them yourself.  The graphic designer we chose we such a sweetheart and I loved how the programs turned out!

We had Joey’s aunt and uncle set up a couple of tents for the wedding party, but I was the first one to arrive so this is me hanging out in the girls tent by myself 🙂  Also, it ended up being sweltering inside those tents.  Why didn’t we think of that before?

I won’t post every single guest photo but these two stand out to me because it’s all my parents’ sisters who don’t often get the chance to be in Colorado.  It meant so much to have them there.

So I never really got nervous, but I was getting pretty antsy while we waited to start the ceremony.  I think I was afraid the longer we waited, the more time I would have to get nervous.  Totally normal bride fears, right?  This picture blows me away.

I think Joey shocked everyone (myself included!) by shedding some actual tears!  That might sound like normal wedding behavior, but look, I’ve been with him for 7 1/2 years and I’ve probably seen him cry twice.  I didn’t notice, but he says his tears had all my girls in tears.  It was such a surprising, real and touching show of emotion.  I can’t think about it too hard or I cry!

Public speaking is probably my #1 fear (well that, and running out of peanut butter), but I felt so calm reading my vows.  All I could see was Joey in that moment.  We wrote them together except for two lines that we each filled in on our own and didn’t hear until the ceremony.  In mine, I promised to try to remember to turn the lights off before leaving the house and in Joey’s, he promised to turn off the lights that I always leave on.  It was so perfect.  And apparently very funny to me.

Since we didn’t do any kind of unity ritual, we opted to actually sign our marriage license.  So we were official right then and there!

Joey had the brilliant idea to play Hall & Oates “You Make My Dreams Come True” for the processional, so we danced our way back down the aisle and followed it up with a little twirl.

We hadn’t originally planned on taking too many photos at the park after the ceremony (this girl wanted to get her chipotle cream meatball on at cocktail hour!) but we ended up staying a little longer and getting a bunch of photos and I am SO GLAD.  They turned out stunning!!!  I guess that whole ordeal we went through to reserve the park was worth it.

Then we hopped in our get away car (that was so lovingly decorated!) and drove ourselves to the reception.  I won’t lie, it was a lot of fun to get so many looks, honks and waves from other drivers on the road.

Reception pictures are coming to you on Friday!