Recap: They've got moves

Paul and I love to dance, so having good dance music at our wedding was very important to us. While we originally thought that having a band was a priority for us, as we thought about it more we realized that with our budget and our mixed group of friends, having a DJ who could play a diverse selection of music would be a better idea.

Luckily, when Paul was in college he spent a year managing his college radio station. One of the perks of him basically living in the radio station basement for a year, is that he can forever use the DJ equipment and pull from the radio station stacks. We put together a list of suggestions for his friend (who also DJ'd at the radio station with him) and then left the rest to him. What he came up with was an awesome selection of music--from funk and soul to hip hop to electronica pop dancy stuff. It was a good time.

Starting out the night. We didn't do a first dance because nobody needs to watch me sway around with P. for two minutes. We had the DJ set up on my parent's hot tub deck, which doubled as a way to mask the hot tub from looking ugly.

The jacket came off pretty fast, and I'm already not wearing shoes.

We had some amazing kids at our wedding. I couldn't imagine not having young folks there. Their parents were all ready to leave way before they were!

After a bit of dancing, and I think for a lot of people, more of the sangria, the dancing got a little crazy (and hilarious).

There was apparently an unofficial, off the dance floor party, going on as well.

My husband's step-sister isn't near old enough to drink sangria, but she had insane moves. She challenged my sister's boyfriend to a dance-off, which turned into several of our friends and relatives break dancing (which, unfortunately, nobody really got a great picture of).


I think P. is pretty dang sexy when he dances. I, on the other hand, look like a crazy fool...
My dress kept coming unbustled, so I tied it in a knot.

Our friends changed into their jeans and converse, because why not?

And my hair came down...
And suddenly it was a good idea to get down on the floor to take a picture.
And I don't even know what happened here...

My friends are going to love me for posting these pictures on the internet!

The night ended around midnight or so. In part because some of our guests were camping in my parent's yard and had started to go to bed, and in part because I was really, really tired. We'd thought about going to a bar to after party, but we ended up just heading back to the B&B for sleep.

Wedding Recap: Dinner & Dessert

On our budget, a day of coordinator wasn't going to happen. Our dj was also a friend of ours, and while he's a great dj, didn't also want to play MC and boss everyone around. That meant that once the reception started, things happened when they happened. No dinner exactly at six or cake cutting at seven on the dot. Things just happened.

I'm going to do a detailed food post later, but our dinner was a combination of do it yourself and a very flexible caterer.
At one point before dinner I walked into my parent's kitchen and found my mom, my sister, my best friend/brideswoman, her mom, and her sister all making salads. While some of you are probably thinking that I shouldn't have had to go in the kitchen, that we all should have been out enjoying the party, I promise that all of these women were more than happy to take a few minutes for the sake of salad. We had a strict, nobody is obligated to help, but we know we have enough friends who will want something to do to make it work, policy.

We served dinner buffet style. There was some attempt to have people go by table, but as soon as people saw the buffet line, they were in it. Unfortunately, that meant that people at the same table, didn't necessarily have their food at the same time, and didn't necessarily eat together.


Although part of the joy of having a very casual wedding was that people who showed up to an empty table just went and sat with another group. Problem solved!

I had no sense of time all day, so I'm not actually sure how long dinner took. I do know, based on our iPod playlists, that we ran out of our two hour and twenty minutes of music (from the end of the ceremony) sometime around the middle-end of dinner. One of our friends ran up and stuck his iPod in for the rest of dinner so our dj could finish eating. I wouldn't have realized that happened except that he was sitting at my table. People are stealthily helpful.

In planning the wedding, P. and I had decided that we wouldn't make a big deal about cutting the cake and pie we had for dessert. But since we'd both been busy mingling for most of the reception to that point, and it felt like we hadn't even really seen each other, we decided to cut the pie together instead of just having the caterer do it. We didn't really make (or even encourage) people to watch us, though it ended up happening a bit. The kids at our wedding were particularly interested in the whole bit--mostly because they were trying to scope out the different flavors we had available.

Since our dinner playlist (that I'd carefully selected to end with dessert music) was long since gone, our friend switched up his iPod to Devotchka for pie cutting & dessert. I highly recommend Devotchka for cake/pie cutting music. I can't tell you how many people came up to us to ask who it was (or if it was Devotchka). Even our photographer was excited. And if you don't know who Devotchka is--for shame! Go listen now!

Since we'd had our pie first, while people were finishing up their dessert, we got the dancing started.

Up next in recaps: Break dancing, I get down on the ground, my dress gets tied in a knot, and other legit and non-legit behavior...

Wedding Recap: Reception, Part 1

Very continently, our ceremony was in my parent's front yard and our reception was on their back lawn. They call it their mullet house (business in the front, party in the back). So after the ceremony everyone signed the wedding certificate and helped us move the chairs to the backyard (an easy way to save $100 or so--only rent one set of chairs).

P. and I ended up getting stuck at the fence between the front and back saying hi to people in an impromptu receiving line. I can't really say I particularly enjoyed that part of the night. Taking pictures with an endless stream of people wasn't that fun and we didn't really get any time to ourselves after the ceremony. While it did give us a chance to say hi to some people I didn't talk to again during the reception, in hind site I wish we had ducked into the reception and not waited out there.

(As an aside, I made that path by deconstructing a wood pile my dad was going to get rid of, placing the logs in a path, and then raking the middle. It was very easy, free, and a good way to get people where we wanted them.)

While we were out doing the meet & greet, people were out back having a good time drinking, eating appetizers, and playing with the photobooth.

At some point we made our way into the reception, and I went straight for the food...
My mom arranged the appetizers. She had been insisting she could do it herself, but I was happy to see that some friends stepped in to help set them up and keep them filled and let her enjoy the party too.

That happened with a lot of things at our reception... Since we hadn't hired many official vendors, friends and family were doing a lot of the work. It was nice to see other people step in to help them or relieve them so everyone could enjoy the party.

During appetizers and dinner we'd set up a play list on our iPod so our DJ/friend could hang out with us and eat. That turned out really well and I'd highly recommend the iPod as background music.

I have two younger sisters. While the middle one really wanted to be a bridesmaid (it was the first thing she said when I told her I was getting married), the younger one did not want any part of it. I was sort of sad to not have her around most of the day while we were taking pictures, so we spent some time together at the reception (and you'll see later that I made her dance for the first time in her life...she's a shy one).

While we were all playing in the backyard, the puppies where playing and getting love from our friends...

Hazel (our puppy) doesn't normally look so chubby, but she was getting fed people food left and right that weekend. By Monday morning her poor stomach looked like it was going to explode. She seemed perfectly happy though.

Up next...what we ate.

Wedding Recap: A Marriage by Friends

While I already did a detailed post of our wedding ceremony here (including the text of the ceremony), to continue in order I thought I'd go on with another ceremony recap here. I meant for it it be short, but somehow it's the longest recap post yet! I really loved our ceremony. It takes the cake for my favorite part of our wedding. That surprised me because I really didn't care that much about it prior to the wedding. I kind of thought that it was something to get through to get to the party fun part. But, it's also the part of the wedding I've gotten the most positive feedback about. People loved it.

First, a bit of background. Since neither of us are religious, we knew we didn't want a religious ceremony. But we also didn't want to pay some random person to officiate a ceremony for us. It just seemed too impersonal for something so personal. So we asked around to our friends, and finally came up with the idea to have a quaker-style ceremony. Basically we had one of our friends M.C. the ceremony (our program called her the "Ringmaster") and we opened it up to others to speak.

We spread the word before the wedding that we'd be doing that--we posted something on our wedding website and then made sure to pass the word along to people we didn't think were checking there. I have to admit that I was nervous about enough people speaking, but honestly, even a few of the things that were said would have been enough. Everything was so touching. And as it turns out a ton of people spoke!

P. & our ringmaster (Susan) head up to the front for the start of the ceremony. Apparently P was very concerned that they'd brought water up to the front because he thought I'd be upset that it was in the pictures. I actually didn't notice until he told me.

We literally didn't figure out how we were all going to get to the front until about ten minutes before the ceremony. At that point it was decided that the easiest way would be for P. and Susan to go to the front first and then have the rest of the bridal party walk down the aisle. Then my dad and I followed. Apparently we were cracking up the whole way. I think it was because we both realized we were walking insanely fast and were going to get to the front about two minutes before the song ended. Or maybe just because we are both dorks.
Once we were all up front we stood up there for a bit while the song played and we tried to get the attention of our DJ to cut it (seriously it had about two minutes left).
I think this picture is right after I walked partway up the aisle where he could see me and made a big "cut" sign to the dj. I'm classy.
The wedding party stood for the first part of the ceremony, where Susan explained a quaker ceremony and we said our vows, which we'd written for each other and kept secret. They actually ended up being almost identical, which was pretty sweet.
There were a lot of funny moments in our ceremony. We were all really nervous so that helped.
Paul read his vows first. They were very sweet and kind of funny...
I went next. I was very, very nervous. I hate speaking in front of people, and I tend to do this rocking back and forth thing (uh, sort of like I have a tick or something), so I was trying to focus on not doing that while still being in the moment.
After we said our vows, we all sat down and Susan opened it up to others to speak. I won't go into details about what all was said, but there was everything from poetry, to political rants (his brother), to Darwin (my dad), to stories about our childhoods, to mocking my ex-boyfriends (from my best friend's dad).



His dad played us a song he wrote while his step-sister sang...
There was a lot of hugging...

After everyone had spoken who wanted to do so, P's friend read our wedding certificate and we signed it. After the ceremony everyone else signed it (including some people multiple times).
Then Susan took over again and read a bit about our hands and how we use them in affection and work and looking at our rings on them reminds us of our love. We asked everyone to hold hands for this bit. Pictures of people holding hands make me happy.
I'm really bad at right and left. Something that slipped through the cracks during my homeschooling youth. Anyway, I couldn't remember what hand I was suppose to put P's ring on so I had to do that trick where you make an "L" shape with your fingers to tell which hand is left (your left hand makes an L, your right makes a backwards L). Here's me doing that...
People laughed at me. It was fine :)

Then Susan said something like "Since I assume you're moved to do so, you should go ahead and kiss!" So we did. Only we looked really funny so there are no good pictures of it. I swear. In hind site, the problem with us kissing is that we were standing too far apart so we were leaning in like crazy to try and kiss. Stand close to your partner!
There were horses running around in the background while we walked up the aisle. They were excited too.