Next in line...

...is the reception. But before that, let's talk about this BIG thing in the works. Did you figure it out yet? Dan and I started our own website! We bought the domain on June 18th after Dan got back from his boys' weekend. I was in limbo on where to post the honeymoon photos and wedding photos so friends and family could download them. Back and forth... It was just the PUSH we needed to get our butts in gear on the site/business and server space ideas we had rolling around. After checking through quite a few domain names that were already taken, rye-designs.com was it.

So a lot of designing has gone on around here. I'm pulling up the designing end of this show, and Dan is obviously taking care of the programming end (with some surprising design work from him also.) We'll learn him some Photoshop yet! That's about it on the big news... things just coming together, looking cool, and will be up soon. MUCHO exciting! Still a lot to do before we're really "in business" like more samples, contracts, documents, documents, and more documents.

Little funny from the other day:
Dan: I'd like to have the first phase of our site up by Friday...
Vicki: Friday?! Yikes, you run a tight shift!
Dan: You mean a tight ship?
Vicki: Yeah, that too...
Dan: You remind me of the foreign girl from NCIS...

[Back to your regularly scheduled program.]

I don't think I mentioned anything about our guest book in the wedding post. Instead of a traditional book for guests to sign, we wanted something different there as well. We found a white wooden wishing well on sale at Hobby Lobby and decided to make cards out of metallic paper that said, "Wishes for the couple..." The guests wrote special messages and tossed their wishes into the well. Loved it. To save the cards and display them, we're going to take each card and match it up (hopefully) with the corresponding photo from our photographer, and put them all together in a 4x6 album.

Another special touch was our wedding favors. I looked and thought for months to come up with the perfect wedding favor. Since our theme included storybooks and happily-ever-afters, things like bookmarks and personalized candy tins (just because I liked them) topped our list. One day at church we were talking to someone about our favor dilemma and she mentioned the charity ideas she had seen at weddings lately. Dan and I had never discussed charity ideas, but it started to make sense. And it must have been the direction we were supposed to take, because soon Dan came up with the best idea ever. We decided to buy one children's book per guest... bought post-it papers... and asked guests to stick a special message inside each book. The best part of all - the books would go on the next mission trip with our church to Mamelodi, South Africa. For those children. And they would read the special messages. Soooooo precious!

If you've seen the photos already, there really isn't much extra to explain of the reception. It seemed to fly by in a flurry of music, food, dancing, talking to guests, and more dancing. As hard as I tried to really stop and take in the special moments, we were paraded from one event to another. Totally fun, but has left us looking at photos saying, "Wow, were we really there?!"

We had a limo for us and our four main party members (no juniors), and started the festivities with champagne. Once we got to the reception hall, our wedding party walked in to U2's "Beautiful Day" and we walked in to Duran Duran's "Sunshine." Such a fun song. The entire wedding party lined up on the dance floor so guests could take photos if they wanted. The rest of the night unfolded as follows...

1. FOOD - I inevitably dropped asparagus and sauce on my dress and Sheri used a Tide-to-go pen on it. We should've had our video camera making a commercial out of it.
2. Toasts - Best Man (Mike), Matron of Honor (Sheri), and my dad. I think Mike and Sheri had the audience laughing, while my dad had them crying.
3. Love Story - Too cool how Dan included a clip from our proposal video into the slide show
4. Cake Cutting - (Sarah McLachlan "Ice Cream") cut to ("Hit Me With Your Best Shot")
5. First Dance - (Jimmy Wayne "You Are")
6. Father/Daughter – (Heartland "I Loved Her First") At the end of this dance, my dad motioned for Dan to come to the dance floor so he could give me away. Such a tear-jerker when they hugged...there's a photo of that.
7. Mother/Son - (Taylor Hicks "Do I Make You Proud")
8. Garter Toss - (Justin Timberlake "Sexy Back") Had to put this song somewhere, and it was perfect! Dan gave me a personal dance, too hilarious. His friend, Alex, caught the garter.
   
9. Bear Toss for boys - Dan's little brother, Kris, caught it.
   
10. Bouquet Toss - ("Girls just want to have fun") Rob's girlfriend, Amy, caught it. My mom said, "Uh oh, Rob!"
    
11. Bear Toss for girls - A friend's daughter, Madison, caught it.
    
12. Money Dance - ("If I Had a Million Dollars") A ton of fun dancing and twirling!
    
13. Anniversary Dance – Multiple songs, Dan's grandparents were longest married!
    
14. Get the PARTY STARTED!!!

Once the reception was over we had to collect the things we wanted and divide them between parents. Our cake top, extra cake, charity books, our wishing well, whatever. Rob and his girlfriend drove us to our hotel near the airport. About halfway through the drive I seriously thought Rob would have to pull over, and I had Dan undo and pull out my bra so I could breathe! I felt better after that. Once we got in the room, I also had Dan pull out my zillion bobby pins so my head could breathe too!

All in all, it was a wonderful day and I wouldn't have asked for anything different (except the addition of more time). We have all of the video and photos to remember our big day forever, quirks and all. Just perfect. And if I've forgotten anything, I'm sure I'll hear about it from Dan or in the comments. ;) Can't thank our wedding party and families enough for all they did, for being there, and for making our day that much more memorable.

Another little funny - Dan told me the morning after that the reception was a huge blur for him... he didn't really hear the music or people talking to him, nothing. But while he was sleeping the entire reception played in his head. All of the conversations he had, all of the songs, our first dance - it all played back like he recorded it as he went along. I think his addiction to DVR has finally gotten to him. ;) At least he got to experience the whole reception, even if it was hours later, lol.