Lastly, the best part, THE PARTY!
After the ceremony we moved the guests up to the barn for happy hour and apps while Dustin and I finished up photos with our family. Then we made our grand entrance with a first dance as husband and wife. We chose our favorite song, “Closer” by St Lucia. It was unrehearsed and fun! We know all the lyrics and sang them to one another between laughs.
“I’ve got a feeling we will never get closer than this
I can’t imagine there’s a way to get closer than this”
-Seemed very appropriate!
Following our dance and mingling for a 15-20 minutes Dustin and I each grabbed a signature cocktail and went off and had that private meal I talked about in this post.
Our caterer was the wildly popular and local Sun in My Belly. They did a fantastic job with not only the food but also the set up and handling of the flow. I know that people want to make you feel good about your wedding but we had sooooo many attendees tell us the food was the best they’ve ever had at a wedding and then tell us they weren’t just saying that! Seriously, they crushed the menu!
*All photos by Ben and Colleen except the above which was taken with my Iphone*
We didn’t get the photographers all the pieces to our suite in time but I wanted to share the calligraphy Sarah did for our menu and envelope! Also shows our full menu. Our favorite app was the fried green tomato topped with pimento cheese and favorite entree was the shrimp and grits-can you tell we are both Southerners??!!
Since our venue was over an hour outside of the city it made finding a wedding cake that didn’t require a $100-$150 travel fee difficult. After lots and lots of email let downs I decided to go with an easier idea – multiple smaller cakes that could be easily transported. So glad we went with this route! We used Metro Bakery and asked friends to pick up for us. They were delicious and gave our guests plenty of options! I only tried two, the lemon zinger (lemon cake, raspberry filling, lemon cream cheese frosting) and cuatro leches (yellow cake soaked in four milks, kahlua buttercream frosting)-both moist and packed with flavor!
We had the traditional list of speeches before the real party went down. Since it had started sprinkling and everyone was inside we all just stood around the barn making it more casual which I really liked!
Dustin and I love to dance and so do our friends! At one point they formed a circle around us and would jump in to have a dance with him, me or BOTH! So many special moments to cherish.
Not that we played much into it but we did get married on Halloween so I brought along some masks and hats from my workplace’s prop closet (I work at a studio!) mostly for the photobooth but they made their way onto the dance floor just as I had hoped!
Ben and Colleen had smoke bombs that we set off and though it was raining it turned out pretty cool!
My blonde bookends-brothers Brad and Buck!
Our photobooth was a makeshift creation. I made the background from leftover dud wedding invites and rented some lighting. We had difficulty getting the light to fire with the remote system so one of our photographers helped run it (yall rule!) Scrolling through all these photos was a riot!
That concludes the Smith – Winchester wedding! Sad to see it’s all done but the memories and photos will live on FORRREEVVVERRRRR!
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