Our Reception!

Well, here it is everyone! The last installment of wedding posts - kind of bittersweet, you know? But, it is exciting to finally have all of these beautiful pictures posted! I cannot say enough how wonderful it was to have Melissa from A&M Photography taking our photos. She's kind of become the Sowers/Tubbs/Frook family photographer, and I look forward to her documenting lots of milestones for Nathan and I!

I am so pleased with how everything turned out for our reception. Both of our families worked hard to make my vision a reality and I think it was a big hit!

The main "attraction" (other than the bride and groom of course ;) was our waffle bar! People could choose to grab an already done waffle or try their hand at one of three waffle irons. Then there were lots of topping to choose from - jams, chocolate, powdered sugar, syrup, whipped cream...

For our cake we did brownies. I am definitely a brownie person, I would choose it over cake any day! For the couples cake, I made three heart shaped brownies from some cake pans I got at Joanns, stacked them on top of each other and dusted them with powdered sugar. Our cake toppers were penguins! Nathan has loved penguins for forever and that means I love them too. They have kind of been our thing for as long as we've been together, so it just made sense. When I was looking for some, I found the cutest ones ever on etsy, but with a price tag of $125, they were WAY out of my budget! I have dabbled with clay over the years and some might say I was pretty good at it, so I decided to go ahead and give it a try! Not sure everyone was super confident they would turn out, but in the end I'm pretty sure they were one of my favorite parts of our whole wedding!

For favors, we had a candy bar with little bags for people to fill up. I spent the 9 months before our wedding scouring goodwill for all the different containers and even recruited Nathan's sisters! I love the ones we found and the old fashioned vibe it brought.

Alright, so now for how all this went down ;) my cousin, Daniel, graciously agreed to me our MC and he was wonderful! After we all walked down the aisle we waited for about 10 min. so that the food could be brought out and just so we could have a breather. Sarah fixed my hair some and took out my veil and then it was time for our entrance. We went ahead and made the rounds, saying hi to everyone and thanking them for joining in our celebration, and then it was time for our first dance.

We danced to "A Thousand Years" by Christina Perry. Yes, yes, I know it is technically a twilight song, but I have never seen the movies, I've just heard it, practically everywhere and I literally felt that exact way while Nathan and I were long distance courting. It brings me to tears every time I listen to it! It was perfect. 

And yes, I sang it to him ;) 

Then we cut the cake while my cousins helped Nathan's Mom set up the wedding party's table.

We all got a chance to eat and fellowship before the speeches were made. 

Jaquelyn and Hayden were our Matron of Honor and Best man - they both did a great job sharing and it was so wonderful to hear from them! They have meant a lot in our lives, especially mine.

After the speeches and a little more milling about, we were ready to blow that place ;) 
Of course the groomsmen, plus certain brides cousins took it upon themselves to decorate our car. It was pretty funny because Nathan and his whole family are AVID Gator fans and Seminoles have NO part in anything ;) Well played, well played.

Sadly it was raining so hard I think it all washed off after a few minutes. 
For our send off, everyone was able to grab a bag of sprinkles!

I had thought of that idea because I didn't really want bubbles, but I wanted something that would be biodegradable. I thought I was so original until I Pinterest'ed the idea ;) 

One of my favorite things about the send off pictures is zooming in and seeing all of the different faces. I think Daniels, Stevens, (Both cousins) were some of the best. They look so happy for us -Blush Face-

It made for some pretty cool pictures, but who knew sprinkles could get so many places! See my hair up there? Well there were even more sprinkles in every place imaginable, including every little fold in my dress, of which there were many! We still had sprinkles on our floor when we got back from the honeymoon. And who knew sprinkles stain! =O I obviously wasn't thinking too clearly when I was planning this... Oh well! All those stains on my dress are just memories. ;)

Then all that was left was to ride off into the sunset, er... Rainstorm. It was fabulous and perfect and lovely and fun all rolled into one package!

Thanks for sticking around as I made my way through all these posts! It was wonderful remembering all the details and emotions of our big day. We also have a video which I would love to share, except I need to figure out how to edit it down to just moments, unless you really want to watch the entire hour or so =P So whether or not I will share will depend on if I figure all of that out. 

Until next time...

Jessica