Wedding Recap! (Blogger isn't cooperating, so I had to put most of the text at the end... but I'm posting anyway!)

I have to admit... I love, love, loved our wedding!  We were blessed with gorgeous weather in an otherwise rainy and cold week, and everything went off without a hitch! 

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but we got married in the Adirondack mountains, in a beautiful old church.  

I loved the moose heads...  very Adirondack-ey!

My shoes.  So smart that they read books!

My handsome groom, getting ready at his parents' house.

My Something Blue... a lace handkerchief my mother bought for me years ago on a trip to Venice.

"Dear God, please let it fit!!"

It fit!

The groom, best man, ushers and one of our ringbearers (we only had one attendant each, in the spirit of keeping it simple).

My handsome groom!

Getting ready with my BFFs!

Ringbearer meets The Ring "Barker!"  Yes we DID have a dog in our wedding! :)

The Ring Barker stops for some lovin'!

The MOH!  Note the bluegrass band up in the balcony!

Waiting to enter the church with my father....

Dad, walking me down the aisle!!!  He was saying the funniest stuff to me to keep us both from tearing up!!

With my sweet groom!  Look at the adorable smile on our priest's face (I've known him since I was 7, and he did the most incredible and personal wedding mass for us -- it was just amazing!)

The happy couple!

The florist did such a beautiful job!!

In our gettaway car!

On the club property...

Smooching in a field....

Bluegrass and cocktails on the porch!

I made this sign for our photographic guest book -- we had props and lots of Polaroid-type film.  The book is hysterical!!

The flowers and tables!  Check out all my eBay-purchased milk vases!

Lawn bowling between the ceremony and reception!

How gorgeous does Nora (A Traveling Bandita) look?!?  We got to meet her adorable new baby over the weekend, who is a beautiful, sweet girl!



Seriously preppie!!



Entering the reception for the first time!!

Dip dip dip dip!!

I love this one -- everyone is having so much fun on the dance floor!

With my husband!

Steve, making me laugh during his speech. :)

My speech!



Cutting the beautiful cake that a friend of Steve's family made for us!



Blogger isn't cooperating, so I couldn't finish telling the story above!  Hopefully the photos did a good job of conveying how happy we were, and how much fun we had celebrating our wedding!  We were very fortunate, in that our close family friend, Father F., who I've known since I was 7 years old, was able to come to do our ceremony.  He made it so personal, and so meaningful, and it added so much to the celebration.

We really wanted our ceremony (really, the entire weekend) to be very personal to us, and to be reflective of us.  Soooo, that led to us having lots of special touches.  Honesly, I was worried that our wedding was going to come across as really hokey!!  We had Steve's favorite dog (his dad's Yellow Lab puppy) as our Ring Barker, toting the rings down the aisle on a caribiner attached to her collar.  We also had a bluegrass band play the ceremony music.... And I walked down the aisle to a bluegrass instrumental version of Bob Marley's One Love!  

During communion, they played a gorgeous version of "Down to the River to Pray" (the Alison Krause version), which was just stunning.  And... one of our readings was "All You Need Is Love" by the Beatles.  Funny enough, it all came together so nicely and really gelled!

Between the wedding and reception, we had a bit of down-time, so our friends had a little lawnbowling tournament on the green next to the clubhouse.  Then, the bluegrass band struck up tunes on the porch and the cocktails started flowing!  I had a rum punch as our signature cocktail... why YES, I DID buy those straws just for that occasion!  (BTW, lucky for me, picking a red cocktail for the reception did not backfire on me!!)

All my months of collecting milk glass vases on eBay paid off, and the flowers looked so pretty at the reception!  I was so happy with that, as well as the programs and menus that I made (sorry for not posting -- they have too much personal information on them to put on here). 

We had a second band come to play the reception --this was a compromise, since I would have loved to have a bunch of dance music a la Lady Gaga, Rhianna, etc., but Steve is not a fan.  So, we had the band play a few old standards and a whole lot of funk!  And, Steve even got out and played two songs with the band toward the end of the night!

It was such a wonderful day -- and such a wonderful weekend.  I loved every minute!