December 7th - Wedding Day! - Part 8
After I returned from my bathroom break, we were told that our guests were on their way to the reception from the cocktail hour. We “hid” in Martha’s Vineyard and watched our guests file into Ariel’s, get their chocolate escort cards, and find their tables. There was a wedding assistant there to supervise, in case any of our guests had questions.
While we were in Martha’s Vineyard, we chatted with DJ Elliot a little bit. Also, one of our guests (my high school/college ex-boyfriend, actually) came up to me to tell me that he told my mom during the cocktail hour that he didn’t like her?!?!
I had a small panic moment until my mom came up to tell me that she had a GREAT conversation with him where he told her that she was always right about everything. So I guess that was a complete miscommunication between them, but it worked out in my favor!
Once our guests were seated, Elliot wrangled our wedding party for our grand entrances, and then we entered Ariel's. I can’t for the life of me remember what song he used for the grand entrance. Maybe it’ll be in our video, and I’ll remember!
My parents
Jeff’s parents
Jay and Haley
Jon and Samantha
And then us! I was very particular about wanting to be announced as “Amanda and Jeff,” since I’m not changing my name.
Then we took to the dance floor for our first dance. We danced to “Define Dancing” from Wall-E.
I love the set-up of Ariel’s, especially how everyone can watch the special dances from the raised up area.
After the first dance, we headed to sit at our sweetheart table, and Jon came up to stand by us for his speech.
Jon did a bit about how he lost his notes but then said that he never actually wrote notes to begin with. He told me later that he actually did have notes and actually did lose them! Luckily, his speech was still really good without them!
Jon told a story about how when they were kids, he and Jeff would get baseball caps signed by all the characters when they visited Disney World. To continue this tradition, Jon brought a white Disney hat for all of our wedding guests to sign!
Then my sister came up to do her speech.
She talked about how her favorite couple was “Jeff and Amanda… and me.”
Both Jon’s and Samantha’s speeches were so sweet! I obviously knew that our siblings approved of our marriage since we all get along so well, but it was still so nice to hear about how they are both really embracing their sibling’s spouse as part of their family.
And after the speeches, it was time to eat! Jeff and I each had a server to make our plates, so we wouldn’t accidentally get food on ourselves.
Here was our menu...
Build your own Cobb salad, with choice of vinaigrette, ranch, or bleu cheese dressing:
Purple Peruvian potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, and truffle macaroni and cheese action station with this assortment of toppings. If I can identify them correctly, there is butter, pancetta, bacon bits, broccoli, scallions, candied walnuts, cheese, breadcrumbs, sour cream, brown sugar, and peas. There was also a heated pan that's not pictures that had the braised beef short ribs... yum!
Assorted seasonal vegetables:
Angus filet with choice of drunken cherry sauce or horseradish:
Parmesan crusted chicken with choice of marinara or alfredo sauce:
I asked for everything on my plate except for the chicken and the sweet potatoes.
Note the bowl of walnuts behind the table sign. During our menu tasting, Jeff said he wished he could eat a whole bowl of the candied walnuts from the topping bar. Kristie remembered this and had a bowl put on our table! She wasn’t even there, but she still made it happen!
Then we had some time to eat. I think I mentioned this in my glad I did/wish I had post, but I had only one bite of everything except for zucchini. A few minutes into dinner, I realized that the only thing I could stomach was the zucchini, so I had one of the servers bring me a plate of just that to eat. I do wish I could go back in time and eat more. But I was just too nervous and my dress was too squeezy for me to feel hungry.
In the next update: parent dances and more reception!