Wedding Highlights

I'm a planner and a reflector, not usually an "in-the-moment" kind of person, so I knew I'd have to be extremely conscious of trying to slow down to enjoy my wedding moment by moment. And, for the most part, I was able to enjoy watching my wedding unfold. Sure, there were a few things that flew by and I don't remember (like most of our first dance), but below are some of the many highlights I will always cherish.

1) Instead of lifting my dress to hand it to me so I could circle Matt during the ceremony, my sister lifted the dress up and set it back down, spreading the train out to better display it to our guests. "Pick up the dress" my mom hissed at Stacey. So she did as instructed and lifted the dress up high, then spread out the train again. The audience got a good laugh (and look at my layers of tulle) before I told Stacey to hand me the dress. Leave it to Stacey to make the moment about her...

2) My cousin's wife, Jennifer, grabbed me during the cocktail hour to tell me that she was watching Matt during the ceremony and she was so touched by the look of love in his eyes. She said that he just looked at me with such absolute love that it nearly made her cry. She gushed that she wanted her daughters to experience that kind of love. It was really sweet.

3) It's funny now, but I will always remember the horrified look on my cousin Danny's face when he came up to me to tease me about Stacey.
"So," he started, "does your sister have a secret?"
"No," I replied flatly.
"Are you sure?" he pried, his eyebrows raised, his giant grin getting even bigger.
"Yes."
"No secret???"
"Yeah, she has a secret. Her secret is that she's fat."
He looked at me in shock and horror, swallowed, and kind of backed away. I didn't know, Danny! She convinced me that she was just fat! (I'll write more about this in another post.)

4) When my good friend Darci was helping me with one of the millions of things she helped me with, she said, "you know, this is exactly the wedding you always wanted to have. You might not know it right now, but trust me, this YOUR wedding."

5) Matt's speech was so touching that it was what finally made me cry that day (again, this deserves its own post).

6) At one point during the dancing, my friend Amete yelled, "this is like Jen and Matt's totally 80s wedding!" I laughed--sure, we had songs from Pulp, Violent Femmes, The Smiths, The Cure, Blondie, Modern English, The Go Go's and more but, oh, right--Jen and Matt's Totally 80's Wedding was Awesome!

7) Amete and I were dancing when he leaned over to share, "I'm probably the only person here who thinks she's totally hot dressed like that," he said about Jen, our friend in the 3-piece suit. "You're probably the only one here who thinks she's a she," I responded.

8) After all the adults (our relatives and parents' friends) had left, I decided that all of our friends needed to do a shot together. The bartenders came to the dance floor with trays of some sort of pink shot and as a group, we all toasted and drank it down. Yay, shots!

9) The spontaneous bubble dance!! A few minutes before Matt and I were to be driven to the hotel in the town car, my mom passed out little containers of bubbles to everyone. The idea was for our friends to line up outside and blow bubbles at us as we passed by and got into the car. However, once people got the bubbles, they started blowing them at each other and around the dance floor. Erasure's "A Little Respect" came on (ok fine, it was a totally 80's wedding) and Matt and I raced to the dance floor. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but all of our friends surrounded us as we danced, blowing bubbles around us. We spent the song dancing together, watching the bubbles, feeling like we were in our own private bubble, wedding snow-globe.

Yay, spontaneous bubble 80's dance party wedding of love!