Happy Wedding Wednesday! I’ve been sharing our wedding photos with you all in chronological order and today we’ve made it up to our wedding day part four, dances and dinner. If you’re behind, you can catch up on all the other ones here: Part One: Getting Ready, Part Two: The Ceremony, and Part Three: Our Wedding Photos.
Our first dance song was Charles’s choice. He wasn’t too strongly opinionated on much, but he had a song he wanted as our first dance for awhile. A few years ago we were watching a season of The Voice and a contestant from Arkansas, where Charles is from, named Barrett Baber was on. He sang a song originally by Conway Twitty called ‘Lay you Down.’ The lyrics make it such a sweet song and Charles loved that version of it. He sang it for weeks to come to me! It was always so cute of him, so when he said he wanted it to be our first dance, I thought it was so sweet and was good with it!
If you read my post about what to do when things don’t go as planned at your wedding, then you know where I’m headed with this story. We sent our DJ the exact version of the song. We had joked before that it would be so funny if they played the original version of the song instead, so we sent clear instructions on which version it was with a link included. I am so not a honkey tonk kind of girl, which the original version definitely is, so that version would have been a big ‘no’ from me for our first dance, haha.
When we were walking back into our villa from taking our wedding photos, they started announcing us before I remembered I needed to bustle my dress. That’s usually a process, so I said ‘nevermind’ and we kept walking in. The DJ played our song and it was the original, Conway Twitty, honkey tonk version. We just looked at each other and started busting out laughing and were trying to say that was the wrong song. There was a slight language barrier with our DJ, although he did speak some English, but we weren’t able to get it straightened out, so we just said ‘whatever’ and went with it. As you’ll see from these pictures, we were both cracking up laughing the entire time, because we were a little unsure of how to even dance to that song! For reference, here is the original version versus the more modern version we were wanting.
Mid-way through the song our family and friends started slow clapping and were all dying laughing, too. One of my girlfriends and her husband had a hilarious conversation during the dance she told me about later. She was cracking up at our song and he gave her a hard time saying ‘that’s their song, don’t laugh.’ She was telling him there was no way I would agree to a honkey tonk song and that was the wrong version. When everyone realized it, they just started clapping slowly to the beat, which made it even more funny. I don’t think we even finished out the whole song because we were laughing too hard. Sweet Charles dipped me for a kiss, and then we were finished. After our hilarious, laughter-filled first dance, we each had dances with our parents. My dad and I danced to My Girl by The Temptations and Charles and his mom danced to In My Mother’s Eyes by Willie Nelson.
After all of our dances we walked off to get some drinks and I had my friends help me start bustling my dress. Around that time, our actual first dance song came on. The DJ said (in his Italian accent) ‘I am sorry to have played the wrong song. They both have the same name’ followed by a giggle. Charles and I danced to it again (my dress was still only half way bustled, haha) and we had a really sweet moment. Having the wrong song played ended up being one of my favorite memories from our wedding. It’s very us to have a funny moment followed by a sweet one and I love that it happened that way.
After this dance, my Dad wanted to take a quick picture. Charles, his dad, and my dad were ironically all in the same fraternity, Sigma Chi, so he wanted to get a group pictures with all the Sigma Chi’s at the wedding together with me.
After this we mingled for a few minutes with drinks and then there was a special surprise that resulted in all of us gathering inside the main area of the villa. I knew what was going on, but I played it like I didn’t. We had them tell us that there was a special surprise and that we needed to go inside for a video. I joked with Charles that ‘Oh gosh, I bet our mom’s made some sort of slideshow’ as we gathered inside.
Really, I had made something for Charles. I asked all of his good friends who we invited to the wedding, but who couldn’t come to make a video of them toasting to Charles. I had one of his friends put all the videos I got back together in a video so we could watch them and have all his friends there in some aspect! He started the video out with a slideshow of us, and of course included some pictures of our sweet Maddie girl who couldn’t come (more on that here), then it sort of went static and he kicked off the video explaining what was going on. It was so funny, sweet, and he loved it, which was just what I was hoping! I was so glad to surprise him with this and I love how it turned out! It was a fun little transition from cocktail hour to dinner, too.
After the video, we all went outside and sat down for dinner. Instead of place cards, we wrote each person who came a handwritten note thanking them and telling them what they meant to us, which was one of our favorite details from our wedding day! We had one long table and sat everyone next to different people than the sat next to the night before at our rehearsal dinner.
We let everyone settle into their seats and read their notes, then wine and appetizers, which were served family style, were passed out on the tables. We didn’t do toasts at our rehearsal dinner, so we saved them for our wedding dinner. Charles kicked them off by thanking everyone for coming and giving me such a sweet toast! He did so well and it was a perfect start to our dinner. From there, everyone else who wanted to stood up and gave toasts. I loved that we saved them for the wedding dinner, because it was a fun way to all interact during it.
We had just asked for tiramisu as dessert for everyone, but they surprised us by making into a cake! This was such a fun little addition and now we have a fun tradition of having tiramisu for special occasions. When we moved recently, we had it for dessert on the first night in our new place. This summer when we are traveling for our one year anniversary we’ll find it somewhere to eat, too.
From here, our dance party started! I’ll be sharing those photos with you all next week, so stay tuned!! All the food at our wedding ended up being so good and I loved the family-style set up we had. Hearing everyone give toasts during it made it so much fun and so special for us.
Thanks for stopping by and for letting me share our wedding day with you all! It’s been so fun going back through all the details as I put these posts together. XO
Photos by Stephanie Parsley Photography
My dress is Pronovias via Bridal Boutique of Lewisville
