A Sunday Kind of Love: I Was Made For You

Once our bridal party had made their way in, Mr. Ly and I were ready to make our entrance and have our first dance as husband and wife. When I last blogged about our song choice for our first dance, we had picked "Colors" by Grace Potter & the Nocturnals.  As much as we love that song, we loved another one a lot more, and while we weren't sure the rhythm was right for our first dance - we decided to go with the song we liked the best - rhythm be damned. Our first dance was to Brandi Carlile's "The Story."  But before we could dance, we had to enter.

As you may recall from our introduction post, nearly a year ago, Mr. Ly has a t-shirt with a well known lyric from a popular Kanye West & Jay-Z song.  After our YouTube viral video bridal party entrance, we really shouldn't have been so concerned about offending people even more with our own entrance song.  But we chose a part of the song that had the least offensive lyrics that we could find.  Yes, we entered to N****s in Paris. (Warning - the lyrics are NSFW!) We entered at about 1 minute 40 seconds into the song - with Mr. Ly's favorite lyrics...

What she order? 

We had so much fun with our entrance! 

At this point, I'm saying "Where is that rose petal entrance we were supposed to have??" 

Seconds later... Rose Petals! 

As the petals fell, our first dance song started.

All of these lines across my faceTell you the story of who I amSo many stories of where I've beenAnd how I got to where I amBut these stories don't mean anythingWhen you've got no one to tell them toI was made for you

I climbed across the mountaintopsTravel across the ocean blueI cross over lines and I broke all the rulesAnd baby I broke them all for you

Oh because even when I was flat brokeYou made me feel like a million bucksYou do, I was made for you. 

You see the smile that's on my mouthIt's hiding the words that don't come outAll of the friends who think that I'm blessedThey don't know I'm in this mess

No they don't know who I really amAnd they don't know what I've been throughLike you do, and I was made for you. 

All of these lines across my faceTell you the story of who I amSo many stories of where I've beenAnd how I got to where I am

Oh but these stories don't mean anythingWhen you've got no one to tell them toIt's true, I was made for youOh yeah, and it's true that I was made for you. 

We actually cut the song early, right before the 3 minute mark (it gets a little scream-y at that point and we always start laughing hysterically.) We thought 3 minutes was the perfect amount of time for a first dance anyway.  I tried to abide by the rabbi's ceremony rule here too, and not look anywhere but at Mr. Ly the entire time, which I almost managed. Except on my BM's was desperately trying to get my attention every time I was facing her direction.  Turns out, one of the rose petals landed on the top of Mr. Ly's head and was causing a distraction.  I brushed it off, and we resumed focusing on each other - singing along to the song and just marveling in our wedding thus far.  We couldn't have been happier. 

I pre-capped our recaps with a big announcement!
Recaps began with our Same Day Edit video.
I needed to get some perspective the week of the wedding.
Personally brewed beers gave our rehearsal lunch a special touch!
I spent a fantastic last day as a Miss.
I shared some gifts for my bridesmaids. 
The girls spend an easy and relaxing morning getting made up.
The guys spent the morning building a chuppah and doing guy things.
I panicked when the morning went by too fast.
We exchanged lovely notes and gifts on the wedding morning.
I put on my dress and became a Blissful Bride.
Bridal details and my "somethings" rounded out the wedding morning.
We had our not-so-private first look.
We took some silly pictures, just the two of us.
Broad Street gave us gorgeous shots, but we nearly lost some of bridal party in traffic.
The Lyres and their huge bridal party storm the art museum, Rocky style.
I shed tears of pain at our final photo stop in Olde City
The ceremony space and details took our breath away when we arrived for a quick rehearsal.
We were officially married under Jewish law when we signed our Ketubah.
Guests were seated and the bridal party got our ceremony started.

I got a little emotional for my walk down the aisle.
We did not take our eyes off each other in our traditional Jewish ceremony.
Post-ceremony photos were taken with some special gender pictures for our surprise!
Our extra-long cocktail hour was full of delicious food and drinks, and a controversial ice-sculpture.

Our ceremony space was flipped into an elegant reception space with gorgeous details.
The bridal party made their entrance to some very viral video tunes. 

A Sunday Kind of Love: Ain't Nobody Got Time for That

All our guests made their way from our incredible cocktail hour into the gorgeous reception space, and were seated.  The bridal party was lined up outside the reception space behind the white curtains and waited for their cue to enter the party!

When Mr. Ly and I were deciding what our bridal party would walk in to, we knew we wanted it to be fun and have a lot of our own personality to it.  Before we started dating, I had maybe seen 1 or 2 viral videos on YouTube.  For the first few months of our relationship, Mr. Ly would send me "must-see" viral videos that I had missed throughout the years, and to this day, he's still finding them every once in a while. We decided our bridal party would walk in to a mix of our favorite viral video songs/autotune remixes.

My parents and Mr. Ly's parents entered first.  My dad LOVED the Numa Numa song, and while this was one video I actually saw before my relationship with Mr. Ly, we thought it was a perfect fit.

All photos by Mike Landis Photographer

For our bridal party we did a mix of Antoine Dodson - The Bed Intruder Remix, the cat playing piano, and Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody Got Time for That.  You can listen to our DJ's remix of these songs below:

Travis and Katie start off the entrances with some Gangnam Style moves

Dan & Sarah

Bill & Jenna

Dan & Elizabeth

Mark & Linda

Kevin, Alissa, & Debbie

Dave & Liz

Mike & Diane

Our bridal party gathered after their entrance, waiting for us to make our way in! 

We didn't make it through the whole mix, I don't think. And most of it was underneath the DJ's introductions.  It may seem like an unconventional choice to be the first songs play, but it was only a brief part of our reception. Yes, a lot of the adults at the reception had no idea what the songs were, but our bridal party had a lot of laughs during the entrances;  it was just a really fun way to kick off our party!

I pre-capped our recaps with a big announcement!
Recaps began with our Same Day Edit video.
I needed to get some perspective the week of the wedding.
Personally brewed beers gave our rehearsal lunch a special touch!
I spent a fantastic last day as a Miss.
I shared some gifts for my bridesmaids. 
The girls spend an easy and relaxing morning getting made up.
The guys spent the morning building a chuppah and doing guy things.
I panicked when the morning went by too fast.
We exchanged lovely notes and gifts on the wedding morning.
I put on my dress and became a Blissful Bride.
Bridal details and my "somethings" rounded out the wedding morning.
We had our not-so-private first look.
We took some silly pictures, just the two of us.
Broad Street gave us gorgeous shots, but we nearly lost some of bridal party in traffic.
The Lyres and their huge bridal party storm the art museum, Rocky style.
I shed tears of pain at our final photo stop in Olde City
The ceremony space and details took our breath away when we arrived for a quick rehearsal.
We were officially married under Jewish law when we signed our Ketubah.
Guests were seated and the bridal party got our ceremony started.

I got a little emotional for my walk down the aisle.
We did not take our eyes off each other in our traditional Jewish ceremony.
Post-ceremony photos were taken with some special gender pictures for our surprise!
Our extra-long cocktail hour was full of delicious food and drinks, and a controversial ice-sculpture.

Our ceremony space was flipped into an elegant reception space with gorgeous details.

A Sunday Kind of Love: Reception Details

Before our guests headed into the reception, the room was finalized and our photographers got some great shots of the room in all it's glory.

All photos by Mike Landis Photographer

We had three different styles of tables - 2 long tables that sat 18-20 guests on either side of the dance floor, 4 oblong tables that sat 14-16 guests on each corner of the dance floor, and 5 round tables that held 10-12 guests on the outside corners of the room.  Each table style had a different centerpiece (or centerpieces for the long tables).  We ended up splurging a bit on the lighting as well, but the chandeliers were our main source of lighting and definitely the focal point of the room, and we had them lit in amber lighting.

Our sweetheart table was in the center of the room, with these large white chairs, that were very low to the ground.  You'll see in future posts that it looks kind of silly how low they are, and made it kind of difficult to eat comfortably.

Another Portal reference - our table numbers were photos of us - our table had us from Halloween, dressed as Portal characters - Mr. Ly was a weighted companion cube! 

Our gorgeous Kate Spade toasting flutes with delicious champagne

All of the tables were beautifully set, all of the linen was included in our package with Cescaphe, we chose a charcoal tablecloth, in different textures - pintucked and crinkled, and navy napkins to match our wedding colors. 

We had a lot of left over hand sanitizers from our welcome bags, and we got married during this past winter's devastating flu season.  I didn't get the flu shot before the wedding (I know, being pregnant, that was pretty stupid) and it hit me a few days before that we'd be hugging/kissing/touching a lot of people at the wedding.  And I kind of freaked out. So we put out all our extra hand sanitizers on the tables.  I don't know if anyone used them, but they were at least taken home, we had none left at the end of the night - and as a bonus - I didn't get sick.
 

We also had a wedding app for our guests to upload pictures throughout the night.  My mom created the entire account, and printed up instruction cards to put on the tables and around other common spaces.

The tall centerpieces of baby's breath that we used for the ceremony decor were on the four oblong tables:

 The long tables had three low centerpieces each spread out on the length of the table:

The round tables had medium-sized low centerpieces on each table:

The room was breathtaking, and more gorgeous than I could have imagined.  It's a pretty impressive space when it's empty, so it wasn't a huge leap to add to the beauty.  You might notice the lack of cakes in our details - those will have their own posts later on, but now we're ready to get the party started!

I pre-capped our recaps with a big announcement!
Recaps began with our Same Day Edit video.
I needed to get some perspective the week of the wedding.
Personally brewed beers gave our rehearsal lunch a special touch!
I spent a fantastic last day as a Miss.
I shared some gifts for my bridesmaids. 
The girls spend an easy and relaxing morning getting made up.
The guys spent the morning building a chuppah and doing guy things.
I panicked when the morning went by too fast.
We exchanged lovely notes and gifts on the wedding morning.
I put on my dress and became a Blissful Bride.
Bridal details and my "somethings" rounded out the wedding morning.
We had our not-so-private first look.
We took some silly pictures, just the two of us.
Broad Street gave us gorgeous shots, but we nearly lost some of bridal party in traffic.
The Lyres and their huge bridal party storm the art museum, Rocky style.
I shed tears of pain at our final photo stop in Olde City
The ceremony space and details took our breath away when we arrived for a quick rehearsal.
We were officially married under Jewish law when we signed our Ketubah.
Guests were seated and the bridal party got our ceremony started.

I got a little emotional for my walk down the aisle.
We did not take our eyes off each other in our traditional Jewish ceremony.
Post-ceremony photos were taken with some special gender pictures for our surprise!
Our extra-long cocktail hour was full of delicious food and drinks, and a controversial ice-sculpture.

A Sunday Kind of Love: The 90 minute hour

Our caterer, Cescaphe, is known near and far for their exquisite cocktail hour. Although calling it a cocktail hour is a bit misleading.  It's actually an hour and a half, and during that time, our ceremony space was being flipped into our reception space, Mr. Ly and I snuck off to take some pictures, and our guests got to enjoy more food than they could imagine.  We really didn't want to miss our cocktail hour, and we tried desperately to get there, but we managed maybe 20 minutes of the hour and a half.  We took some family photos, and of course that takes time to gather everyone, we spent some time in our bridal suite - which was also packed to the brim with hors d'oeuvres and samples from all the stations. Cocktail hour was held in the same foyer area where the guests entered before the ceremony.  It doesn't look like a huge space, but both  But I don't have many professional pictures and without our own personal experience, I am relying on our guest photos and their commentary to tell this part of our wedding.

BEES! Mrs. Fox, Mrs. Pain au Chocolat, & Mrs. Coyote / Photo by Mike Landis Photographer 

I hadn't mentioned it yet, but I had some very special bee guests at the wedding.  I was so lucky to have Mrs. Pain au Chocolat, Mrs. Coyote, and Mrs. Fox at the wedding, and as fellow bloggers they know they importance of the detail shots - they made sure they were taking plenty during cocktail hour!

Sushi Station & Seafood Station / Photo by Mrs. Fox 

Mrs. Fox sampling the seafood station / Photo by Mrs. PaC

A selection of what Mrs. Fox had during cocktail hour

Antipasti Station / Photo by Mrs. PaC

There were also carving stations and over 30 passed hors d'oeuvres, and a full top shelf open bar featuring our signature drink with just about everything else for our guests to enjoy.

Mrs. Fox's drink of choice - an orange cosmo with a splash of champagne 

Photo by Mike Landis Photographer 

Our cocktail hour came with a custom ice sculpture as part of our package, and while we didn't get to see much of it, we picked something that was representative of our relationship and meaningful.  We didn't want to do the LOVE sculpture or our monogram, we wanted to the weighted companion cube from Portal.  It's not the first (or last) Portal reference you've seen in our wedding (the cufflinks I bought Mr. Ly were the Aperture Science logo) or the first time you've seen the companion cube on the bee - Mrs. Wizard made a companion cube cake for Mr. Wiz for their rehearsal.

One of our guests posted a picture of our sculpture on Reddit, and while we loved reading how much people hated our choice of sculpture on our way to our honeymoon - we didn't choose the companion cube because we wanted to be different or special or show the world that we played a game once, we chose it because it means something to us.  And to everyone else, it's a box with a heart, and how could that be wrong for a wedding?

For the entire 90 minutes, we made it down one hallway, and got to see about 20 to 30 guests before everyone started filing into the reception.  Even though we didn't get to fully enjoy all our cocktail hour had to offer, every time anyone talks to us about our wedding, the cocktail hour is one of the first things they mention.  It left a memorable mark on most of our guests, and I'm glad I had the bees there to document some of the parts I missed! I'm sure you'll see more glimpses of the bees throughout the wedding, and their photos will pop up from time to time, too.

I pre-capped our recaps with a big announcement!
Recaps began with our Same Day Edit video.
I needed to get some perspective the week of the wedding.
Personally brewed beers gave our rehearsal lunch a special touch!
I spent a fantastic last day as a Miss.
I shared some gifts for my bridesmaids. 
The girls spend an easy and relaxing morning getting made up.
The guys spent the morning building a chuppah and doing guy things.
I panicked when the morning went by too fast.
We exchanged lovely notes and gifts on the wedding morning.
I put on my dress and became a Blissful Bride.
Bridal details and my "somethings" rounded out the wedding morning.
We had our not-so-private first look.
We took some silly pictures, just the two of us.
Broad Street gave us gorgeous shots, but we nearly lost some of bridal party in traffic.
The Lyres and their huge bridal party storm the art museum, Rocky style.
I shed tears of pain at our final photo stop in Olde City
The ceremony space and details took our breath away when we arrived for a quick rehearsal.
We were officially married under Jewish law when we signed our Ketubah.
Guests were seated and the bridal party got our ceremony started.

I got a little emotional for my walk down the aisle.
We did not take our eyes off each other in our traditional Jewish ceremony.
Post-ceremony photos were taken with some special gender pictures for our surprise!