THE THIRD & OUR WEDDING {part four}

Brendan and I have both been out of town all week…me in Orlando for Lindsay & Dan’s wedding and him in South Carolina for a tournament.  I met him down in Myrtle Beach to watch for a few days, and now we’re back in Charlotte to entertain his family for the weekend.  We’re so excited to show them around :)

Today I’m posting the final pictures from our wedding!  You can also check out part 1, part 2, and part 3.  The majority of our planning time was put into decorating the reception.  I loved how everything came together in the end.  But to be honest, the day before was probably the most stressed I’ve ever been in my entire life!  It took twice as long to hang lights, arrange tables, put together the D.I.Y. items, etc. than I had originally anticipated.  I’m SO thankful to our bridal party, family, and friends for helping setup and tear down.   If there’s any advice that I can give to a bride planning an outdoor wedding…plan EXTRA time to setup!  And, hire a wedding planner!  I was so glad to have Erin help us the day of and the day before, but it would have been even more great to have a team with us the entire weekend.

All photos in this post © Sean Flanigan.

Brendan and I had our first dance to Your Everything, by Keith Urban.  It’s been our song for as long as I can remember.

It was totally unintentional, but our first dance was perfectly timed with the sunset!  It was such a beautiful moment to take in with all of our friends and family together. (Notice the confetti that is still in my hair? ;) )

My dad and I danced to A Horse With No Name by America.  Supposedly, I used to make my parents sing to me before I went to sleep when I was younger, and this was one of the songs.  My dad and I spent months bouncing the typical father-daughter songs back and forth, but this one seemed to be the most sentimental to our relationship :)

Brendan and his mom danced to My Wish by Rascal Flatts.  It’s a song that is also sentimental to them.

Brendan’s sister, Britni, gave an amazing toast to start off the reception.

My maid of honor, Linny, made me cry.  Watch out!  I’ll repay the favor this September for her wedding!

It wasn’t planned (or at least I didn’t know about it), but my dad gave a hilarious and unforgettable speech before dinner.  Everyone knows my dad is long-winded and loves to tell stories (and exaggerate all the details).  I remember being surprised to learn that Brendan and I had met “on the internet” (we actually met in high school in speech class, but reconnected five years later over Facebook).  Apparently that’s what my dad remembers.  ;)

As I mentioned in my first post, we had a lot of indecision in regards to our reception location.  We really wanted an outdoor venue, but had a very difficult time finding one in Muskegon.  Old Channel Trail Golf Course was a perfect fit.  They have a huge field overlooking the lake, which was exactly what we were looking for.

I spent hours on Pinterest dreaming up the perfect reception.  The one thing I wanted most was an outdoor dance floor.  I think everyone thought I was crazy because Michigan weather is incredibly unpredictable.  We ended up setting up two floors, one for inside the tent, and the other outside.  We had perfect weather during the day, but the temperature at night dropped to the high 40’s.  Surprisingly, everyone put on their winter coats and tennis shoes and jumped around on the outdoor floor!  I do have to say that the fire pit and the propane heaters were a huge hit…

I was inspired by Jessie & Nate’s wedding from a couple years ago, and we decided to sew all of our napkins–each table having a different swatch to match their escort card.  This was the most time-intensive project that we worked on.  After several trips to JoAnn’s and gathering LOTS of help, we were able to pull it off! I’m so blessed to have such wonderful family that helped….thanks mom, Renea (Brendan’s mom), and Karen (Brendan’s aunt) for sewing! Renea also wrote all of the names on the little golf flags and tied the napkins together with the golf tees.  We’re planning (and by we, I mean my mom and I) to create a quilt with all the leftover (washed) napkins.

Renea and Britni spent days making treats for our guests to enjoy in addition to our wedding cake.

I truly enjoyed gathering wedding pictures from our parents and grandparents to put up.  Now, these are framed on our mantle in our living room.  Brendan and I worked on these shadow boxes titled with significant places that we’ve been to in our relationship thus far.  We included letters, tickets, etc. for guests to look at.

Another thing that can barely be seen in the right photo are the MANY chalkboard frames that we created.  We bought frames at Hobby Lobby, painted them, and then sprayed chalkboard paint on cardboard inside the frame.  Again, another project that can be reused in our house :)

We wanted to include our passions in our wedding.  For golf, we created a leaderboard with all of guests names.  The table number was next to their name instead of their score, and the napkin swatch in place of their nationality.  For photography, we set out a blank book with a polaroid camera for guests to take pictures and then sign.  Unfortunately, only about 10 guests signed our book!  I’m glad that Sean took the initiative to use up some of our film :)

You can’t really see, but our tables were lined with seaglass vases with white dahlias inside.  I didn’t want to spent the majority of our budget on flowers that we couldn’t enjoy past our wedding day, so we decided to keep it simple. Linny, my mom and I took many trips to Hobby Lobby on their sale days to buy all the glassware.  Again, we were able to use some of these vases as decoration in our house post-wedding.

Mason jars, mason jars, mason jars!  We used them to light pathways to the cars and bathrooms.  We also hung some from a tree with candles and ribbon.

My favorite detail was our cake topper!  I found lots of adorable ones on etsy, but didn’t want to spend $250+ to buy one.  I bought all the little pieces from Hobby Lobby to mimic our wedding attire and put it together myself.  I had to put my hand over the girl to cover my “dress” when I showed Brendan how it turned out.  haha!  Brendan and I actually went down to the lake to gather the sand for the base.  Notice the camera and golf club?

Brendan knew I was going to make a mess ;)

We had so much fun getting down on the dance floor with our friends. We didn’t want the party to end!

One of the last things we did was light paper wish lanterns and send them floating in the sky (no photos, but it is on video!). This turned out to be quite a disaster because it was so windy!  The lanterns have to build up hot air to lift off the ground, but the cold wind kept many of them on the grass.  Brendan and I were able to get ours off the ground with a wish, along with a couple of our guests.  We attempted to fly some over the sand dune cliff toward the lake, but one actually got stuck in the briars and CAUGHT FIRE!  My dad nearly sprained his shoulder climbing down to put it out.  Thankfully, we didn’t burn the whole place down.  After that incident, we put an end to the lanterns.  We still have a box of them that maybe we’ll set off on our anniversary :)

Our wedding day was magical and more wonderful than I could have ever dreamed it to be.  We’re so thankful to have amazing friends and family that flew across the country to attend our wedding.  And, a HUGE thanks to all of our vendors.  We couldn’t have pulled it off without you!  Like every wedding, not everything was perfect as planned, but all of the imperfections made awesome memories.

Here’s a list of our amazing vendors:

Sean Flanigan {photography}
A.J. Chavar {videography}
Ryke’s {cake}
Hearthstone {catering}
Drew with Music Unlimited {DJ}
Tye One J {dance floor, ceremony chairs}
Sun Rental {tent, heaters, reception tables + chairs}
Erin with Modern Day Floral {day of coordination + linens}
J Majors & Martina Liana {wedding dress}
Bunny Tuxedos {groom + groomsmen}
Dillards {bridal jewelry}
Kay Jewelers {rings}
Jessie Burns {stationary + logo design}
Old Channel Trail Golf Course {reception + beverages}
Jamie with Chalet Floral {flowers}