Wedding Reception and Honeymoon

Kelly's blog is at it again! This Friday she's hosting lots of blogs and our topic is Wedding Reception and Honeymoon.




My wedding reception was held at The Grand Hall at a garden in Kansas City. I dreamed of getting married here since I was a little girl. Although we actually got married in a church about 10 miles away, it was perfect for our reception.

I loved this venue because it's very rustic ~ there are two stone fireplaces and most of the walls are stone. On the back, there was an atrium and garden where you could go out and enjoy the garden (that's where we put the bar!).

Since it was July I couldn't see lighting the fireplaces so we filled them with hundreds of candles.

We had a sweetheart table for us to sit at right in front of a fireplace. I loved having our own table and we DID actually EAT at our wedding (although many people told us we would be too busy to!)

We had a HUGE six layer cake that was designed to resemble my wedding dress. We even borrowed vintage crystal clips from our cake lady to decorate the fondant bows like I did on my dress. I remember telling our cake lady that I wanted the cake to be almost as tall as me and boy did she deliver!! We had a choice of 4 flavors, with the overall crowd favorite: Peanut Butter cake. Our top layer was red velvet.
Joe's Grooms Cake was a chocolate cake that resembled an OU football field that my mom and her BFF made. They did a fabulous job!
We did a lot of dancing at our reception - fast and slow!

First Dance: Everything I Do, I Do It For You, Bryan Adams (this had been our song for years and years and Joe even played it to me the night he proposed - I could cry just thinking about it - very meaningful)

After we left we stayed the night at Chateau Avalon at The Legends in Kansas City. We had to get up and make an early afternoon flight to Atlanta - St. Maarten the next day.

Here was Joe rolling our overnight bag to our honeymoon suite on our wedding night - so debonair!
I can't believe I'm showing you this but I found this picture and I literally LOLed when I saw it ~ breakfast the morning after our wedding. Whoa boy, look at that hair! Haha!!

We were gone for two weeks but we spent the first couple days in Atlanta for the 4th of July (my fav holiday!)
We stayed at the Oyster Bay Beach Resort in St. Maarten. We did SO much while we were there. We rented a car so we made it our goal to visit every beach on the island (I think we almost did!). We did sunset catamarans, we visited St. Barths, we did snorkeling tours, went shopping and so, so much more.

The only time we've ever flown first class.

Infinity pool at the resort.

We had this beach totally to ourselves!

Don't you just love looking at wedding pictures? :)