The Rest of The Night

Summing up the rest of our wedding night is overdue but figured I should get this out of the way before I bother posting about anything else!

After the speeches were given by our wedding party and parents it was our turn to say thank you to everyone. Unlike my father, I did NOT come prepared, assuming that I would remember everyone that needed to be thanked. I did not take into consideration what my emotional state would be in. I honestly never expected I would be a crier and yet the water works didn't really stop once I walked down the aisle.

So at this point I attempt to tell everyone how we would never have been able to put on our wedding, being so DIY intensive, with out the help of some many friends and family. At the point that I mention the help of my aunts in the kitchen to prepare the appetizers earlier during the day I lose it and end up rapping it up that I'm just so grateful. I really hope that I didn't miss anyone and that they all realize how important they are to us.

{Here I am attempting to hold it together}

My Mr stepped in and said thank you to a few that I missed, my work being one of them as my employers stepped up a lot by providing the media truck among other things.

After our thank yous it was caking cutting time and guess what I forgot to put on my list to bring?! A cake knife! Didn't even occur to me until we were standing in front of the cake! So we improvised and grabbed a dinner knife. Luckily the cake was only serving the head table as we provided mini cakes for each table.

{Three types of cake were brought to each table: vanilla, chocolate and carrot}

{See you can't even tell that it was a dinner knife!}

After cake was cut I joined my father on the dance floor for our Father Daughter dance. I had decided on Cinderella by Steven Curtis Chapmen, which I explained in this previous post, which I thought was very appropriate based on my childhood fascination of pretending to be Disney princesses but try as I might to get my father to pay attention to the lyrics he was just so preoccupied with everything else. Oh well I thought it was touching...

Next up was my Mr and his mother. As his musical tastes don't really provide a huge selection for mother/son dances we gave his mother the responsibility of picking a song. She chose "I hope you dance" by Lee Ann Womack.

I personally think the song choice is funny, only because my Mr is not a country music fan and when I chose Sugarland for our first dance he commented "At least it will be the ONLY country song I'll ever have to dance to" Bah-ha-ha If you could have seen his face when I explained Lee Ann Womack is also a country singer...priceless...

The rest of the night went much like ever wedding reception. We were extremely lucky to have clear skies for the entire wedding and the mosquitoes didn't bother us much until the end of the night but we had bug spray and Off! lanterns helping with the fight.

Although our first three dances (we opted NOT to have a dance with the wedding party...I pick the traditions I think are important and completely ignore the rest) were held in the hall we took the dancing outside for the rest of the night.

{Here I am getting a dance in with one of my grandmothers}

Shortly after this dance I took off with my Mr to our camper to change into my 'going away dress' that my mother-in-law made for me (which I now wear to the office every once in a while) and came back to dance and visit.

{Unfortunately I didn't get any professional pictures taken while in this dress but I think this picture sums up what I did the rest of the night}

Dancing went on through the rest of the night.



Before we could call it a night my Mr and his groomsmen had to have their photo shoot around the campfire with their Manowar shirts and swords...boys will be boys...



We ended up packing it in around 2pm and left the majority of the stuff for clean up the next morning. All in all I think it all turned out great and our guests enjoyed their selves...I hope!

Were there things I would do differently? Absolutely and I will tell you about those soon but I still had a wonderful time and my Mr says it was the best day of his life so I guess that is what really matters.

One Year...where has the time gone

Yesterday we celebrated our one year anniversary. It feels like we JUST said our vows and at the same time like we've been married for years.

I had great plans to update this blog with all the behind scenes of our wedding planning shortly after our honeymoon and then life got in the way. I would still like to do that, just a matter of motivation at this point. During my wedding writing block I've been blogging about everything else on my other blog which had originally started as a 'mother-to-be' one but almost as soon as that started it was put on hold when life slammed me in the face with a one in ten experience that no one wants, a miscarriage.

Being married for a year now we've experienced a lot:

• Had an extremely close friendship end based on our lives moving in different directions
• Dealt with the stresses of trying to conceive, loss and the aftermath
• Buying a larger and newer home
• Entering into the home rental arena as we chose to keep our other house
• Struggled with a wonderful 20lb weight gain, only to find out recently that was helped along by the fact that my body doesn't want to acknowledge the insulin it makes. Still working on letting go of my much loved carbs.
• Waiting for my first nephew to arrive
• Helping to plan my future SIL's wedding
• Finishing year one of my CMA designation
• And although we've lived together since 2008, still learning to adjust to each others annoying habits and practicing compromise so we don't resort to violence.

All and all I think its been a very "productive" first year.

One of the things I have yet to do, though, is legally change my name (everywhere). I've said it many times to people and will now vent here, I do not think men realize how easy they have it when they get married. Taking your husbands name after marriage is A LOT OF WORK. Currently vital statistics knows I've married and because my driver's license happened to come up for renewal right after our marriage I managed to remember to have my marriage license with me so that one is updated but because our provincial and federal governments lack an effective and secure way to communicate with each other I personal have to notify every department individually which means they still think I'm single. Why did I think I should take a new name!? I like my last name...oh well I'll get around to it, for no other reason then I told our financial advisor I had changed my last name and now I'm a little concerned how that will affect my income taxes when I get around to filing them. I suppose this is a whole post on its own so I'll get into this on a future entry.

Another responsible thing couples (or even individuals) should do is draw up their wills...I know morbid but necessary. Tomorrow we are FINALLY sitting down with our lawyer to create ours. We've been dragging our feet. Mainly because we DO plan to have children and will have to change it once that happens but since difficulties have been put in our path, a year has past with no baby and no will which leaves us vulnerable if one or both of us has something terrible happen to us. No will means that the government gets involved with settling the estate even though it should be clear that everything should go to the spouse. Our biggest challenge was deciding what do we'll do with our estate if we both pass away and DON'T have children to pass it to.

How did your first year of marriage go? Did you do all of responsible things or are you like me who's been putting it off, hoping that they will be magically completed by their selves?