After we ate dinner, it was cake time.  And dancing…or at least I tried to get people to dance.  I knew much of my family wouldn’t dance, which was fine, but I had high hopes for my friends.  Some failed me, others far surpassed my expectations…

I danced some, and kept trying to go around the room to make sure I talked to everybody.  If you haven’t been married, you may not realize how stressful it is to try to be a good hostess and talk to everybody.  I kept feeling like I was skipping people, and definitely talked less to my in town friends (arguably my better friends!) than my out of town guests and family.  I felt like I was in a race against the clock all night.  But it was a blast, and people were always happy to see me come over, which isn’t always the case in life 😉

Chris danced with his mom.

My dad got coffee. 

Me dancing but somehow looking like I’m doing a lat pull down…hardly any tan lines, and check out those muscles!

Chris and I dancing…

Mom and my brother Jesse.  I barely got to speak to him—I’m hoping he can attend Leslie’s wedding in October and then I’ll have more time!

Mike (my trainer) drinking coffee.  I told him if he didn’t cut his hair he would go on the "do not photograph list" but he convinced Sarah Crowder to take a series of pictures of him.  Later he seemed embarrassed that she left some of them in, but I find them telling.  No worries Mike, if you ever get married I will likely just wear my wedding dress to it.  That should get me in a few photographs 😉

Karen, Loren, Leslie, and Ginny.  This picture is probably an example of what Sarah Crowder meant when she commented that we had really good-looking friends and family!

John and his wife Karen.  We went to their wedding right after we moved to St Louis.

Carrie and Jeff dancing.

My aunt Connie and Chris’s father dancing.  Both are very good dancers!

Jeff and John playing around with the guest book.  Jeff wrote us a poem.

From earlier, on top of the building (Vin de Set)…I don’t think I shared this one.  I was so cold, I’d never been so cold!

Similar view later than night…without Chris and I, obviously.

After the reception was over we had another hour in the "Malt House Cellar" which was downstairs—it’s a small room with table shuffleboard, pool, foosball and such, and we thought some of our guests would enjoy hanging out there.  No pictures, unless somebody took some and didn’t share with me?  I had to say goodbye to tons of people and grab a bunch of stuff (my flowers, coats, etc) but finally made it downstairs.  I realized then that I was exhausted, so I basically lay down on the couch and talked with my friend Sarah and a couple other people who came over.  I couldn’t be on my feet anymore!

The hotel shuttle was taking people from the venue back to the hotel, and that was our escape plan as well.  We loaded up the shuttle and rode to the hotel…it was funny because Chris was having so much fun with his out of town friends, he wanted to hang out MORE, but I told him we still had to figure out how to remove my dress and take all the bobby pins out of my hair (100s, I imagined) so I convinced him to go up to the suite rather than keep socializing! 

So that’s pretty much it for the wedding—I’ll look back through all the posts and see if there are any pictures I wanted to share and didn’t.  It was a wonderful day, and we are so lucky to have been able to have exactly the wedding we wanted. 

Next:  saying goodbye to our guests and time to go on honeymoon!

After the first dance, we had some "milling about" time until dinner (we had asked for approximately 30 minutes.)  I think this worked out fairly well because people were able to work up a little bit of an appetite again.  The downside was that we didn’t really have enough dancing time (we probably could have used another 30 to 60 minutes of time…) but that’s okay.  I’m over it.

For the toasts, our fathers were giving toasts and also Leslie and Dave. 

My dad went first and set the bar.  It was hilarious.

Chris’s dad did a wonderful job and went for something a bit more sentimental. 

Leslie was funny as well, and very modern in her use of an iphone for her notes.

Dave went last.  Everybody did a wonderful job—they were all hilarious.  Our friends and family are a bunch of comedians!

After the toasts, dinner was served (well, continued to be.)

It was all delicious!  I had the salmon.

The bread was really good too.  One time Chris had gotten up and I reached across his drink to get a piece of bread.  Dave witnessed me dropping the bread into his drink and then quickly fishing it out, right before Chris sat back down.  Oops.

After dinner came dessert and more dancing…I will share a few more pictures with you in my next post, Reception, part 3.  After that it’ll be a quick wrap up and at some point in the near future I’ll be telling you about the honeymoon!  (By then it’ll be anniversary time, hahahahahahahahaha!)

If you’re absolutely sick of my wedding and can’t wait for me to get back to regular posts where I talk about…myself…well, that will be soon.  I promise!  (I plomise.)

 

 

Our place settings

The cake topper

The two different centerpieces

The place card table

My bouquet

The Centennial Ballroom at Moulin

The view from our seats.

One of the tables

The guest book

The BBQ Bacon wrapped Shrimp

After the ceremony, we took some family group pictures, and then Chris and I had a few moments alone upstairs in the Lafayette Room.  We sat down, had a drink and ate some snacks.  During that time our guests were enjoying the cocktail hour and hearing some jazz piano music.  After a bit we went to join them.  Shortly thereafter, we were taken back out in order to be brought back in for introductions, cake cutting, and our first dance. 

Introductions!  Mr. and Mrs. Chris Tantillo are in the house.  (Sorry.)

Leslie had given us some engraved forks to use for the cake cutting, so we did.  We hadn’t thought about the cake cutting in advance at all, and as a result we were a little taken aback realizing we didn’t actually have a good idea of how to cut a piece together!  Chris thought we just had to cut one cut, and I (knew, haha) that we needed to cut the whole piece.  It was awkward holding the knife together—note to future brides and grooms:  practice this!  Get lots of cake cutting practice. 

Next came our first dance.  We also don’t really dance—only at weddings.

We chose Frank Sinatra’s "Fly Me to the Moon" for our dance.

After we danced (which was not so bad after all—I was pretty terrified but it was just fine) we had the band invite people to join us on the dance floor.  Yes, we had a live 7 piece band called Galaxy.  They were great!

Chris’s parents danced, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen joined us.

After the dancing finished, I grabbed Leslie and we went to switch my veil for a hairpiece (that came with my dress) and to pin up the bustle of the dress.  I was a little disappointed to realize the bustle didn’t entirely take care of the train, but at this point, oh well, who cares!  One of the flowers was coming loose too, but I figured by now most of the pictures were done so it just didn’t matter any more…

The hairpiece

Our place cards

Next:  Dinner and Toasts! 

It’s been a crazy weather week, so mild!  I suppose the entire winter has been really mild overall.  I went for a run on Tuesday outside IN SHORTS!  And I got really hot…it was close to 70 degrees that day, I think.  It makes me nervous for the summer, does that mean it will be really hot?  Or…is this our reward for having suffered through an incredibly hot and humid summer?  Or is there no relation, or perhaps it’s all just global warming and we should really consider migrating north? 

Unfortunately my time machine is broken.  Oh well.  I’ll just do what I always do and play it by ear!

This is an old picture, but it is basically what is happening next to me on the couch right now.  Sometimes (always…)I really wish I were a cat! 

This morning I had a workout with Mike (yes, still doing that, even though I’m married now and technically could just let myself go…).  I feel like I’m finally getting back to normal as far as working out, though not quite with running—I have been having a lot of hip pain this week and have been taking it easy.  I think I tried to push myself too much.  On the scale, I’ve lost at least a pound this week which is awesome…in 6 more weeks I’ll be back to my pre-Thanksgiving weight, if I keep it up.  *that is the last time I felt really awesomely confident with my body, just fyi*

On a completely unrelated note, last night I showed Chris that I indeed had one more bag of chocolates left over from Christmas.  He claimed I had been hiding them, but I was simply using that whole "hiding in plain sight" trick where eventually Chris doesn’t notice things, they just become part of the landscape.  You know, like dirty laundry, dirty dishes, hair balls, and the cat.  Or at least that appears to be the cat’s endgame. For me, if a bag of chocolates isn’t open it is less of a temptation.  But I’ve honestly tamed my sweet tooth a bit since the holidays/wedding/honeymoon, and haven’t been craving daily fixes of sugar.  SUCCESS!  If I could just tame my "craving salty carbs" tooth that would help further…

I saw this on the internet the other day and thought of myself.

Note:  it’s been one month since the wedding now!  Can you believe I’m still recapping the wedding, Dad? 

After the pictures were done, we went to Moulin.  The limo…sort of bottomed out entering the parking lot.  And by bottomed out I mean it was the worst sort of screeching noise.  One of our friends witnessed us arriving and said the limo visibly bent.  Norbert turned to us all and said "there is no way that was at all okay."  Basically I think the driver may have totaled the limo.  Nonetheless he kept his cool and we all gracefully got out of the limo.  We were met by Ann and Linda of Moulin and hustled up to the Lafayette room on the second floor to have some drinks/snacks and wait for the ceremony.

Finally it was time!  They took Chris downstairs (our parents had been milling about, of course, but it was finally Go time!)

 

It’s time for our wedding ceremony!  Welcome!

Setting the stage…

The Musicians—Jeff, Karen, Bjorn, and Shannon.  We were around the corner from them, lining up.  I was so nervous!  I remember the last piece they played before the processional was one of the Brandenburg Concertos. 

Chris was waiting at the front.  The musicians played Panis Angelicus by Cesar Franck for the seating of the families and bridal party processional.  We had the men and women walk down together.

My Mom and Dad.  After seating my Mom, Dad came back to meet up with me.

 

Then Chris’s parents!  (My friend Emily looking on).

Next came the bridal party—Norbert and Carrie first!

 

Then John and Sarah, followed by Dave and Leslie…

 

Please rise for our beautiful bride!  (Oh wait, is that me?)  The musicians switched to Edelweiss from The Sound of Music.

Oh, yes, the crazy eyes!  Edelweiss was playing, and I was just remembering to try not to walk too fast…

 

Don’t pass out, don’t pass out…

 

I made it!  I was holding onto Chris’s hands like I was going to fall over a cliff otherwise.

Lighting the memorial candle (in honor of people who are no longer with us).

Some laughs…

Jon did a really nice reading.

Rings…

You can see we are married here…

You may now kiss the bride!

And we were probably laughing because the quartet was playing the Medal Ceremony music from Star Wars!  It was AWESOME.  The ceremony was exactly what we wanted!  I have played for hundreds of ceremonies…and mine was the best ever.  (Completely unbiased opinion).

Oh my goodness.  We are MARRIED.  I was terrified through most of the ceremony—I was so embarrassed by much of the ceremony (I don’t like public displays of affection or personal stuff 😉 ) and so nervous for the vows (didn’t want to mess up) and when it was over, what a relief! 

Next some family pictures, and finally the celebration!  All of our hard work planning and preparing…now for the fun!

Chris told me I needed to go by the jewelry store to get my ring quasi-appraised for the insurance company.  I said, what?  Why, didn’t we just do that?  He looked at me like I was crazy and said, um, you’ve had that ring since mid-February of last year.

Oh right 🙂  I was thinking of the NEW ring.

I can’t believe that a year ago we weren’t even engaged yet!

Story of our engagement: A different sort of bling.

The question is then:  what will the next year bring?  I have some ideas, and I know some things that I want to happen, but I imagine the most interesting and fun stuff will be the stuff I haven’t thought of yet…I certainly didn’t think, one year ago, that we’d be married by now.  Isn’t that the fun of life?

This will happen in October though—I’ll be matron of honor.  I’m already hard at work brainstorming for shower ideas!