When we were finished taking our "husband and wife" photos at the nature pond, we hopped back to the church for our reception. We had the ceremony and reception in the same room, so the tables were already set up and ready to go. While we were out taking photos, the caterers - Perogies Plus - served coffee and punch, and people helped themselves to the candy and cookie buffet, which sadly there is no picture of because by the time the photographer got back it was all gone! (And that baby was stocked.)
We also had White Christmas playing on the big screen above the head table (which the bridal party so kindly assembled during the in-between time.) We chose that movie because a) it went perfectly with our theme, and b) it was a significant movie in Matt and my relationship. It's the first Christmas movie we watched together when we were just friends, and I actually ended up sliding over and falling asleep on his shoulder in the middle of it. So it has a special place in my heart.
We used some inexpensive Walmart bows on the front of the head table, some snowflake twinkle lights, and basic navy blue paper napkins from Dollarama.
The cake was sweetly made by one of my bridesmaids, Mallory, who made and decorated the cupcakes and top of the cake herself (with fondant even - which she had next to no experience with and was extremely concerned about. She didn't have to be, it turned out beautifully.) I made the cake stand and decorated it myself, and we picked up the cake topper from Party Stuff. It's a bride kissing a little frog that she's holding in her hand. Suitable.
Each place setting had a couple of things, each that I hand made myself. There was a two sided "guest book" card, with a bunch of fun prompting questions and little spots to draw the bride and groom, or guess how many children we'll have and what their names will be. We gathered them all at the end and assembled them in a book. Reading through that now is extremely hilarious, and much more entertaining than a book full of guests signatures. We also had little pencil crayons in our wedding colours at each place setting for filling in the pages with. (We purchased, picked out, and hand sawed/sharpened each pencil.)
There was also a little "favour wrap" with a quote about winter or snow on it (each guest at each table got a different quote) as well as a list of the songs they might hear that evening and who performed them. And then tucked in was also a little package of hot chocolate with a little sweet poem about winter and love on it (which we hand assembled and designed ourselves. Each one individually measured for the perfect cup of hot chocolate.) The wraps we also made out of scrapbook paper, cut, and folded ourselves.
And then there were of course the place cards, which I made myself. Just simple cardstock in different shades of blue, with little snowflakes attached, and guests names.
One other fun detail about the table settings is that our caterer was actually sweet enough to make the butter into the shape of snowflakes using a mold. Amazing.
We decorated the room in a winter wonderland theme, as well. Around the perimeter of the room we put Christmas trees strung up with twinkle lights, interspersed with white bare trees. We actually went to the branch dump and grabbed the branches, my dad trimmed them to size, and then we (with the help of Matt's sister Marrina) hand painted each and every one of them white (most of them required two coats!)
We actually got the Christmas trees from the town Santa Claus display in the local mall. My dad is the town "Santa" and has been for many years, so he had unofficial "access" to the display. He basically snuck the groom and groomsmen in to the mall the evening before and then they all walked down the street with Christmas trees in hand, hauling them down main street on foot. That must have been a sight...
There's also no photo of this detail either, but to help with the theme we also had tall centrepieces on each table, made from a tall glass vase (from Walmart - $15!) that we filled with silver, black, and navy blue Christmas balls. Then sticking up out of each vase were tall white branches (also hand painted) with small plastic clear icicles hanging from them.
For Matt and my entrance, we had something extremely special planned. Something extremely unique, very "us" and that we didn't think ANYONE would be expecting!
Once the entire bridal party was seated, we waited for our background music to start, we attached our discreet little headset mics, and entered singing "Baby It's Cold Outside" back and forth to each other. We even did a coy little cheeky dance to it while we sang, when we got to the centre of the room.
I also totally tripped on the aisle runner near the end of the song, but everyone had a good laugh and I think I recovered pretty well. It was right during "I simply must go..." in the song, so it worked out pretty well. It was definitely unique, that's for sure, and so much fun.
Immediately after our song and dance number, my dad announced "Ladies and gentlmen, Mr. and Mrs. Matthew and Holly Gilson" and everyone clapped, and it was delightful.
Next the MC (Kirsten) introduced herself and welcomed everyone, and then it was time to eat some real food finally, which I know everyone was pretty excited about since they'd just been snacking on junk food from the candy bar. My dad came up again for the next part and "auctioned off" which table got to go up to the buffet first. Basically various tables made bids while my dad did the whole "auctioneer" thing that he does so well. My Grandpa Penner ended up taking home the prize for his table, and they got to go up to eat first. My dad actually ended up auctioning off the second table as well, by popular demand (I guess people were really hungry!) But after that table were just called in order.
The meal was absolutely divine. There was a selection between two meats, honey garlic chicken breast and roast beef. Then there was mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables and salad, lots of gravy, and for dessert there was both seven-layer-cake and cheesecake to be had. We got a LOT of compliments on the food. What we were told most often was "I've never eaten so well at a wedding! Ever!" Everyone got to take as much of whatever they wanted, and go up for seconds, too. Well fed guests are happy guests! Way to go, Perogies Plus!
As I remember, though, I barely ate any of my food. I was just so caught up in the moment and the fun and the adrenaline that I wasn't really all that hungry. Another interesting detail from the day is that I didn't go to the bathroom once. The entire day. And didn't realize until we got to the hotel that evening. Just a bit of oversharing there, for ya...
So for our kissing game, we had two little glass fishbowls up at the podium next to the head table. One had a bit of loose change in it, the other had little folded slips of paper that had different kinds of kisses on them. So if someone wanted us to kiss, they would come up, put some money in the jar, and take a slip of paper and read it into the microphone. Then Matt and I would have to kiss that way. This was a HUGE hit and we basically didn't stop kissing the entire night! Once all of the slips of paper were used up, people started coming up with their own ideas (some of which we weren't even really sure how to act out!) But it was so much fun, and gave Matt and me an opportunity to really get creative and ham it up, and show our true goofy personalities.
I saved most of the little bits of paper, some of which said:
- church kiss
- stolen kiss
- caveman kiss
- Spiderman kiss (this one was tricky!)
- Golden-Anniversary kiss (we both bent over and crinkled ourselves up and kissed like an old married couple.)
One of the very favourite kisses from the night was actually "Forbidden Kiss" for which I surprised everyone as I slowly leaned in to kiss Matt, and then pushed him out of the way and planted one right on the Best Man's head. There was laughter and blushing all around.
Demonstrated below is "Titanic Kiss" and that's the best man there with the short dark hair, chuckling in an embarrassed manner. :)
We didn't really want too many games at the wedding, but one that I'd seen online was "the shoe game" in which the MC asks the couple various questions while they sit back-to-back, holding one of their own shoes, and one of their spouses. Then they answer the question either themselves or their spouse by holding up the corresponding shoe. There were some typical questions, like "Who will do the chores? Who will bring home the bacon?" but the really memorable ones were "Who has the most exes?" or "Who has the ugliest exes?" and the last question of the night, of course, "Who looks better in leopard print lingerie?" to which the answer was obviously Matt (this is a bachelor party story that I won't get into, but it definitely got some laughs.)
After the slideshow we had the toasts, just the standard ones. Toast to the bride, toast to the groom, and our parents each did the "Welcome to the family" speech. My parents didn't make that awkward at all... *eye roll*When my dad got to the microphone, the first words out of his mouth were actually "Matt, I'm still not afraid to go to jail." To which I responded "Come on! Say something real!"and everyone laughed and he actually gave a very touching speech, in which he mentioned that he didn't think there would ever be a man worthy of my hand and my life, but that if he had to pick any man in the entire world it would be Matt. :)
After our parents speeches, we made our Thank You speech to all of the guests and the various vendors and services we'd used. We thanked our parents for being so wonderful, and basically everyone we could possibly think of. We definitely made it up on the spot but I don't think we forgot anyone.
The toasting glasses that Matt and I used I picked up from Walmart and decorated myself with little crystal snowflakes and navy blue ribbon. I still have them!
Right after the cake cutting, we shared our first slow dance as husband and wife, and the guests just watched in loving wonder (I like to think!) I was barefoot, I remember. We danced to "The Book of Love" by Peter Gabriel, and we laughed and Matt spun me around, and we cried and talked to each other. No junior high sway-dancing here, folks. We danced like we meant it - like we really truly love each other. Because we so do. That's why I'm posting so many photos of our first dance - because they're all beautiful and it was hard to narrow it down to just three for the blog!
We still dance to that song together every year on our anniversary, and sometimes when we're having an "off day." You know, when you're just out-of-sync with your partner, you're at each other's throats, on edge. I'll just throw the song on, and we're forced to dance with each other for the entire length of the song. It reminds us why we're doing this, why we're here. It reminds us how our love is more important than anything in this world.
Following our first dance, I shared a dance with my dad, to John Mayer's "Daughters." Once the first verse was over, Kirsten invited anyone who had someone they loved to come up and share the dance with us. The "dance floor" was packed. Matt even shared a dance with his mom.
Now, at the beginning of the evening, Kirsten had assured everyone that we wouldn't be playing the "garter game" because Matt was just too bashful for something so publicly suggestive, and we weren't going to put him through that.
What actually happened was she told Matt we were going to play a game, and that he needed to be blindfolded. Then they assembled all of the young men in the room in a group behind him, and I sat on a chair on front of him. And when they whipped the blindfold off, "Let's Get it On" by Marvin Gaye game on the speakers, and I was in "Get my garter" position in front of him. His face went beat red, and he smiled that ridiculous adorable grin, and was a great sport. I think the most hilarious part of the entire thing was seeing how embarrassed Matt was - it was entertaining for everyone involved.
Then immediately after the garter toss, Kirsten told everyone that we were going to be making our grand exit soon, but first we were going to throw the bouquet. So she called all of the young ladies in the room into a group behind me and I threw one of the bridesmaid's bouquets (since what are they going to do with it when the wedding is over?) to the song "Haven't Met You Yet" by Michael Buble. Then as everyone clapped and cheered, we joined hands and danced/skipped/strolled out of the reception room and out into the foyer, leaving our lovely guests behind us.
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| We actually used this photo as our first ever Gilson Family Christmas card that year. |
Once it looked like the place was starting to empty out, we headed over to the Nature Pond again with our photographer for some extra cold night photos which actually turned out stunningly beautiful in black and white.
When we were finished taking photos (and thoroughly frozen from head to toe) we headed back to my mom's place to hop in the limo and ride into the city for our wedding night in the very classy (and very pricey) Fort Garry Hotel.
The limo driver was totally late picking us up, and full of excuses for it too. And since we rode "sideways" the whole way to the city, I got completely and totally nauseated in the back. He was also driving like a maniac because it seemed like he was in a hurry to get somewhere. We actually had to ask him to pull over in the middle of the city because I had to get out and get some air. We pulled over at a Tim Horton's and I went inside to use the washroom - giant white ball gown and all. I got a lot of smiles from a lot of coffee drinkers. :) Then, literally seconds away from the hotel (we could see it through our windows) I definitely threw up in the back of the limo. No joke. Right on the floor. I calmly and gracefully pulled my dress to one side, bent over, and let it out. There's your tip, Mr. Limo Driver. Gross, but hilarious story.
Our day was absolutely beautiful and perfect in so many ways. It had so many personal touches that really showed who we were as a couple and as individuals. It was romantic and fun and easy going. There were more laughs than I can remember, and it all went off without a hitch. I will always treasure that incredible day. It went by way too fast, like a big magical blur of lovely amazingness. And I think what made it the most special is that I got to marry the man of my dreams, my true love, and my absolute best friend in the entire universe. Everything about that day felt exactly right.
Thus concludes the commemorative recap of our wedding day! I hope you enjoyed it! It's definitely been a delightful stroll down memory lane for me, and has brought back a lot of beautiful memories. I'll swap wedding stories with anyone anyday, so if you've got one let me have it! I'd LOVE to hear it!
Once we arrived at the hotel, we were having credit card troubles, so we actually spent a lot of time just hanging out in the (beautiful) front lobby, near the giant ornate Christmas tree. And since we were still in our wedding attire, we got a lot of congratulations, and "Did you just get married?" and smiles. We actually got asked by a sweet older woman if she could take a picture with us.
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