delaney talks to statues

while at the dentist today (read about that here), my sweet dental hygienist (who is actually the hygienist for my mom, dad, brothers, sister, aunt, and a few coworkers & their kids- what can i say, guess we're definite job security for her!) asked me what song i had danced with my dad to at my wedding. at first, i thought it was an odd question, but then she told me that dad had been talking about it last time he was there. while i sat there having my teeth cleaned, i was whisked back to the sweet memory of me & diddy dancing on my wedding night. inspired by that moment of nostalgia, i thought i would share the lyrics with you. while i admit, it was an unconventional song for us to dance to, it was perfect for us. i remember days in 3rd & 4th grade, playing on the boat or dancing on the dock to this song with me dad. ever since then, i knew it would be what we would dance to, and i'm so glad we were able to. 

enjoy!

Delaney Talks to Statues

By: Jimmy Buffett, Amy Lee, Mac McAnally

1994

Delaney talks to statues

As she dances 'round the pool

She chases cats through Roman ruins

And stomps on big toadstools

She speaks a language all her own

That I cannot discover

But she knows I love her so

When I tuck her 'neath the covers

Chorus:

Father, daughter

Down by the water

Shells sink, dreams float

Life's good on our boat

Delaney draws me pictures

She finger paints the sand

We chase the dogs and hop like frogs

Then I do my bad handstands

She's growin' up too fast for me

And askin' lots of questions

Some I know the answers to

And some I'm lookin' for suggestions

Chorus:

Father, daughter

Born by the water

Surf's up, sun's down

Life in a beach town

And some of the things I've seen

Maybe she won't have to see

But there's a lot I want to pass along

That was handed down to me

Delaney talks to statues

As she dances 'round the pool

She chases cats through Roman ruins

And stomps on big toadstools

She speaks a language all her own

Just a little like her mother

And she knows I love her so

When I tuck her 'neath the covers

Chorus:

Father, daughter

Down by the water

Shells sink, dreams float

Life's good on our boat

Shells sink, dreams float

Life's good on our boat

our wedding - part 2

alright the first post was getting a little lengthy, so i wanted to break if off and start fresh. so here's the rest of the deets about our big day.

the ceremony was held in a beautiful lakeside pavilion. while there was an exquisite fireplace that we could have used as a backdrop at one end, we choose a great view of the lake as the background for the alter. we decided to go super simple on the decor for the ceremony- after all, we were only going to be there for about an hour total, and we loved the beauty and simplicity of nature. we went with four arrangements behind us, mainly to help cover a little dock that had yellow paint on it, and to offer some height to the stage. we added in the white to connect the arrangements to just tie in a little more elegance. additionally, we blocked off the center aisle with more white tulle, and had all of our guests seated from the outside aisles.

i love this picture

we blocked off the center aisle because we had this beautiful, custom made, hand painted aisle runner. hopefully, my girls will want to use it someday- i've seen some neat ideas where you just add the next set of names and it turns into an heirloom. regardless, it was beautiful.

because it was may, and because of our location, we had our guests valet their cars at the hotel, and then had a shuttle take them to the ceremony site (there was a path they could walk that was also marked). when they arrived at the ceremony site, we had plenty of ice cold bottled waters for their refreshment, and the pavilion actually stayed pretty cool from the water and fans.

as you may have noticed, i went super simple with my flower selection. first, we didnt have a lot of flowers (as you'll see once i get to the reception), but also, i'm not huge fan of tons and tons of flowers. in fact, my favorite flowers are-take a wild guess- DAISIES. why? "aren't daisies such a friendly flower?" (know where thats from? :) ) additionally, i chose to bring in the star-gazer lilies. when nathan and i were dating, he brought them to me on multiple occasions, and i loved them:) finally, i added in a few roses for the romantic factor they offer. my florist (who unfortunately has closed her shop due to retirement) had the great idea to use some pearl pins in the bouquets- check them out in mine

our unity candle floral piece

nathan and i worked with our officiant very closely to plan a highly personalized ceremony. it was beautiful. to help our guests follow along, and to pay tribute to our wedding party, we put together programs that we passed out

it was actually several pages long, but i have posted it here. hopefully, you can read it enough to get an idea of it. additionally, keep in mind that this was a booklet, so the page numbers are below that would put them in order.

alright so we had a beautiful ceremony led by a very close friend of ours. because we chose to not see each other before the ceremony and take pictures together afterwards, we had our guests ushered up to the "pre-func" area of the ballroom for passed hors d'oevers. nathan and i enjoy our first moments as husband and wife, and took some great pics with our fam & friends.

so then the super fun part- the reception! we planned a beautiful and fantastically fun reception.  as i mentioned in my previous post, we went with a theme of coffee & starbucks. also, it was a special celebration of the people who helped make us what we are, so we wanted to make sure no detail went unnoticed. so to start with, we had asked all of our guests to make a dinner selection- we offered three, as well as an option to mark the number of kids coming. we actually decided to have a separate room for our kiddo-friends to eat in, which turned out to be an AWESOME idea. we asked that anyone under the age of 12 head to the youth room, which was fully equipped with chicken tenders, and ice cream cart, a few wiis to play on, and a movie playing on a big projector, not to mention board games, coloring books, and more. we only kept the kids in this room during the dinner hour, and then opened the doors into the ballroom once dancing started, allowing them to go back and forth. i think this was a great idea- it let the parents have a nice time knowing their child was taken care of, but it also was fun for the kids because for a lot of them, this was the first wedding that they went to, and this gave them a fun way to not get bored, and to also feel like they were special guests. plus, it saved us a lot on food- we had about 50 kids under 12 come, and the kids meal was much cheaper (and probably much more enjoyable for them) than the adult meal.

now, because we offered dinner selections, we decided to go with a seating chart- and we did all the way down to the exact seat. this actually turned out to be a lot of fun. we had to work pretty hard on this, but it was great. so we had a sheet for all our guests when they came to the ballroom that had the table names and locations, and then once they got to their seat, they had a name tag with a flower that was color coded to their dinner selection. this ensured that everyone had a seat, everyone got what they ordered, and also grouped our types of guests together (for instance, all of our college friends were seated in a few tables around the speakers, while we placed some of our older guests closer to the doors).

instead of table numbers, we decided to name all of our tables based on our favorite books- because what goes good with a cup of coffee?  a great book. some examples of what we used included Jane Eyre, Banker to the Poor, Freakonomics, Comeback, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

that idea was a hit. we placed the table names on little signs with a paragraph about the books, and put them in our centerpieces. the centerpieces were all a little different, but they contained different glass vases full of coffee beans, candles, and a few flowers.

as you can see in the one picture, in lieu of favors, we made a donation to winshape marriage on behalf of our guests, and presented each with a bookmark detailing the donation and the organization.

so dinner was served, during which, our awesome band played some light jazz. the menu for the night included a salad, entree, and then plenty of dessert. in addition to wedding cake and a grooms cake, we had a great dessert bar set up next to the starbucks bar (which we somehow didn't end up with a picture of?!). also, for our toasts, we passed out shot glasses of milk with warm cookies. definitely plenty of sweets!

as i mentioned, we had a full service starbucks bar, making everyones favorite starbucks drinks. the baristas were even in their green aprons! this was quite a special treat for us. we set the starbucks bar over to the side of the ballroom, and really set the stage with white leather couches and lots of candles. there was a line the whole night!

one of nathan's best friends, aaron, giving his shot glass of milk toast

my mimi, at the dessert bar

now our cakes- wow! what fabulous creations! both mine and nathans cakes were made by the Frosted Pumpkin- and incredible cake bakery that is a partner of the Evergreen. they were beautiful- and super yummy!

my cake, a vanilla genoise cake with cappuccino mousse and chocolate ganache filling, iced in swiss buttercream- yikes! super yum

nathan's super great cake- his was a chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganache and rolled fondant icing

yeah, they were pretty great:)

so once we got everyone fat and happy, what was it time for? dancing of course! and let me just say, we had the best band EVER. the neons. they were great- great to work with, played awesome, and had more people dancing then i had ever seen at a wedding!

for our dances we selected:
our first dance- we will dance by steven curtis chapman
father/daughter: delany talks to statues by jimmy buffett
first song for our guests: september by earth wind fire
last dance: new york new york by sinatra

finally, in addition to all the food and dancing and kids room, we had one more treat for our guests- a photobooth! the company we used was awesome- it automatically printed 2 copies of every session, so that our guests could leave one for us and take one with them. also,  the booth had a projector that streamed all the photos taken on to the wall- which was quite a surprise to our engaged friends who took some kissing shots :)

finally, it was time for the night to be over and we had the perfect get-away planned. we had asked and my dad's business partner very generously allowed us to drive off in his Ferrari- quite a treat to my car-loving husband.  to cheer us off, our guests lined a path with sparklers- too fun! it was a perfect ending to a perfect night:)

to see more of our pictures, check out my shutterfly page- http://whitniandnathan.shutterfly.com/

if you have any questions or want to know more, let me know! i love talking about my wedding :)

our wedding - part 1

after recently doing some heavy reading on younghouselove, i was inspired to blog about our wedding and all the details that went into it. i loved loved loved our wedding. shoot, i love any wedding! planning our wedding was one of the most special times in my life so far, and i left no detail unnoticed. so, if you're interested, keep reading! i've broken it all out (partly for yall, but also because its fun to remember!).

first, allow me to brag about my awesome husband. i'll blog about how he proposed later, but needless to say- it was awesome!

central park, NYC!

nathan proposed on march 19, 2008 and we decided to tie the knot on may 16, 2009- giving us just over a year to plan the big day. now, just so you understand why we had such a long engagement- i was going into my senior year of school, and didnt want to miss a day in the dorm. i graduated from berry on may 9, and the very next weekend married my love.

as i started planning my wedding, i wasnt entirely sure what i wanted the "theme" to be- honestly, i wasnt even sure about colors. all my friends assumed that i would go for pink (i'm known around these parts for my obsession with pink & brown), but as i looked around on theknot.com , i feared a scene that i described as looking like "a baby shower threw up on a wedding." no offense, or anything :). so after doing a lot of brainstorming and research, nathan and i agreed that it only made sense to have our wedding be about one common love- coffee!! the more i thought about it, the more confident i was that rich browns, accented with creams and ivory and a light pink, would be perfect!

we celebrated our engagement at starbucks- no joke, our first stop!

while deciding on that, mom and i started trying to figure out where we wanted to get married. since i was a berry girl, my dream was to get married at college chapel with a reception at ford

beautiful, huh? 

but alas, ford was already booked, and we couldnt find another venue in rome that would meet our requirements. see, we had also decided in the midst of all this that we wanted a huge wedding- we invited over 800 people and ended up serving close to 400. so, we moved on from rome and started looking in the atlanta area. after a site visit, we decided on the beautiful evergreen marriott nestled inside of stone mountain park.

they had a perfect lakeside pavilion for the ceremony, and the perfect balance of coziness yet elegance for the reception in their ballroom. so, we started planning our "destination wedding" around the corner.

first up: invitations. i wanted something unique. beautiful.  i found a great company with an online store that i worked closely with to make them exactly what i wanted. they were exquisite.  i went for a folded card with a hand tied bow, and  two enclosure cards- a reply card and a directions/accommodations card.  sandy at invitationpie.com was an angel- she worked with me patiently over email and changed everything i asked to create some beautiful, one of a kind invite that i am still proud of. later, she also helped us with our programs & favor book marks, which i will get to later.

sample, from the website

all the parts

not pictured here, but i hand tied dainty little pink bows on each one! this was quite some work . also, i and i wish i had taken a picture of it, i hand addressed every single invite. it took hours- we sent out  i think 350 invitations. but i was glad to do it.

as the replies started coming in, i kept up with rsvps and dinner selections with a combo of theknot.com and my own monster excel spreadsheet. i love excel. its my hero.  seriously it was like 20 worksheets and each one had color coding, checklists, and much more. if anyone wants to see it, contact me and i'll happily send it along.

so with invitations out, we started planning the weekend- because see, we had decided that although it was a celebration of our union, it was even more so a celebration of all the people who had played a part in helping us become the people we are today. so mom and i worked closely with nathan's mom to plan everything. 

first up, our wedding party. boy, did we have a great crew!  made up of our family and closest friends, we had a large group of folks we love. nathan's three sisters and two brother, along with one of my brothers and my sister , made up the base of the group. to that, we added friends from our childhood, high school, and college. we each had 8 attendants- which was a lot, but there's not one person we would have cut. we wanted these people beside us on our day.  for our groomsmen, we picked out some nice and simple tuxs, complimented with a chocolate brown vest and tie. they looked so sharp!

and for the ladies, i picked out a lovely brown tissue taffeta knee length dress. i thought this dress looked great on every girl. 

and the final piece of attire that i must brag about- my dress!

i loved loved loved my dress. after a few days of dress shopping all around atlanta, i stumbled upon this dress at the same store that my mom bought her dress from 20+ years ago.  on a bright, sunny summer day, mom, ash, and i waltzed into bridals by lori

in the sample,  in the store

my dress was a rivini  layered lace dress and it was perfect. i didn't want to take it off. 

so that's that. with our bridal party picked out and prettied up, and my dress ready to go, it was time to move onto the rehearsal. we worked with mrs freeman to plan a perfect night-before bash. because we were all staying at the marriott (and by all- i mean us and about 100 of our wedding guests) we had all night to enjoy a laid back gathering and prep time. after a quick rehearsal in the pavilion, mrs. freeman hosted an awesome back deck dinner party, followed by a pool party. this laid back, familial gathering gave us a great opportunity to socialize and celebrate with our favorite people- with whom we knew we wouldnt have much time to do the next day.

it was a great party, complete with mason jars of daisies and a bluegrass band. the pool party was fully equipped with tin buckets full of sodas and a candy cart with starbucks bags to fill to take back to the room.

which leads me to our welcome bags, which we pre-placed in each hotel room. while i don't have a picture of these, they were one of my favorite little details that we did.  full of bottled waters, snacks, gum, maps, and some treaties for the little guys, we wanted all of our guests to fill welcome, relaxed, and definitely not go hungry!

the day of the wedding, we hosted a great bridesmaid luncheon in the hotel room. as my girls and i got ready together (we had someone do our hair and makeup), some of my other favorite ladies surrounded us as we snacked on chicken salad, chicken tenders, cheez its, and berries with fresh whipped cream.

lunch party!

ash!

cousin casey

during the bridesmaid luncheon, my grandmothers, mother, and godmother presented me with a new twist on a traditional poem of gifts. i hadn't even thought about my "something old, something new," but of course, i come from a family that is a lot like me- always thinking about the details. so, in one of the most touching times of my life, they one by one presented me with some treasured tokens for the day:

mom and grammie- with my, something old

you cant see it very well, but my something old was my great, great grandmother's 14k rose gold wedding band. both my mom and aunt carried it in their weddings, and it was beautiful. this was presented to me by my grammie (mom's mom)

something new- new pearl earrings to wear from my mom

something borrowed- my godmother's garter. i had been very firm about not wanting a garter, and everyone thought i was crazy. i did wear this, but i did NOT have it tossed :)

and this is when i really lost it. unbeknownst to me, my mimi had sewn two blue bands on the underside of my dress. my papa, my dad's dad, had passed away in february from Alzheimer's. the two bands were to represent her and papa's presence. in honor and memory of papa, i also wore the pearl ring that he and mimi gave me as a high school graduation present. 

so that leads us up to the pictures beforehand and the wedding itself. we had a great photographer- mr. kenny wesley. a family friend of ours and an excellent photographer. unfortunately, right before we were to start taking pictures, a massive storm broke out. great. good luck though, right? so we started out taking pictures inside- at the fireplace in the starbucks in the hotel (yet another reason we selected this place). finally, the storm broke and the sun came out and we got to move out side. see the next post for more about the wedding itself!