This is part 2 of my reception. You can read Reception, Part 1 here.

Andrew and I shared our first dance to the song, “You Are My Sunshine” covered by Patrick Dansereau. That song has always been really special between us, and I feel like it just fit with our wedding. We really can’t dance so we just swayed and took that moment to soak in the day and this little private time that we had with each other.

My dad and I danced to “Daddy’s Little Girl” by Michael Buble. I always forget how tall my dad is until we were dancing! Andrew and his mom shared the Mother/Son dance to “You’ll be in my Heart by Phill Collins. My mom whispered to me during their dance, “At lease they kind of look like they know how to dance.” I laughed because my dad and I were trying to focus on not tripping or stepping on each other’s feet!

We did two more special dances: an anniversary dance and a distance dance. For the anniversary dance, all of the married couples were invited to the dance floor and the DJ would then ask in increments of years for the couples to stay on the dance floor. So he started with “Those who have been married more than one day, stay on the dance floor.” So me and Andrew sat down and he continued on to five year, then ten years, continuing in increments until there was just one couple left. We gave a small little prize to that couple just to thank them for coming and to show our appreciation. We did the same with the distance dance because we had so many people that traveled to attend our wedding. We had a small gift for the couple that won as well.

And that commenced the dancing! I’m not a huge dancer, but it was so much fun with all my friends and family that I didn’t care what I looked like. Even though I was a little annoyed with the DJ asking us every five minutes what we wanted to do next, he played really good music.

Did I mention how hilarious the groomsmen dancing were?

There were some songs that came on that I didn’t know that my friends taught me the moves to, and then proceeded to laugh at me. Andrew hates dancing, so he was hiding for most of this until I could find him and persuade him to slow dance to some of the songs with me.

The night went by so fast! We also had a dollar dance, where my grandpa proceeded to teach me how to two-step and I got to show off my bad dancing to absolutely everyone. Still so much fun, though!

The bouquet toss got a little feisty when one of my friends (the same one who read the Bible verses at our ceremony) practically dove and took out some of the other girls for the bouquet. Afterwards she said, “I have no idea what came over me! I just wanted it!”

The garter toss was much less eventful; Andrew sling-shotted the garter, but it broke (that’s what you get for buying cheap on Amazon, lol) so just landed on the floor until someone picked it up.

We tried to make our way of the tables to be able to speak with everyone, but we only made it to a handful over the course of the night. We had the ballroom until 10:00pm, but at about 9:30 I was suddenly so exhausted so I told the DJ to wrap it up. The last song of the night was “Bye Bye Bye” by the Backstreet Boys – I tried to keep it classy.

We had a sparkler exit that was everything that I hoped it would be. We bought about 200 sparklers and had matchbooks with “Mr & Mrs Smith” and our wedding date for our favors, that way everyone could light their sparklers. I remember standing behind the doors, wondering why it was taking so long for them to be lit, but it was apparently really windy and the wind kept blowing them out!

And then we were running through the light of the sparklers and everyone was cheering for us. I have heard horror stories about brides’ veils or dresses catching on fire – thankfully neither of those happened! It was exactly like a fairy tale and was a perfect ending to the night.

As we made it to the end of the line I couldn’t help but laugh because my brother wasn’t there with the car yet. Then when he did pull up and we got into the car, my sister had all of my stuff in her car. Haha- it was a little crazy leaving!

As my brother drove, and Andrew and I sat surrounded by all of the tulle of my dress, I leaned my head on his shoulder and we both agreed that today was, hands down, the best day ever. And though tonight was the end of our wedding day, the day I have been planning and preparing for for over a year and a half, it was only the beginning.