Southern Grace Wedding: Reception II

These reception pictures will be more people oriented! After the ceremony, hubby and I headed over to the marina that is across the street from our church. We hopped on a family friend's boat that is absolutely stunning. The sun started to get that orange, sunset glow and I couldn't think of a more perfect way to spend the first few minutes of our wedded lives together than with fresh, ocean air and salty sea spray greeting our smiling faces.

Even though it was our wedding day, we had to wear the appropriate non-scuff shoes so of course Mr. SG and I rocked our Sperry's for the boat ride.

One of my favorite pics.

Doesn't she look beautiful!!



Our shoes were awaiting our arrival at the Ritz's dock.

As were all of our fabulous wedding guests!!!


After a quick champagne toast on the dock, we walked straight to our first dance (Sunday Kind of Love by Etta James) Funny story about the dance ... the shoes you saw on the dock were my "reception shoes" and about 2 inch shorter than my "ceremony Manolo's" ... Mr. SG and I spent 6 weeks perfectly choreographing our first dance and when we hit the floor, I was suddenly tripping all over my dress. I was able to cover it and I whispered into his ear "I'm stepping on my dress, we have to improvise!" So we threw our dance out the window and freelanced! Everyone kept saying how they were so impressed - little did they know it was our Plan B!

At least we were able to nail the dip ... I was still a little scared since the mister had dropped me during our practice two nights prior (on concrete no less) but we pulled it off perfectly!!

Then came time for the Father- Daughter dance ... same issue with the dress so once again we had to wing it! We had a blast dancing to "How Sweet It Is". Throughout the week leading up to the wedding I made some incredible memories. Some of theme were positively grand like arriving to my reception on a boat but some of them were deliciously simple. For example, on the Tuesday night before the wedding, Mr. SG and I took our parents, my sister and our grandparents out to dinner to exchange presents of gratitude and share our thankful hearts with them. Before joining together, I met my dad at the hospital where he works for some last minute dance practice- I will never forget just the two of us, dancing in an empty conference room and singing to ourselves "How Sweet It Is".

About 3/4 of the way through the dance, Mr. SG and his mother joined in and really surprised everyone with their moves!

The rest of the night was filled with toasts (as seen above) ...

Cake cutting ... (no smashing cake in each others faces ...)

And dancing!! We had a fabulous band called The Venturas ... our guests could not stop talking about how great they were!!

My sweet mom and her new son-in-law dancing!

My grandparents, Gaya and Geedad kicking their heels up!!

Dancing with everyone ... this may have been on of my favorite songs "Shout"!

Husband and I were able to steal a few private moments throughout the night.

Tossed the bouquet and guess what ... my sister caught it!! So not only did she get the silver ring charm in the bridesmaids cupcakes but now this?!?! She must be next .... uh oh!!

I love the pictures where I can see the whole scene like this with the palm trees and the night sky ... it just takes me back to such a magical night!

This is us at the very end of the night ... one of our friends snapped it. It completely summarizes how we felt ... happily exhausted!!