Arthur Open House

We were blessed to have an open house/2nd reception in Arthur, Il where I grew up. I love my home town and though we don't see our lives rolling back around to live there again, its a great place to be.

Tom and I with the second wedding cake :)

I wore the dress again briefly, but it was very warm that day, so we canged soon after.

I didn't expect gifts, we were given so many nice things!

Mom's wonderful friends

Briley & Sophie

yes mother, someday we will do our best to give you granddaughters :)

In the meantime, she borrows Aunt Sue's

Several of our family memberes gave us two weekends in a row of their lives, we have a great family!

We also had many great friends who made the trip to share this time with us, we have great friends!

Lots of work went into this day and we had a lot of help to make it happen.

I should specifiy, mom had a lot of help... Tom and i were in Brown County enjoying a few days away while most of the work was going on!

Individual Custard Cups... Yumm!

Again... Yumm!!!

Dippin' Dots - Marsha had to trek off to go pick them up.

Marsha spent the better part of a week helping mom get ready for the open house,

don't think we could have done it without her!

Prepping the potatoes

Apple Pie, Tom's favorite

Makeing sure the flowers are ready, mom watered and babied those flowers daily all summer long :)

And Dad build a deck!!

A little help with the finishing touches

complete with a fire pit

Even Buddy got all dressed up

Bridal Party

I tried to list them out by name, but it got complicated because they are not really in a row...

Dori's top 5 wedding moments

1. Seeing Tom for the first time in his suite. He looked so handsome, I was/am so excited to marry him. I cried, he cried, we laughed and cried at the same time. It was a good moment.

                                                    

2. Dancing with my dad  - its something we have done together very few times and it was one of the parts of our wedding i ws looking forward to the most. I chose the song "I Loved Her First." I knew the first time i heard that song it would be the one i used at my wedding if i ever met a man worth giving up singledom for. If you don't know the song or would like to hear it again, I haved added it to the blog, its located at the very bottom of the page in the form of a youtube video.

3. The old car - Initally I thought this was a silly idea, but that car was one of my favorite parts of the wedding, we rode from the church to the reception in it and i loved every mintue. It also looked amazing in the pictures. What a great time!

4.Wedding Reception - I loved the location of our reception, the food was great, the deserts were amazing and I had the opportunity to see so many of my friends and family. Tom and i chose to greet our guests at the reception by going from table to table and taking time to just sit down and chat. We had a wonderful time!

                                            

 

5. The Music - It was amazing and made our ceremony sacred and beautiful. Brandon and Marie guided the music and musicians that made for such a pretty ceremony. Left to my own devices i would have used more praise and worship and less traditional music BUT what Tom and I decided on together, with Brandon's help, fit both our preferences and personalities. And i got to walk out of the wedding to a very lively rendition of Blessed Be The Name. Yet another great wedding moment.

Ceremony Slideshow

I put together a short slideshop of the ceremony, I with you could hear the music, it was amazing.

Pre Wedding Pictures - Bride and Groom

Finally, i have taken some time to post some official wedding photos. Thank you to Accent Photography, Nappanee, IN for doing a wonderful job with out pictures! The following are pictures taken before the wedding. For this post i am covering only the bride and groom. I have over 400 pics taken by the professional photograher alone, so i thought i would break it up into several different posts.

Tom and I didn't want to keep our guests waiting at the reception, so we opted to take most of the photo's prior to the wedding. But we didn't want to lose the moment of seeing each other for the first time in out wedding finery... We will start there.

Groom. Inspecting the Unity Candles while waiting for his Bride

Bride. Stepping into the church, i can see my groom, but he has his back to me...

Psst... Right behind you!

Honey, we're gettting married today!

First official wedding picture as a couple... I think we're both still in shock, its out wedding day!!

love this picture

well, hello there handsome

More to come...