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- No unity candle. After talking about other weddings with my family and Todd, we all discovered that we've never been a fan of the unity candle. There's a lot of room for error and it's always seemed a little awkward to me-- at least I'd feel awkward doing it. So we decided to bring the family into it in a different way. I actually got this idea from my friend, Hillary's wedding. Our parents pre-recorded messages to us. My mom and Todd's mom recorded messages to me while my dad and Todd's dad recorded messages to Todd. When the minister asked, "Who gives this woman to be married?", my dad replied, "I do" and my mom and Todd's mom came to stand next to us. Todd's dad stepped down next to us from his Best Man position and our parents were on either side of us. As soon as they got there, my mom's voice came over the system and said, "Dear Erin..." All four of our parents recorded the sweetest, most meaningful messages to us about love, faith, and marriage. Our music coordinator was playing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (one of my favorites) very softly on the piano while all of the recordings were played. It's definitely one of my most favorite memories from the day. I knew they'd recorded the messages and I was so excited to hear what they had to say.
- The ceremony music. The prelude music included "Someone to Watch Over Me," "Nessun Dorma," "And So it Goes," and lots of other love songs that I love. We exited the church to "Oh Happy Day" with a big gospel sound. My cousins and two close family friends sang "Shine on Us" and "The Prayer." It meant so much to have special people and special songs. We couldn't help but cry, but it was beautiful.
- The pies. We chose not to have a groom's cake, but had groom's pies instead. We had white chocolate banana cream pies from Soby's displayed on scales of justice (Todd's an attorney). Then the big pies were surrounded by miniature 3 inch pies. Someone said they ate 7 of the mini-pies! The white chocolate banana cream pies are Todd's absolute favorite and I have to say I love them, too. You can see the shadow of the scales of justice in this picture.
- The cake. I love plain white wedding cake with almond filling. So yummy. We had a white cake, but had pale pink butter cream icing with gold ribbon. I wanted one surprise layer of red velvet cake to remind people that Southerners know how to do food!
- The food. I wanted some fancy food, but I really wanted comfort food for everyone. With the drinks and all the dancing I knew they'd need lots of yummy comfort food. In honor of South Carolina, we had a shrimp and grits station. In honor of my Louisiana roots, we had a crawfish etouffee station. We had a carving station with pork tenderloin, but I insisted that it have a side of French fries-- my favorite late night snack. So we did sweet potato fries in little cones. This was the perfect dance floor snack. We had yummy cheeses, mushrooms, chicken salad tartlets, and more Southern fun!
-- okay, there's more, but this post is so long right now that I think I need to post the rest later. And next time there will be pictures.
