The wedding was in New Jersey and while I'm not usually a huge fan of New Jersey, our friends couldn't have picked a nicer hotel and venue. First of all, the hotel was a castle. No, literally... the hotel looked like a castle:
Sezzy and I weren't part of the wedding party so we only went up on the day of the wedding, but we stayed overnight. We weren't going to make the mistake of not staying over on the night of the wedding again. Sezzy and I got in to the hotel around 12:30 and ordered some pizzas with some of our friends. Then it was time to get ready and head out to the wedding, which started at 4:30 pm. We hopped on the shuttle and about halfway there it started raining. The weather was bright and sunny the day before and the day after the wedding, but it sure had to rain on the day of.
The ceremony was at a place called Perona Farms and when we got there, I shook hands with the groom, Josh, who looked like someone just took away his puppy. He was so upset at the prospect of having the ceremony indoors, or rather, not having the ceremony outdoors. Everyone filed into the backup room, the "in case of rain" room, and took their seats. After sitting and waiting for about 15 minutes, the coordinator came into the room and started taking down the flowers. It was getting sunny. Had the storm passed?
After another few minutes, everyone was told to head outside, where it now looked like a beautiful evening. The ceremony was held in a secluded little terrace outside the main building. This was one of five possible locations where a ceremony could be held, but it looks like the nicest and most accommodating to me.
The reverend that officiated the ceremony did an excellent job and Josh and Monika's self-written vows were touching. They performed a hand fasting and a Polish tradition involving bread, salt, and sweet wine. It was a nice touch and it made their ceremony unique to themselves. The end of the ceremony neared and the rain crept back up, but the ceremony finished before the rain started coming down hard again.
Then it was time for the cocktail hour, where the food was quite good and the open bar kept the drinks coming. The featured food included stuffed peppers, lemon pepper chicken, sushi, and alcohol-infused fruit and veggies, among other things. Unfortunately, the cocktail hour was cut a bit short since the ceremony started late, but it was still nice.
Everyone was then ushered into the dining room where we awaited the newly married couple. The band, the Fuzzpops, was already playing when we arrived in the room, and they were quite good. Once the new bride and groom were announced and had their first dance, a server came to our table and took our order. I loved this idea. We didn't actually give a meal choice when we RSVP'ed. Instead a server came to the table and gave us two choices of main course and two choices of salad. They even asked each person individually whether they wanted their steak rare, medium, or well done. What a great idea!
Then there was some dancing while waiting for our food, and more drinks and chatting with friends. Another thing that our friends did differently was the seating arrangement. They had a sweetheart table and scattered the rest of the group of friends around the room. I liked this better than having the entire wedding party at one or two tables and scattering everybody else. We had people we already knew at our table, as well as a few we didn't know. It worked out very well.
The rest of the night was just fun. There was dancing and drinking and pyramid-building. The food was fantastic, as were the drinks. The guys went outside for some fresh air and pictures in between courses and this is when we attempted to build what would have been the largest human pyramid ever built by the BTPBT--a 6-person base.
Unfortunately, we didn't quite make it on attempt #1. We had to go inside and eat after that. We all came back out for attempt #2, but it was then time to cut the cake, so our plan was thwarted. In the end, we didn't get a full pyramid up. However, soon after the cake cutting, we all got a surprise - a cordial cart. Ok, really it was just a moving shot bar, but they called it a cordial cart because it was mostly after-dinner liquers (except for the Bushmills!). Things started wrapping up soon after that and by midnight we were back at the hotel. Some had planned to go to the bar to do Irish car bombs, but Sezzy and I were beat. We ended up going to bed a little later.
The next morning, we woke up and went down to the brunch that the bride and groom set up. We got there early and ate up to cure our headaches. We didn't see our friends at brunch but ended up running into the newly-married couple on our way down to the check-out desk. We congratulated them again and wished them well on their honeymoon and then we were off, back home again.
All in all, the wedding was a ton of fun and Sezzy and I picked up on some things that we liked, giving us more ideas for our ever-nearing wedding. Seeing two more of our friends get hitched got us more excited, but more importantly, we realized that we now have to start planning soon. Like, we actually have to start doing stuff. For our own wedding. It was a little crazy at first, but we are both ready to do it. Our venue gets officially booked in just over a month from now. Our engagement lunch with family and friends is in less then 4 weeks. We started looking at Save the Dates last night. It's crazy. Like, it's really happening. Here we go!
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