Love is Where We Are: Cake and Such

Our wedding budget revolved around making enough room for food. We chose our venue based on their catering. I wanted our wedding to have an incredible seated lunch, decadent cupcakes for dessert, and a tasty candy buffet to serve as favors. Unfortunately, among our two photographers and all of our guest photos, I have yet to find any pictures of our lunch. The good news is that I have pictures of the rest of the food! First, this is what our tables looked like sans food...that is, here are our lovely centerpieces.

Some of our tables had this centerpiece: a mint julep cup filled with cotton blooms, white hydrangeas, white garden roses, yellow garden roses, and blue thistles.

The rest of our tables had this centerpiece: a vintage blue mason jar filled with white hydrangea, cotton blooms, fiddlehead ferns, and green hypericum berries.


Our grooms cake was Knightro, UCF's mascot.

Our "cake" was a cupcake tree filled with strawberry, margarita, and red velvet cupcakes. The top tier of the tree was a strawberry cake. Rather than using a cake topper, each cupcake had a little pinwheel to indicate which flavor they were.

Our desserts were served family style (despite some initial arguing), so our cake display included a key to guide our guests in choosing their cake flavor.

Here's another thing I didn't realize about wedding receptions: cake cutting is difficult! First, we had to come up with a plan.

Then, we cut a sliver that ended up being ridiculously small...

...but, we enjoyed it anyway.

The final item on our menu was our candy buffet. You can read all about the breakdown here. We ended up with the perfect amount of candy. There was enough for everyone and just a tiny bit leftover (which quickly got consumed on the drive to our honeymoon destination).

It was really fun to get to watch everyone enjoy our candy buffet.

What snacks are you most looking forward to on your wedding day?


Catch up on the Lioness recaps here!

• First, we got ready at my apartment.
• Then, we finished getting ready at the venue.
• The boys got ready and posed for pictures.
• We exchanged gifts.
• The girls posed for pictures.
• I admired every little detail.
• We walked down the aisle.
• We got married.
• We had some alone time.
• We posed for photos with family.
• We posed for photos together.
• Of course, we took a few goofy pictures.
• We had our first dance.
• I danced with my dad, and Mr. Lion danced with his mom.

*All photos by H. Photography unless otherwise noted.

Love is Where We Are: Goofing Off

While wedding planning, I came across a lot of fun photography ideas on blogs. I really wanted a photo of the groomsmen picking me up...and another one of my girls holding up Mr. Lion. I had told my photographer about this, but we didn't really anticipate how much thought would have to go into picking up a bride in a wedding dress! In my opinion, the "logistics" picture was funnier than the actual posed picture!

Then, it was Mr. Lion's turn. At first, we had the groomsmen pick him up and try to "pass him" to the girls...but that didn't work.

The Lioness Bmaids ended up just picking him up.

Of course, they had to pick up enough slack to make up for a very pregnant brides matron, who wasn't allowed to do any heavy lifting! This resulted in giggling.

Then, we took one nice one...

But then we made our way over to the fauxtobooth and took another goofy one.

Mr. Lion's best man wins that one...the powdered wig and the stoic face? Brilliant.

What antics do you have planned for your wedding day?


Catch up on the Lioness recaps here!

• First, we got ready at my apartment.
• Then, we finished getting ready at the venue.
• The boys got ready and posed for pictures.
• We exchanged gifts.
• The girls posed for pictures.
• I admired every little detail.
• We walked down the aisle.
• We got married.
• We had some alone time.
• We took photos with family.
• We took photos with each other.

*All photos by H.Photography unless otherwise noted.

Love is Where We Are: Us

Once we were all done with family photos, it was time for Mr. Lion and I to pose for portraits by ourselves. Our photographer wanted to show the diversity of the venue, so we got really into it and posed all over! But first, our videographer wanted us to recreate the moment from Disney/Pixar's "Up," when Ellie flung her arms around her new husband.

Our photographer brought some props for us to pose with...

We posed in front of the fountain...

We posed on the front porch...

We posed in front of the original smokehouse from when the restaurant was a house. But then my boob kept popping out (Hey seamstress, I told you so!) so we got all chucklehouse...

We got it together eventually...

We posed underneath our chuppah...

We posed with our invitation...

We posed in our fauxtobooth, and later used those photos for our thank you cards...

Fun fact: that fabric is Lilly Pulitzer, I bought it on eBay for $4/yard, it includes all three of our wedding colors, and those little blue thingies (if you look closely) are lions. I'm going to make a dress out of it once I learn how to sew :)

My favorite photos of us, however, are the close-ups. You can really see how relaxed/relieved we are.

What photos are you looking forward to the most?

Catch up on the Lioness recaps here!

• First, we got ready at my apartment.
• Then, we finished getting ready at the venue.
• The boys got ready and posed for pictures.
• We exchanged gifts.
• The girls posed for pictures.
• I admired every little detail.
• We walked down the aisle.
• We got married.
• We had some alone time.
• We posed for photos with family.

Love is Where We Are: Family Photos

While the rest of our guests enjoyed their cocktail hour, we posed for photos with our families. Mr. Lion and I each have divorced parents, so there were a lot of separate pictures to take. Fortunately, our photographer was really great about speeding things along efficiently.

First, we posed with Mama Lioness.

Next, we posed with Papa Lioness.

As you can see, Sister Lioness got to be in all of the Lioness family shots. Next up was MIL Lion and Mr. Lion's stepdad.

They're so stinkin' cute.

Next, we posed with FIL Lion and Mr. Lion's stepmom.

Next, we posed with Mr. Lion's abuelos.

Then, Mama Lioness decided she wanted one of just us girls. I'm glad she said something, because this is one of my favorite pictures from the whole day.

Then, I decided that I wanted one with just Sister Lioness.

When my cousin (the one who was our officiant) got married last year, the rest of us cousins took a group picture together...without him. We thought he was too busy playing host and didn't want to bother him for a silly photo. I firmly explained to my cousins that this would not be the case at my wedding. I was never too busy for a cousins photo! Sure enough, fast forward to the middle of our reception and I was summoned for a group photo.

I like that one because Ship, Jen's boyfriend, apparently thought this was a goofy picture. Clearly, the rest of us did not get that memo. We have one normal picture, but I like this one better. Here's the normal one:

And here's one where we all decided to be goofy:

Finally, we invited some of the older generations to participate:

My grandmother is still talking about this picture, six months later. It doesn't get any better than that!

Catch up on the Lioness recaps here!

• First, we got ready at my apartment.
• Then, we finished getting ready at the venue.
• The boys got ready and posed for pictures.
• We exchanged gifts.
• The girls posed for pictures.
• I admired every little detail.
• We walked down the aisle.
• We got married.

*All photos by H. Photography unless otherwise noted.

Love is Where We Are: Yichud

Of all of the details that went into our wedding, the ceremony was the part that had me the most nervous. When I was writing it, I wasn't following religious guidelines; I wasn't even following a template. That blank canvas really intimidated me. Was it going to seem too weird and unconventional? Were the few religious components going to seem really out of place? I was also worried about my cousin/officiant and his lack of experience. He's a charismatic speaker, but would that be enough to lead a ceremony? Did I totally freak him out by asking him to perform the ceremony and he just said yes to be nice?!

The ceremony was perfect. I enjoyed every second of it, and my cousin was a better officiant than I ever could have hoped for. And just like that, we were married.

We recessed down the aisle. I stopped, of course, to chat with guests...

...and to pose for the camera.

The Lioness Bmaids and Lion GMen followed closely behind us.

They retreated to cocktail hour, but my new husband and I had other plans.

When I first created our day-of itinerary, I scheduled in a little bit of time for a Jewish tradition called yichud. Yichud, or unity, is a period of time in which the bride and groom are alone together immediately after the ceremony but before the reception begins. A long time ago, this time was used to consummate the marriage. I don't think anyone really does that anymore (mostly because touching up hair and makeup to that extent would just be a pain in the ass). Nowadays, the more traditional Jews use that time to share a meal together, breaking the fast that led up to their wedding. The rest of us just use it as a peaceful break from the chaos of the day.

We had told our photographer and our videographer to leave us alone for ten minutes. It seems brief, but that's really all we had time for. We hadn't seen each other since the rehearsal dinner, so we squeezed in a lot of catching up during that short time! I told Mr. Lion about how we almost didn't make it to the venue on time; he told me about some silly things the guys had done the night before. It was so refreshing and relaxing. It really hit me that everything was over and all we had left to do was party. That's a pretty great feeling.

Just as we were starting to wrap things up and head back to the garden for photos, my cousin Shannon busted through the door. She looked terrified when she realized that she had interrupted our first moments together as husband and wife. "Dude," she exclaimed. "I am so sorry. I just wanted to put my uke away." I just burst out laughing. It was just so appropriate that the first person I spoke to as a married woman was one of my cousins. It was even better that the first words someone spoke to me were, "I just wanted to put my uke away."

If I haven't said it enough on here, allow me to reiterate: I love my family.

Catch up on the Lioness recaps here!

• First, we got ready at my apartment.
• Then, we finished getting ready at the venue.
• The boys got ready and posed for pictures.
• We exchanged gifts.
• The girls posed for pictures.
• I admired every little detail.
• We walked down the aisle.
• We got married.

*All photos by H. Photography unless otherwise noted.