Our wedding day: The reception (Part 2)

After our first dance, we sat down at our sweetheart table for some delicious appetizers [vegetarian crostinis and mushrooms stuffed with corralitos sausage], and we found out the reason we had to wait so long to come in. My sister/maid of honor gave a beautiful speech about how much she loves us, and began a slideshow of pictures she had collected - of us growing up, and us together (I actually blogged a lot of those pictures here!).

The guitarist played in the background as we all watched it. It made me cry!

Okay in the interest of full disclosure, the surprise was not a complete surprise. When Rose went to my mother in law's house to get photos, she blabbed to James that she had been there, but wouldn't say why. We had forgotten about that by the wedding day with everything else going on, so we really were surprised at the time.

Still, it was a beautiful surprise gift and I cannot thank her enough for taking the time to put it together!

Dinner was next - yum! We had a buffet of Michael's house salad [mixed baby greens, Point Reyes blue cheese, candied spice pecans, local apples and dried cranberries tossed in a tarragon vinaigrette. I'm not kidding that people are still talking about it], grilled sierra steak with mushroom sauce, barbecue chicken, roasted vegetable lasagna, sage buttermilk biscuits, roasted garlic mashed potatoes and mixed veggies.

After eating we mingled with guests a little - because we had such a small wedding (62 guests), we were able to talk to every one of them and say more than just "hello, thanks for coming." I'm so happy about that - we love every person there and are so thankful that they made the effort to attend - we really wanted them to know that!

A few more shots from our guests -

To be continued...