{Louisiana Wedding Reception}

We were married on a Tuesday, left for our Honeymoon that night and then came back to Lake Charles, LA for our wedding reception on Friday. These are the photo from the night. Ben's family (my new family) decorated the entire day before and so many people helped and cooked and just made the party so very memorable for Ben and I. My new sister-in-law (with the help of many) turned a regular church cultural hall into a romantic, canopy ceiling, wedding land with white lights! I loved all of the decorations and the details she and Ben's mom put into it. I couldn't believe HOW BEAUTIFUL and PERFECT everything turned out. I really couldn't have done what they did or even dreamed it up. I am not a details kind of gal, but they made our reception exactly what I didn't know I wanted :) The food table was beautiful with amazing food--including Gumbo, Swedish Meatballs, Fruit...and to be honest, I'm going to need to get the list of what else was there. I was too busy to eat anything---except for CAKE! Oh wow. That was pretty amazing though. A week before the party, Ben and I went for a cake tasting and since that day all I could think about was cake. I've never had cake quite like that before. If you ever get over to Lake Charles, LA go to Pronia's Deli and eat the White Raspberry cake and German Chocolate cake. YUM! I need to learn to make spicy Gumbo and Etouffee as well...that was a side-note. I'm just thinking about all of the good food we ate while down there. Anyway, I digress! Ben's brother, Daniel was our MC and set up all of the audio so we could have music and a slideshow going on. Music is a big part of our life and we worked really hard on the perfect playlist and chose all of the songs that would always remind us of our wedding. Having said that, I think its funny that last minute I changed the song I wanted to be our "first dance song" and while we were dancing I wished I would've stuck with the original. Since there is no video or proof of our wedding reception, it will go on record that although the song we danced to was "True Companion" by Mark Cohn, our real song will be "Crazy Girl" by the Eli Young Band. I can do that, right? We had so many guests and it was really fun meeting all of the people Ben had told me about who meant so much to him. We did the traditional cake cutting and I was "encouraged" by several people to smash cake in Ben's face. I really hadn't intended on doing that, because if there is one thing I know about Ben, is that he doesn't hesitate to retaliate. While I was telling him to "be sweet" and he was feeding me cake, I just decided to go for it and I was correct to assume I would end up with cake in my hair...not to mention my ears. It was worth it though :) Everyone worked so hard on our party--it was picturesque and lovely and we have so many wonderful memories from it. We got an interesting send-off as we left the church that night...the great part was all of the bubbles people blew while we were walking down the sidewalk...the interesting part were the messages someone had written on the windows of our car. All wedding related, but conveniently blacked out for our future posterity :) One of our wedding presents from his brother and sister-in-law was a room at a hotel in town. It was homey and clean and very nice! I have to say how much I appreciate those details because we now laugh at the difference from the hotel we stayed at in New Orleans :) Good memories! Being a married lady is great. I love it!