And Drink the Wild Air: And it Comes Back to Us: It's Time to Eat (and Toast)!

When the last notes of our first dance song were complete, it was finally time to do what, quite frankly, Mr. L and I had been looking forward to the most out of the reception -- dinner!

Our sweetheart table

The food was absolutely delicious. Our caterers, Tyner's Catering, did a wonderful job of making sure all of our guests, Mr. L, and myself were very well fed!

We opted for a buffet dinner with green salad with a choice of ranch or raspberry vinaigrette dressing, sliced roast beef in a peppercorn au jus, hot chicken casserole (Mr. L's favorite!), Italian flat green beans, buttered corn, and twice-baked potato casserole. It definitely wasn't a "fancy" meal by any means, and that's just the way we liked it -- celebrating our wedding with the kind of down-home food we were both raised on!

Unfortunately my photographer didn't get any pictures of the food, but you can kind of see it here!

Towards the end of dinner, our friends and family began to go up in front of everyone to give their toasts. My dad was first up.

His speech was incredibly sweet. He actually wrote a poem for it! I was so touched, and you could hear all of the women immediately in the crowd go "Aww!" and start tearing up. I definitely shed a few tears, too, especially when he got to the part of the poem talking about Mr. L taking care of me now after he'd done it for 22 years. I think it really hit me then that that part of my life was over and everything was really changing.

I love my dad!

After my dad finished, Mr. L's best man and best friend took the microphone.

He recollected on his friendship with Mr. L, including how they would stay up all night playing with their Legos at each other's houses, and threw in a "you're welcome" to Mr. L and a "I'm sorry" to me after mentioning that Mr. L and I had first met at his house =)

Next, Mr. L's dad took the stage.

He welcomed me into the Landrum family and assured me that "It gets better", haha. He congratulated us and let us know how proud he was of both Mr. L and me.

The final person to give a speech was Mr. L's best friend, Joe.

At one point he said that he was thrilled the wedding was over because if he had to keep one more secret between the two of us, he was just going to start telling people everything, haha. He was absolutely right -- Mr. L and I trusted him with all of our secret plans we had for each other!

Mr. L and I were incredibly touched by the kind words and emotion shown to us by our fathers and friends. We were so happy they all got to say something (and so happy the speeches were caught on film, yay!) to commemorate our wedding.

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Before the Big Day

And it Comes Back to Us