Hello, friends! This is the second recap of my magical wedding day. For those who haven’t seen part one, that covers the getting ready and ceremony chunk of the day. This post walks you through the cocktail hour and reception!

Following the ceremony, our families and the bridal party spent a good chunk of time taking photos around the grounds. Part one shows some of the photos we took by the chapel (which turned out amazing). The great thing about Drumore Mill is that there are so many pretty parts of the property. I definitely insisted that we all to to the creek to get some more pictures. The bridal party came with for a few more group pictures before Curtis and I stayed back (along with my bridesmaid Devynne) to get more coupe pictures in the creek together. And yes, that meant we literally waded inside the creek!

We were able to get some truly stunning photos by the water. This was something I had wanted to do all along, and I was not opposed to going in even further! Fortunately the photographer captured the moments perfectly.

For those who may not know this, weddings are a complete blur. They really are! After taking our fair share of photos we were whisked away to the reception. Fortunately being the bride and groom has some advantages, as we were the first ones to be served from the buffet :).

Our food was catered by a local personal chef in Lancaster County who caters events as a side hustle. She cooked a lovely spread of breaded chicken in white wine sauce, honey and brown sugar bourbon roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans almandine, baked macaroni and cheese and a gluten-free mediterranean quinoa salad. For dessert we had lemon blueberry buttermilk cake and a gluten-free peanut butter pie, as well as a plate of assorted homemade cookies from my mother-in-law!

We chose not to go with a traditional wedding cake to serve our guests and instead got a small, decorative cake from a local grocery market to use for the ceremonial cutting and pictures. Curtis actually picked out this sweet little cake topper and it reminded me of us so much!

By the way, I would be remiss if I did not mention that ALL decor you see on the head table, tabletops, entry way and more were designed and executed by my amazingly talented mother, Christa Wolfertz. I am so lucky to have a professional interior designer for a mom and very grateful that she was willing to bring my vision to life at this venue.

One thing Curtis and I really wanted was for the speeches to not take forever…..especially if it got in the way of people eating. I’ve been to my fair share of weddings where I am “hangrily” waiting for dinner but have to sit through about 45 minutes of speeches before I can even begin the first course and I did NOT want my guests to have to go through that. So we let people do speeches after they all got their dinners so they could eat AND listen. It killed two birds with one stone.

Another thing we did that was somewhat unusual is we opened the floor for anyone else to say a few words impromptu if they wanted to. I really loved this because it allowed my dad and one of my best childhood friends to also say (and sing) a few words for us. I loved how it felt very organic to the moment and not forced in that way.

Following dinner and speeches, we got to our series of traditional dances. Curtis and I danced to “Hey Girl” but Stephen Sanchez (which is a song we discovered early into dating that very much captured the feels). By the way, dancing in front of a group is intimidating! I found myself feeling a little wishing we had that dance all to ourselves, but it was still sweet to share that with others.

Following our first dance, Curtis did a short dance with his two girls, Hannah and Rose. The I did a dance with my dad to “Moon River” where my sleeve ripped off. Haha! Finally, I did a dance with just Rose (the youngest girl) to “Who Let the Dogs Out”! We attempted to choreograph something a little more organized, but it ended up mostly being us jumping around making paw motions with our hands. We opened up the dance floor after this and let whoever wanted to join in.

The last few hours completely flew by in a blur of dancing and socializing. It was certainly exhilarating and so special to see so many of my favorite faces in one setting, but Curtis and I were pretty exhausted towards the end and ready to enjoy our alone time! One of the reasons we chose Drumore Mill was that it offered a beautiful couple suite room above the waterfall for us to stay in (for a fee..of course). My uncle kindly treated us to the suite so we could stay overnight without having to make other arrangements. It was MAGICAL.

All in all, I would say the wedding was a success. Was it perfect? Nope. Was it special? Absolutely. But I can honestly say that the wedding day is truly only the start of the fun. Even though it has not even been two full months of marriage. I feel even more in love now than I did on our wedding day now that Curtis and I are living daily life together with his girls. I am so excited to keep you posted on our lives together and share more of the journey along with regular blog content.