The Imperfectly Perfect Wedding Reception

Patrick and I had our wedding reception at the Pittsburgh Athletic Association in Oakland, PA. I fell in love with it at first sight! The Schenley Room is where the cocktail hour took place. It's a more masculine room with the dark green and red decor paired with the big wooden bar. Next-door is The Pennsylvania Room which is where dinner and dancing took place. It screams elegance with the white pillars, fancy sconces on the wall and who can forget the gorgeous crystal chandeliers!

I loved that there was a more masculine room paired with a more feminine room. I felt it was the perfect combination for Patrick and I to both love where we held our reception! And we did love where we held our reception! The reception however...!

Well, let me explain!

When our bridal party got to the P.A.A. we were escorted to an upstairs room where we had some drinks and appetizers. My MOH informed me that my fabulous lingerie kept poking out the top of my dress and asked if I would be more comfortable maybe taking it off until the end of the night. Being a rookie at lingerie I had never realized how uncomfortable it really is and said "Yes, that would be great"! So we headed to the bathroom where we took off the lingerie. 

Worst. Decision. EVER! 

When it was time to put my dress back on something went terribly, terribly wrong with my zipper. The zipper was up but it started to split from the bottom up. It was a nightmare! What was supposed to be a quick change turned into about a half-hour ordeal trying to keep my dress on! We were in no way prepared for this...I mean who really prepares for their brand-new wedding gown that cost a ton of money to have a faulty zipper? With all my will I didn't cry. I stood there praying for a miracle as my poor MOH had her head up my dress trying to safety pin me from the inside to be as inconspicuous as possible. All the while our wedding coordinator at the P.A.A. was telling us our guests were seated and patiently waiting on us to be served...no pressure! We did the best we could and got in the line-up to be introduced as quickly as possible. The entire timing of the wedding was majorly off at this point and I knew it. Poor Patrick just gave me a hug and said it would all be okay. I had on my brave face as we were introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Bailey :-)

My mom and MOH did a fabulous job pinning me in, you really can't tell I was unraveling at the seams here! 

As soon as we got in to the Pennsylvania Room we cut our cake! It was delicious!!

P.S. 

That is a "B" on top of our cake...I don't know why every picture has it backwards, I'm going to have to check with our photographers on if they have a picture with the "B" going the right way!!

Patrick and I then sat down at our sweetheart table to eat our dinner. Patrick's brother and Best Man gave a great speech about how he's always looked up to Patrick and my sister and MOH gave a speech about the trials and tribulations of marriage. Both did a fabulous job! So, so touching! 

Our first course of dinner was the Wedding Soup. I was so nervous about my dress I couldn't even eat. Patrick's mom saw this and took me aside and asked if she could try fixing my dress. So I left my new husband to eat alone and went to try out Linda's idea. I was so scared as Linda took out each pin and unzipped my dress completely. She then zipped it up and it was perfect! I was in one piece again! I was so grateful to her!!! I remember feeling like a million bucks walking in with my dress right this time! And I was so excited to tell Patrick my dress was good now! Patrick had already finished the salad and was mingling with friends. Gosh, it had to have looked so obscure seeing these newlyweds eating separately and mingling separately! We did get to eat our main course together fortunately! I chose the Boursin Crusted Fillet Medallions and they were amazing! Patrick ate the Stuffed Chicken Breast and my other Medallion - lol!

During dinner our DJ played a slideshow of our childhood photos set to music. I had always planned to have this at our wedding. Days before the wedding though, the man I had hired to create this bailed on me. He had had my photos for over a month and said he got tied up with work and couldn't complete it. I was beyond livid! When you pay someone for a service it should be done! And to bail on someone days before their wedding...just wrong!!! Fortunately I have amazing friends!!! My friend and bridesmaid, Krista, had created a slideshow of us as a gift for my Bachelorette party, not knowing I had hired someone to do the same thing. We used her version and it was a huge hit!

Patrick and I had had a really difficult time finding a song for our first dance. What we consider "our songs" are songs that we both love to sing and jam out to together. None of which have a thing to do with love!! Could you see us dancing our first dance to Zac Brown Band "Chicken Fried" or "Sic'Em On A Chicken", Jerrod Niemann's "Lover Lover", Adele's "Rolling In The  Deep" or Boston's "More Then A Feeling"?! Yeah, not happening! 

Patrick wanted us to dance to Michael Buble's "Feeling Good" and I wanted his version of "The Best Is Yet To Come"...both of which were kinda awkward to dance to. 

I love love love Ray LaMontagne's "The Best Thing" but always hated the very first line for a wedding...

"Baby, it's been a long day baby. Things ain't been going my way you know I need you here to clear my mind " in reality it would have been quite fitting - haha!!! 

I had found a song on Pandora called "Count The Days" by an artist named Ernie Halter. The words were exactly the words in my heart when Patrick was in Tennessee during our engagement! But I feared people wouldn't know the song. 

We thought we finally had found our song when we heard Johnny Cash "Rose Of My Heart". The words were beautifully written and we both loved it! We danced to it for my mom and she hated it! She said it sounded like a funeral. 

I had so much stress over finding our song I tell you!!! 

Finally we decided on Keith Urban's "Making Memories Of Us". It has beautiful and true lyrics sung to a tender melody by a well known artist...jackpot! We never made it to dancing lessons so there was nothing fancy about our dance except for a few random spins and turns. It was a beautiful moment for us! I'll never forget when Keith Urban sang the lyric

"you've been stretched to the limits but it's alright now  "...SO TRUE KEITH! 

 

  My dad and I then took center stage as we danced to Heartland's "I Loved Her First". I let my dad choose the song and actually didn't know what song we would dance to until we were out there! I always had a hunch he's pick that one though, and secretly had always hoped that would be the one! 

I remember my dad saying Patrick and I looked like pro dancers out there and he had inquired if we did make it to dance lessons. Well any little turn or move Patrick and I had made during our dance was about to be overshadowed in a big way! 

Patrick and his mom danced to Steve Winwood's "Roll With It" and should probably go down in history as the BEST mother-son dance ever!!! I remember when I first asked Linda what song she wanted to dance to Patrick with and she said "Oh I don't know, just roll with it, baby." and I said "Okay" kinda puzzled. Then Linda said "Yeah, Roll With It, Baby! That's the one!" and I said "The song Roll With It Baby?!" She said "Yes! That's the one!" When I got home I pulled up the YouTube video for Patrick and informed him that this was the song his mom wanted to dace with him to at our wedding. Patrick got a big grin on his face and started dancing around the house and singing it - lol! Secretly I always wondered how in the world they were going to pull of dancing to that fast of a song...they mastered it! Check it out...!

Roll With It, Baby!

That dance got the entire party started! Everyone was clapping along, cheering and having a good time! And when it was time to open the dance floor nobody was shy about getting down!

 

The dance floor was never empty and never even close to being empty! People were out there all night long having a good time! Our DJ, Bill Bara, did a fabulous job playing great music all night long!

We tried to talk to people as we saw them (since we never got to go around from table to table) while also trying to make appearances on the dance floor and get last minute portraits taken with our grandparents and parents since we didn't have time to do that at the church. I felt like we were being pulled in every direction! Oh, and my flats and purse never made it to the reception so I had to walk barefoot all night and had no makeup to touch up with throughout the night!! 

Then came our bouquet and garter toss...quite memorable. Patrick first retrieved the garter from my leg to Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On". 

I then tossed my bouquet to Moulon Rouge's version of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend". I remember seeing girls running from all directions to come and catch it - haha! The date of one of Patrick's teammates in Tennessee caught it! Her name is Naomi.

Patrick then did a little baseball skit to Trace Adkins "Swing, Batter, Batter" before tossing my garter out to the waiting group of guys! Our friend Dez caught it! Patrick played with Dez on the Steelers and he was actually one of the masterminds behind our matchup! He got us some good luck in our marriage by placing the garter of Naomi to Nelly's "Hot In Here" - haha!

Somewhere in the mix, my zipper busted again :-( Linda grabbed the back of my dress to cover me and we bolted out of there as quickly as possible. I was pretty defeated. It happened just when I was starting to enjoy myself again. I again retreated to an empty room where my sister and Mother-In-Law pinned me into my dress again. This time there were no disguising it. There were safety pins all the way up the back of my dress. To try to hide it though, they took the bottom of the train of my dress and pretty much pinned it to the top of my dress. I had paid $200 for my bustle...it was supposed to be this beautiful layered silk taffeta with the crystal medallions gathered in the back. Instead I got my train practically tucked into the back of my dress!  At this point I was ready to just go home but we tried to make the most of it by just having a good time on the dance floor. 

Only one person said something to me about my dress being broken, which was difficult to hear. I'm sure others noticed but opted not to say anything which was probably the best thing for my sake! My zipper breaking twice was horrible. I hope no other bride ever has to go through that.

We didn't have a theme to our wedding persay, but we did tie in lots of cookies! Pittsburgh weddings are known for having a cookie table. I remember the first wedding Patrick and I went to together. It was my friend Colleen's wedding and I was actually one of her bridesmaids so Patrick and I weren't sitting by each other. I ended up finding him parked in front of the cookie table lol. He said "I don't know what the heck this is but I like it!" I then explained to him that most Pittsburgh weddings have a cookie table and he made me promise we'd have one one day. So we indeed had a cookie table, actually cookie tables! Our centerpieces were actually intricate cookie trays and our favor was a personalized cookie with each guests name and table number on it. 

Unfortunately our wedding flew by so quickly I never even got to see the cookie table that night. There were over 300 dozen cookies on it though! We had boxes there for guests to take home all the cookies they liked!

We also had a signature drink, "The Bailey's Kiss" that we never got to sample. It was a mixture of Bailey's and Amaretto! (Thanks Miss Palma for grabbing this picture, we didn't have one of it!!)

 Patrick and I had always planned on doing an early exit together. I had asked our DJ to announce our final dance to Chris Young's "Gettin' You Home". Patrick and I have always loved this song and thought it would be the perfect end to our wedding reception ;-) I remember loving this dance so much!! 

Patrick and I then headed out to get our car only to find that none of his groomsmen got the memo to have his car waiting for us. So there we are with no car for our early exit!!! I had envisioned a "Just Married" sign with coke cans tied to the back of his car and here we didn't even have a car! I felt humiliated and really just wanted the night to be over. It seemed as if nothing had gone my way. Within a few minutes we got word that Patrick's dad grabbed the car and it was waiting for us. Patrick scooped my in his arms, I gave a quick wave and we were out of there! 

We never did get our "Just Married" sign or coke cans but I think we both were so happy to be married and off to spend our first night together as man and wife! We stayed in the Braeburn Suite at the Inn On Negley - the room we had selected months ago for this special night! It took Patrick about 15 minutes to get all the safety pins from my dress lol! It it took me another 20 minutes to get my veil and all the bobby pins out of my hair! Finally though I was released from all my pins and Patrick and I were able to give each other the best wedding gift ever!

The End :-)

LOL...If only!

Around 3 AM I woke up from my sleep. My heart was pounding, my throat was tight and I felt like I couldn't breath. I remember waking Patrick and telling him but he was pretty much dead to the world - lol! So I got out of bed, went into the bathroom and put some water on my face. I remember seeing my dress lying there on the floor and rethinking the events of my wedding. Tears filled my eyes and I began to sob uncontrollably. I cried and cried - and it felt SO good!!! I realize now that I had been holding those tears in all day long! It felt so good to finally get them out and I felt like I could breath again! After I cried myself out, I washed my face again and went right back to bed. 

Patrick and I woke pretty early to the sweet scent of breakfast. We showered and got ready then headed to the dining room. The staff at the Inn On Negley made us Eggs Benedict as a special treat (I had requested it the previous day!) It was delightfully delicious!! 

After breakfast we played some checkers in our room. There were no pieces to be found so we decided to get creative...my pins from the previous night vs. the prank bells the groomsmen gave Patrick at the altar - haha!

Before checking out we documented our stay... 

Such a special place!!

Our first day of marriage included lunch at Primanti's with the Bailey's and opening gifts with both families which was a blast! Once everyone left, Patrick and I made a quick trip to the mall for last minute honeymoon stuff. We grabbed a romantic dinner to bring back to the house...Taco Bell!

The remainder of the night was spent packing for Playa Mujeres, Mexico!! Next up...our Honeymoon review! 8-) Stay tuned!