Our Wedding: Sand Ceremony & Cocktail Hour

I'll go ahead and apologize that there aren't nearly as many pictures for today's post as there have been in the past {and will be in the future}.  But, there are still two important parts from the day I wanted to talk about and show more detailed pictures!

I mentioned yesterday, that during our ceremony, we had a sand ceremony in lieu of a unity candle.  I've personally always liked the sand ceremony a lot more, mainly because I've never been a huge fan of candles. {There are some that I do like, and sentimental ones I've received as gifts, etc.}

I didn't want to have just a vase with maybe something engraved on it as what the sand would be poured into.  I wanted something a little more fun, that could definitely be more useful in our house.  After many Google searches, Matt and I finally found a set that we liked!! It's kind of like a shadow box, and engraved on the front is an "N" and
"Matt & Mallory, June 8, 2013."  After seeing the pictures of it set up before the ceremony and after seeing it once the sand was all poured in, I was so happy with the choice we made! Now, it's sitting on one of our side tables in the den, and I see it every time I walk out the door! :)

Since we had three main wedding colors and there were only two of us, we needed a way to incorporate all of our colors! We ended up having four colors, and each of our moms poured a color at the beginning of the ceremony before they were seated.  Then, during the sand ceremony part of the wedding, Matt and I poured the remaining two colors.

After the ceremony, we had a cocktail hour for about an hour before the reception {at least, we had an hour blocked off on our timeline for cocktail hour; I don't know how long it actually was! haha}.  During this time, we took all of the formal family photos with our parents, grandparents and siblings, and also the big group shots of our wedding party.  Towards the end of that time, we had some picture time for just pictures of Matt & me.   There were light appetizers, and of course drinks, ranging from water, soda, wine and beer.....right down to Matt's choice of Legends!

I don't have any pictures of people interacting during cocktail hour, as our photographers were with us! But, they did get some shots of the cocktail hour decor, which I love the final outcome!  I found several quotes that I liked and thought were appropriate for the two of us, printed them and framed them so they could sit out on a few of the cocktail tables. 

What was nice is that our cocktail hour location was right beside the ceremony location, just on the other side of the bridge!  This was nice because we were still able to see our guests and really see who was there, and we didn't seem so secluded from everyone.  We didn't really provide seating for cocktail hour, because we were totally fine if people wanted to come back over to the ceremony area and either sit there, or take a chair to the other side.  We did, however, provide two Reserved tables for our grandparents and all of the elderly guests!

So, although there may be few, I hope you enjoy these pictures from our Sand Ceremony & Cocktail Hour! :)

Tomorrow, there will be another post to wrap up the ceremony! I'm very excited about it, because it's one of the things I looked forward to most in regards to our wedding!!