Ashley also got some gorgeous detail photos of our invites and programs. So proud of these and it’s lovely to have them professionally photographed!
Lisa then asked us some final questions and made sure we were happy with the schedule for the next few hours, and we said we were! Then a lady bought us over 2 plates of appetizers from our cocktail hour yay! And we also got another drink! Our photo and video teams were wandering around taking photos and getting set up, and then they and Lisa said bye and closed the doors, and me and Benj were left alone in the room to enjoy a moments quiet with our snacks before the craziness continued.
The food was OHMYGOD amazing. We were both absolutely famished by this point, so we absolutely demolished our plates! For our cocktail hour, we served our guests the Artisinal Cheese Selection which included a boat load of delicious cheese, crackers and bread, and everyone just went mad for it. In fact I think a lot of people (us included!) filled up on the amazing cocktail hour food haha!
My plate!
It was delicious. We chatted as we ate and it was nice to just pause and sit down for a sec! Lisa then returned, this time with another lady in tow who worked for the Dapper Dans and wanted to know how we wanted to be called in. She said they’d hate to get our names wrong! Bless! We also had a quick chat about them and she shared some extremely exciting news! We had emailed Lisa and asked if the Dans were able to take requests. She said possibly, what did you have in mind, and we said either Grim Grinning Ghosts or This is Halloween from NBC would be amazing! She said she’d see what we could do but we didn’t get our hopes up and knew they’d be awesome either way! Well, this lady said they’d learned Grim Grinning Ghosts specially for our event! AMAZING! She said they’d been practising in the kitchen all morning, and were really excited to sing it for us. Eeeekkkkk! She then disappeared, and Lisa let us know that the Dans were about to enter onto the patio, and we could peek through the windows and watch everyones reactions if we wanted! Yes please! So we stood at the windows and peeked, and at 4.30 on the dot they burst through the double doors and out onto the patio, and everyone literally freaked out. It was so amazing to see. Our friend Lottie (Lottie89 of Dibb trip report fame) in particular was my favourite reaction, I knew she loved them and obviously it was a surprise to everyone but my Mum/Vic/Ian, and her face was just priceless! Her jaw literally dropped it was amazing, and she scrambled to get her camera haha! The Dan’s then opened with “Walking right down the middle of Main Street USAAAAA” which was incred, and then they sung us out to rapturous applause and cheering from our guests which was lovely!
We waved to everyone and then went and perched in front of them, and then they sang loads of songs! They did 3 x 15 minute sets, and we’d spread them out throughout the afternoon as a way of separating out key parts of the wedding day
It worked really well! My favourite bit was when they called Ben up to help them sing one of their songs! He had to sing the word ‘you’ in lots of different lines, and then at one point they sung about my eyes, then they covered his eyes and asked him what colour eyes I had haha! He said ‘Blue...y!?’ and we all fell about! I was like ‘I’ll take bluey!’ haha!
Here are some photos of the wonderful Dans
Once they’d finished we all clapped and cheered, and they bid us farewell and said they’d see us a bit later on! And then we got called in for dinner, yay! I can’t remember if Lisa called us or Ian did, but either way it was time for FOOD! It was about 4.45 by this time according to my notes, so we were 100% on track with our schedule
love that! We wandered around the patio for a few minutes hugging and kissing people, and everyone was just talking non-stop about the Dans! I was particularly happy to chat to my Dad about them as I really hoped he liked them and I was so looking forward to revealing this surprise to him throughout the planning session. He loved them! After a few minutes of this, a CM came over to me and Ben and said would we like to be taken through the buffet? Yes, yes we would. Ha!
So me and Benj went up, me first wooooo, and this wonderful man selected all the food for me! I made it clear that I was a. Pretty hungry and b. Had paid a lot of money for this food, so don’t judge me for the amount I’d be asking him to load onto the plate for me. He cracked up and said he likes a woman who can eat! Legend. So I pretty much got a little of everything as it all looked beautiful and I wanted to try it all.