Weddingbee Blog

I haven’t been to many rehearsal dinners before, but I doubt many of them were like ours. Complete with atrocious singing voices and Momma Puff & FIL Puff running around with shriveled chicken heads on forks, our pre-wedding party was quite the spectacle. It even started out a little wacky:

Most of our guests met us in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt, where we were staying. We walked together through the famous Chinatown gate, and a couple of blocks to the restaurant.

Mr. Cream Puff and I decided that the only way to truly get the karaoke off on the right foot was to start it ourselves. Here we are singing a beautiful rendition of “Endless Love.” I am not being modest when I say I have a terrible voice, so I really think our song made our guests feel more comfortable being silly.

Our guests really got into the singing as well.

Here is one of the many reasons why I love Momma Puff (that’s Puff Daddy in the background):

One of our groomsmen, checking out the playlist:

FIL Puff and I talking with Momma Puff about our next song:

While Mr. Cream Puff and I were innocently eating our meal with our very well-behaved friends, trouble was brewing between Momma Puff and FIL Puff. I was busy dissecting a spring roll to verify that it was vegetarian when a shriveled chicken head started cawing in my ear. I looked up in surprise to see my mom laughing hysterically and FIL Puff dancing a chicken head on a fork by my ear. The two of them thought it would be funny to take their dinner and create a puppet show. It was hilarious!

I have no idea what I’m doing in this picture:

FIL Puff gets down and funky:

Singing with my mom and her girlfriends:

A few weeks before the wedding, MIL Puff and SIL Puff called from Chinatown with some sad, sad news. Golden Gate Bakery, maker of my favorite chinese dessert, was closed for vacation. I don’t know why we didn’t think of this earlier, as the store closes every year for a month, but we didn’t. We were planning to order a bunch of don tot for dessert for the rehearsal dinner, and now we had nothing. So what did we do? We looked inside ourselves and chose the most obvious replacement. You guessed it! Cream Puffs:

Yes, that’s a wine stain on Mr. Cream Puff’s lovely shirt. The wine was free-flowing, and I guess SIL Puff wasn’t paying attention to her glass during a particularly raucous rendition of “Enter Sandman.”

Our rehearsal dinner was great fun. If you live in San Francisco and are looking for a fun place to throw a kitschy party, the Far East Café fits the bill (it’s great even if you’re not looking for kitsch, actually!). The service was great and the karaoke couldn’t be beat.

If you can make your rehearsal interactive somehow (and karaoke is a perfect way to do that), I think it makes the rehearsal so much more fun for people! Everyone seemed to have a great time, and it was a great way to de-stress before the wedding.