Weddingbee Blog

There’s a fun Polish wedding tradition that I’ve always known I wanted to incorporate into our wedding, no matter where it took place.

It’s called poprawiny (pronounced po-pra-vee-neh) and basically it’s an after-party that happens the day after the wedding. Originally it was a chance for all the guests to get together and eat all the leftover food (and drink all the leftover booze!) and have an excuse to talk over the events of the previous day and celebrate s’more.

Since we were at a holiday resort in Punta Cana, the food never ended and the liquor was bottomless so the leftovers thing wasn’t really relevant, but we arranged a poprawiny for that evening anyway.

Wisely, however, we left everyone to their own devices for the morning and afternoon… something that I’m sure our late-late-late night partying friends took full advantage of:

Hanging out on the beach and in the pools the day after the wedding was one of the most relaxing experiences I’ve ever had! All the stresses of wedding planning were finally, officially over (!!!) and I had so many delicious memories to replay over and over in my head.

As the sun began to set, all our friends and family gathered in the resort’s main buffet restaurant for dinner. We filled one entire side of the place and there was quite the feeling of celebration still in the air.

And although it was pretty obvious from our constant laughing and joking that we were all together, there was one other thing that gave us away…

Remember the hats we had made and put in our guests’ OOT bags? We asked everyone to wear theirs that night just so we could get this SUPER AWESOME group photo!

You should have seen how many people came up to us and asked us what our hats were all about. Of course we told them they were very, very exclusive, limited edition designer hats. *snort*

After dinner, it was time to move the party to the beach!

Our partying friends from the night before probably had deja vus at this point, ha! But the difference was that this time, we were all there…

… and Adam brought his guitar!

We had a HUGELY fun sing-a-long evening full of laughs.

Good music, good friends, good surroundings, gooooooooood times!

Mr Breezy still talks about the poprawiny as being his favorite part of the entire week because it was so casual and relaxed (much like him!) and although I have a harder time picking a favorite moment, I have to agree it was pretty darn awesome.

Up next: The photo shoot you’ve waited almost a year to see… trashing the dress!

All photos by us and our friends.

DW in the DR: Pack It Up, Pack It In
DW in the DR: Airport Confessions
DW in the DR: Bienvenidos a Punta Cana
DW in the DR: The Guest List Is In the Bag
DW in the DR: The OOTs in Action
DW in the DR: Planning the Reception
DW in the DR: Planning the Flowers & Cake
DW in the DR: Planning the Ceremony
DW in the DR: Planning the Photography
DW in the DR: Stag and Showerette
DW in the DR: The Meltdown
DW in the DR: Final Touches
DW in the DR: The Guys Get Groomed
DW in the DR: The Girls Get Gorgeous
DW in the DR: We MacGyver the Flowers
DW in the DR: I Finally Get to Wear the DWess
DW in the DR: Girls Gone Wild
DW in the DR: The Reveal and Portraits
DW in the DR: We Are Family
DW in the DR: Here Comes the Bride
DW in the DR: Love Ceremony, West-Coast Style
DW in the DR: Love Ceremony, The Vows
DW in the DR: Mazel Tov!
DW in the DR: Sunset and Sand
DW in the DR: Sto Lat!
DW in the DR: Dinner Game Hijinks
DW in the DR: Cake Wreck
DW in the DR: Let’s Get This Party (Re)Started
DW in the DR: A Song and a Dance
DW in the DR: The Party Must Go On