Weddingbee Blog

After our rehearsal (which was your standard, hour long event that I have no photos of) we ran back to our place to get ready for the dinner. When we got back to our ’hood, the caterers were already setting up, and our family members were arriving. The sky was gorgeous.

Our friend Tina happens to be an amazing wedding photographer, and she graciously brought her camera along and snapped some photos. This is good, because I don’t remember anything about the dinner. At all. I was so nervous, like a shaking and red-faced kind of nervous. I am not good at hosting parties! I worried about the food, the music, our families meeting, our decision to not provide alcohol, the planned surprise. The whole night is a blur in my mind, but luckily I can explain it to you through photos!

We had a local Mexican food restaurant cater everything for us. We had a vegan feast of quesadillas, enchiladas, tamales, salads, chips and drinks. Sadly, my stomach was such a mess that I didn’t eat a single bite of the dinner, OR of the ice cream sundae bar that we had for dessert. I fully regret this now.

Children played!

Speeches were made!

After dinner, the tables were cleared for our surprise guest! We had hinted that there would be something special happening at our dinner, but I don’t think anyone quite knew what it was it. We had a professional dance lesson! The instructor, who had been teaching us a routine for our first dance, agreed to come and teach a mini swing lesson. It was a great surprise and everyone had fun dancing with each other and learning new steps.

Learning the basics!

Showing off some hot moves!

Mr. Sprinkle danced a song or two with my mom!

I danced a song or two with my kidlets!

I danced with our dance teacher!

Then everyone but me enjoyed some ice cream. Thus ends our rehearsal dinner…

It was short, but sweet, and even though I was a wreck at the time, the pictures don’t show it. I am notoriously bad at parties and will either hide in a dark corner or have a cocktail (or three… or four…) to relax, neither of which was an option here! Luckily, everyone I know understands how I feel at social gatherings, and they laughed off my skittishness as “Typical Miss Sprinkle Behavior”.

After all of the guests left (and while our darling, sweet friends were cleaning up), Mr. Sprinkle and I shared a quick private moment and I presented him with his gift. It was getting late at that point, so Gina Sprinkle and I said goodbye to everyone and headed over to our hotel room. She was exhausted and promptly fell asleep, while I was suddenly starving and ordered some room service. I had the hotel piece together a real meal for me, and since it was the first actual food I had managed to eat in days, it tasted amazing.

As soon as we stepped into the hotel room my nervousness disappeared. It was like something snapped and it all fell into place, and it was so, so peaceful. I think the fact that we were doing the planning, setup, clean up, etc., for the dinner made it harder on me than it should have been. I wasn’t at all worried about the wedding the next day since I had so many people helping out to make things run smoothly. I knew that the next day I wouldn’t have to do anything except show up!

I spent my last night as a single lady laying in a fluffy bed, eating French fries and writing up my final post as a “Miss bee”. Then I fell into a deep relaxing sleep. It was perfect.

(All photos in this post: Tina Carlone Photography)