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When the subject of our destination wedding in Punta Cana comes up, one of the things our family and friends still talk about is the dinner. And no, not for the food (which was awesome) nor for the cake (which was hideous). Nope, they talk about how my groom carried me around the restaurant on his shoulders and how we did the chicken dance while they (and everyone else in the vicinity, random vacationers and staff alike) hooted and hollered.
That’s how we know that we achieved what we wanted most for our wedding: for our guests to feel like they were a part of it and, most importantly, that they have an insanely fun time Breezy-style…that is to say, with oodles of goofiness.
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Once we had determined that Mr Breezy was the head of the household forevermore, it was time to head into the restaurant to drink my sorrows away eat our scrumptious dinner.
For a few different reasons (including one big one that started with 17 and ended with 000) we chose to forgo a private reception in favor of dinner in the public restaurant by the beach followed by a speeches and dancing at the disco. DW BRIDES, TAKE NOTE: it turned out to be one of the best decisions we ever made. The staff set up two long tables of thirty for us and you know what? All that time I spent stressing about how it might be weird to be surrounded by other resort guests during dinner? Big fat waste of time. We didn’t even notice they were there!
Of course, that might be partly due to the fact we were all so distracted. By our awesome dinner game, that is.
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It’s hard to believe that it has been a year and a half since I joined Weddingbee and started blogging about our celebration of family, friends, laughter and love. Throughout my journey, there were many ups and downs but it was all worth it in the end – I wouldn’t have traded our destination wedding adventure for anything in the world.
But now it’s time for me to move on, or rather, time to say au revoir. I’ve always liked that French saying. Rather than the harsh I’m-going-and-I’m-shutting-the-door-behind-me kind of “goodbye”, au revoir is more like: until we meet again. It suggests the delightful possibility you’ll see the other person again and though you don’t know when or how, oh won’t it be a lovely reunion when you do? So this is not to say I won’t be popping back in to say hello and share some new wedding goodness from time to time. It will just be much less frequent.
But before we part for a little while, there’s one last Polish wedding tradition that I’ve never seen personally but that I’ve read about* that I’d like to share with you. I think this is sort of an old-school tradition but I think it’s quite funny and besides, isn’t everything retro cool again?
The tradition is this:
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Can it really be true? Are we finally coming to the end of this super long drawn-out DW saga?!? If you’re breathing a sigh of relief, it’s ok… so am I. This has been a looong time coming, yo!
The last little story I have to tell you is about our sorta fabulous honeymoon. No wait, I’ve got that wrong – it was totally fabulous but only a ’sorta’ honeymoon.
What am I talking about? Well, you see, since we got married in the Dominican Republic, one of my many pre-wedding dilemmas started out being where we would go on our honeymoon and turned into whether we would go anywhere at all!
We never did get the newlywed banner put on our door but that didn’t stop us from posing in front of someone else’s.
Well I almost did it – finished my recaps before our one year anniversary, that is. Turns out I’m only a couple posts shy but the day is here and I can’t help but stop everything and revel in the joy of it.
Has it really been a whole year since this?
I can hardly believe it.
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When I first started researching destination weddings, there was one thing in particular about them that made me gasp and say, YES, I want to do THAT: the beachfront Trash The Dress photo sessions (a.k.a. TTD).
What can I say? There’s something so beautiful, so fun and so… well, hot… about all those pictures of brides rolling around on the sand in their wedding finery that heck, I couldn’t resist.
So two days after our wedding day, Mr Breezy and I set our alarms for sunrise and, after hitting snooze a couple times and finally yelling “Oh fudge we’re late!!“, we threw on our clothes and sprinted down to the beach to meet our photographer Photophil.
Some brides get a second dress specifically for their TTD session so they can go crazy and not worry about ruining it but I always knew I’d wear the same one I got married in. It doesn’t have any delicate beading or lacework so I thought it would probably be OK, but mostly, I just loved it and couldn’t imagine wearing another dress. I figured that if I ruined it beyond repair, at least I’d have a lot of photos of it and the knowledge that I really did get every single ounce of fun out of it that I could.
Warning: We got so many incredible shots from our photog that honestly, I had a heck of a time picking just a few to share with you so please forgive me if this is a super photo-heavy post…
As the sun started to peek over the horizon, our trash the dress–er, make that ‘trash the DWess’–session started off innocently enough with some fooling around with one of the parasols I had brought with us to Punta Cana.
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:
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Once the dancing got into full swing, I expected our awesome photographers to pack in in. It had been a looooong day and they fully deserved to finally kick their feet up.
But when I suggested it, Photophil said he had one more idea he wanted to try out.
He took us outside the disco for a couple fun, funky shots. Check out those colors!
After we had all calmed down, my super talented SIL and her man Adam got up. Theirs was not a speech, however––it was a song that they had written for us, especially for our wedding day.
Sorry the video is dark but you’ll get an idea for how heartachingly gorgeous the tune is:
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In most weddings I’ve seen, speeches are done during dinner. But if you will recall, our dinner took place in one of the resort’s main restaurants and our sixty-odd guests were seated at two long tables. That didn’t make it very practical to have speeches there, which is why we did them in the disco.
The advantage? The speaker has everyone’s undivided attention. The disadvantage? Your guests might get fidgety and bored… that is, unless the speeches are made by people as hilarious as THESE.
Our officially-awesome officiant Brian was also our MC so he started things off with a bang, of course.
Yoo hooooo! Remember me? If not, I don’t blame you; it’s been almost… gah!… six months since you last heard from me. Where does the time go?!
I’ve missed you guys! And I’m sorry, I have no good excuse for leaving you hanging. Let’s just say that those people who say that things get even busier post-wedding than they were pre-wedding are not kidding. But that’s a post for another day.
It’s hard to believe but this past weekend marked one month until the Breezys’ one year wedding anniversary (can you believe it? I can’t!) and, well, there’s nothing like a looming deadline to get this gal back in the recap saddle. I still have a few stories to share, so I hope you’ll join me as I whisk you back to our destination wedding extravaganza in Punta Cana. If you’d like to get caught up or refresh your memory, please see the bottom of this post for the first half of the DW in the DR recaps.
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I’m interrupting the Sea Breeze recaps to bring you this special treat - I just couldn’t wait until they were over. I know, I know… jeez woman, wrap it up already! I’m swear I’m trying, but I have so many projects on the go these days, it’s a bit crazy here in SB Land.
One of these million and one projects is our photo books.
After having made one for Pepperpot as part of her MOH thank you gift, I knew that I wanted to create photo books of all our wedding images not just for us, but for our parents, too.
And then I came across this:
The dinner game hijinks were a hoot and we were still on a high from them when someone motioned to us that it was time for cake. Yippee! We both LOVE cake!
If you will remember, when we met with the wedding coordinator upon our arrival at the resort, I was well prepared and not only handed her these two photos, but also some purple ribbon as well, which I’d bought back home.
Knowing that things at destination weddings don’t always turn out exactly as you imagine them, I didn’t expect our cake to look exactly like those photos.
However… well… have you ever been to that site Cake Wrecks? It’s a self-described “gallery of deformed, distasteful and bizarrely decorated wedding and birthday cakes”.
I think we may have something to submit.
DUN DUN DUN…
Once we had determined that Mr Breezy was the head of the household forevermore, it was time to head into the restaurant to drink my sorrows away eat our scrumptious dinner.
For a few different reasons (including one big one that started with 17 and ended with 000) we chose to forgo a private reception in favor of dinner in the public restaurant by the beach followed by a speeches and dancing at the disco. DW BRIDES, TAKE NOTE: it turned out to be one of the best decisions we ever made. The staff set up two long tables of thirty for us and you know what? All that time I spent stressing about how it might be weird to be surrounded by other resort guests during dinner? Big fat waste of time. We didn’t even notice they were there!
Of course, that might be partly due to the fact we were all so distracted. By our awesome dinner game, that is.
I’d like to tell you we spent hours contemplating what to do during dinner since our speeches weren’t until later, but the truth is, Mr Breezy sprang this game on me the night before the wedding. I still have no clue where he got the idea (and why he waited until the last day to tell me about it…?!?!) but I LOVED IT. And I think you will too.
As Mr Breezy said in his own words, “It’s really the one part of the wedding that was driven by the guests and not the bride and groom.”
And with crazy fun guests such as ours, it was guaranteed to be a memory-maker. Though to look at them, you would never, ever guess they’d ever do anything remotely ridiculous… right?
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After our post-ceremony photo shoot on the beach, Mr Breezy and I headed back to our suite with the wedding party to freshen up before dinner (read: the guys smoked cigars while the girls touched up their makeup and then almost wet themselves over the hilarity that was me almost dipping my dress into the potty - I’ll spare you the photos of that).
Then we made our way to the oceanfront seafood restaurant where everyone was standing outside, waiting for us.
I’m not too sure why I felt that tooting my trucker horn was an appropriate thing to do in this moment but what can I say? I was reaaaaaally excited.
Why?
Because we were about to do our hugely fun Polish wedding tradition!
Read more…
Still laughing after our great group shots, Mr Breezy and I hustled out of the lobby to catch some photos on the beach while there was still sun. Since our ceremony started a half hour late due to the power failure at the resort, and because we dawdled drinking champagne in the gazebo afterwards, we were really in a rush!
My MOH Pepperpot and cousin K barely managed to get some food in me before I was whisked away.
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Mrs. Sea Breeze, Vancouver/Dominican Republic Age in 2008 and Occupation: 30, Communications Manager Fiance's Age in 2008 and Occupation: 29, Experiential Marketing Director Engagement Date: October 6, 2007 Wedding Date: November, 2008 Blogging Since: July 17, 2008 Venue: Majestic Colonial Resort, Punta Cana About Me: Planning a destination wedding by the sea should be (oh no she di-in't…) a breeze (…*sigh* yep, she did) but when you've never been to the Caribbean, your powers of imagination are really put to the test. Luckily, I'm 90% resourceful, creative optimist (and kooky, neurotic practicalist-if-that's-a-word for the other ten). Other than writing about our week-long celebration of family, friends, laughter and love, I adore books, shoes and… you guessed it… long walks on the beach.
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