The rehearsal and dinner

I only have a few pictures of the rehearsal itself that came out ok - it was pretty dark in the church, so the picture quality was pretty low.  So for that reason, I'm only going to post one, since it was pretty much your everyday rehearsal and since I think people wondered why I was taking pictures.

Don't worry - We told Pink Shirt to make sure he wasn't blocking the groom for the actual ceremony

The rehearsal dinner, on the other hand, was a production.  And I literally mean - it was a production.  Dave prepared a Power Point presentation that would go along with a speech that he and his older brother would give after the dinner.  In addition to that, he and I put together a slideshow of pictures from Lil' S and Happy P's life that showcased them from childhood to present day, which Dave then set to music.

Happy P was more than a little concerned about their best man speech at the reception, and when she found out that there was going to be not one, but TWO speeches at their rehearsal dinner, I think she really started to worry.  You see, in addition to the Hartman's being very dedicated to quality multi-media presentations, they're also notorious for giving what some might call excessively long speeches.  It's not that they're bad speeches at all, but somewhere at the 8 minute mark, people tend to start wondering when this thing is going to be over.

I insisted that Dave keep this in mind when writing and creating all of the presentations, and while they were all still relatively lengthy to a normal human being, they were quite reasonable based on Hartman standards, and he made sure to keep them interesting and engaging. (For example, the "roast" presentation was originally 22+ minutes, cut down to about 12.  That's real progress, people....)

I was hoping that I would have the video version online by this time to post with this video, but there have been some delays, so you're going to have to wait.  But I promise that I will post it as soon as I can, and then it really is quite funny.  The first time that Dave watched it back, he made a comment that it sounded like a laugh track had been dubbed in, that's how much people were laughing (and it was true.)

So instead of a video, here's a picture of the presenters, after their (first) moment in the spotlight.

We did it! They loved us!

At this point the bride and groom-to-be started handing out their bridal party gifts and a bunch of people started to leave!  Dave quickly went up to the laptop and wrote a message, "Video to follow! Stay! Have a drink!!!" and then projected it onto the screen. I'm not sure if it convinced anyone to stay or not, but those who did had no idea what they were missing!

The saddest part of the rehearsal dinner for me was the dinner itself.  It was sort of a buffet, but there were restaurant employees serving the portions, so you could only get a little of each of the three things that were being served.  For most people this was probably fine, but one of the dishes had shrimp in it and was dairy based, and the other had tons of onions in it, which meant that the only dish I could really was the red sauce pasta with chicken and sausage.  They gave me a small scoop of that and I explained that I wasn't able to eat the other two thing, so could I please have a little more of the red sauce dish?  For some strange reason they were really hesitant and only gave me about 5 more noodles before handing my dish.  So, the food - while tasty - was very meager, which might explain why 6 beers gave me quite the hangover the next morning.  I feel like there was plenty to go around, so I'm not sure why they held out on me (plus, we were the second to last table to eat!) Oh well. C'est la vie!

So, before we get to the next morning, I'll leave you with one last picture of the rehearsal dinner after party. Yes, this was definitely a wedding full of drinkers....