A Wedding Weekend

We drove down to Greensboro, NC this weekend to attend the wedding of my good friend Stephanie and her now-husband Will. It was wonderful!

We stayed at the Proximity Hotel, the only LEED Platinum rated hotel in the country! Not only is it incredibly luxurious, it is incredibly green. The water is heated by solar panels on the roof, almost all the materials came from local sources and--how cool is this?--the elevator captures energy going down to use to go back up!

Oh and did I mention that my parents were watching Lucas for the weekend?

So the hotel and weekend alone were nice, but of course, the best part was all the wedding-related festivities. A fun girls luncheon, manicures, rehearsal, rehearsal dinner...then of course the actual wedding and reception on Saturday.

A few fun things I wanted to share...

• Be careful leaving the husbands and boyfriends of the bridal party alone in the back of the church during the rehearsal. They might just end up putting together an under/over bet on the length of the ceremony.*
• I did a great job with my reading. In fact many people came up to me during the reception to tell me what a great job I did. One person, a cousin of the groom, told me that the reading and the way I read it "made me rethink the importance of my own wedding vows". Wow.
• Perhaps I should offer my reading services for hire!
• There was a band at the reception and it was so fun! They did a great job of getting people out onto the dance floor.
• This is the second reception I've been to where someone ordered pizza to be delivered. Come one people, seriously.
• The reception ended with a really awesome Slovak tradition (from the bride's family). The women form a circle, lock arms and dance around the bride. The groom tries to break through while the women hold him off. Eventually, of course, he breaks in, scoops up the bride and carries her off to everyone cheering for them. It was a really awesome way to conclude the celebration!

*Abel won! The ceremony was well under 37 minutes in length!