Monumental Love: A Dinner of Love & Laughter

We all left the church and headed down to Superior Seafood. The room that Sphinx Mom and Dad reserved was a long, closed in patio that looked out on the St. Charles streetcar line.  

The first thing our guests saw when entering was an adorable spread of pictures put together by Sphinx Mom - including engagement pictures, a framed invitation, and some cute (aka embarrassing) baby pictures of Sphinx and I.  The invitation is in the middle of the table - teal, a chandelier and the phrase "Love and Laughter Before the Happily Ever After."  She couldn't have nailed it any better, amiright?

Apparently middle school team pictures are our downfall: his basketball and my dance team.

Since our rehearsal was on Thursday night, we didn't invite all of our out of town guests to the dinner.  We stuck to those who were necessary at the rehearsal, their dates, a few extra aunts, uncles and cousins, and a handful of guests who had come into town already.  It was just the right size party to be intimate, and still allow for lots of chatting and mingling among all the guests.  We started off with drinks and welcoming everyone.

Way to look excited GM Lil Bro!

And the fact that we got no pictures of the food shows how delish it was - we all just wanted to jump right in!  Appetizers were crab meat stuffed mushrooms and spinach and artichoke dip.  Guests ordered their own entree from a small menu: shrimp and grits, grilled chicken topped with a crawfish cream sauce and potatoes, or blackened fish topped with crawfish etoufee and corn maque choux. Dessert was bread pudding or creme brulee.  I chose the chicken and the bread pudding and ate the whole thing - it was excellent!

They had everyone sign a copy of the personalized menu for us- it was so sweet to read!

Besides a fabulous meal, there were two other important items that needed to be accomplished at the dinner: parent gifts and toasts.  I've mentioned a time or two that we were running around buying gifts for our parents up to the day before this.  And that's not because we didn't care about the gifts - the problem was that we cared too much and nothing seemed good enough!  When it came down to the wire, though, we stuck with some good old standbys: pictures of us, promises of wedding pictures, handkerchiefs and cuff links.

We had the moms open their presents first.  I had printed a few engagement pictures, and included a note that these were "for wedding pictures!"  Sphinx Mom's frame had the "LOVE" letters and her handkerchief had the quote from the book "Love You Forever," because Sphinx likes that one.

Sphinx showing his mom what was written on her handkerchief.  And me looking oddly calm...

My mom had a silver frame, a different set of engagement pictures, and her handkerchief had a quote about recalling "the love and laughter we share together, and how much you mean to me now and forever." I think it made her tear up, so mission accomplished.

Momma P showing off her frame.

For the dads, we got them some cool LSU cufflinks - the "Eye of the Tiger" for Sphinx Dad and the "Old School Mike" for Daddy P.  We had a lot of back and forth over which style to pick, and I think we made the right choices because they seemed pretty pleased with them. 

 

After dinner was over, we had our toasters stand up and come to the middle of the room, so that both tables could see and hear them easily.  I wish we had recorded the toasts, because they were heartwarming and funny and just perfect.  But by that point the whole group was...well, as they say in Game of Thrones: well into their cups. I remember most of the sentiments, though, and I'm so glad that we did toasts at the dinner instead of the reception so that we could focus our attention on them better without a million things going on.  I'm sure they all appreciated the smaller audience as well.

Look at his left hand without a ring yet! Looks weird to me now. 

We had four short speeches our dads, my maid of honor, and his best man.

MOH Curls gave a really sweet speech.  She and I shared a room growing up, and when I came home from college on breaks, she would have to put up with me coming back in her room and staying up way too late talking to Sphinx on the phone.  She said one time we were talking about having a little pink house and a family someday - and although our house isn't pink, we have now made our dreams come true.

BM Skittles spoke about how proud he was to be the best man, and how glad he is to see his cousin so happy.  They have always been very close, and he talked about running around in their grandparents backyard in capes and Spiderman underwear, and how far they've come since then.  Except not really, because they still play around in that backyard and probably still wear Spiderman underwear.  But now we'll all be starting families of our own and he looks forward to having our kids all playing together just like they used to do.

Sphinx Dad's toast was hilarious - he had three main points congratulating his son on finding a girl that fit in so well with their family from the beginning.  They're huge LSU fans - and I went to LSU.  Their family and mine are two of the biggest Disney fans anybody knows - "And she worked there!"  And we all like this really hole-in-the-wall taco place, so that just meant we were meant to be.  Everyone was laughing after his.

This wasn't from during the speeches, but we can pretend because we're cracking up.

Finally, Daddy P referenced one of his favorite books - Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (which we have listed to together on a car trip). He gave some background on one of the first chapters: a scientist (John Gottman) can analyze a video tape of a married couple for as little as 3 minutes and determine if they will remain together.  It's all about thin-slicing - looking at tiny piece or something and drawing conclusions about patterns there.  Gottman does it with a computer and calculations, but our brains do it every day.  Daddy P's point was that even though he wasn't running a scientific analysis on us, just watching us interact shows that we care for each other, we make each other happy, and would stay together.  Cue the tears.

And soon after, we began to wrap up the night with pictures and telling everyone goodbye.

Sphinx Mom and BM Dino

The rest of the Sphinx family - we were too busy visiting, we didn't get a full family picture!

More Pyramid Family.

Some of the Sphinx cousins who were able to make it out that night.

BM Dino, Sphinx, Pyramid, and Cousin Who.   Who knows what that boy found so shocking.

Our night didn't end there, though (although the pictures do). It was a friend's birthday, so we went home to change, met BM Duffy and her then-fiance when they got in from the airport, and headed out to a little karaoke bar in the Marigny, and we had a good time just hanging out.

Did anybody else do toasts at the rehearsal dinner?  It made the whole thing much more casual and (hopefully) less nerve-wracking for our brave little toasters!

Previously on the Pyramid Wedding:
Kickoff and teaser trailer
Thursday night Rehearsal