The Oyster Wedding Rehearsal: Still dark, less stormy.

After my little meltdown, I tried calling a couple of stores, which had already closed. Mr. Oyster, feeling quite helpless, offered to order me a new shaper via overnight mail. I made my own efforts to "suck it up" and got dressed to go to the rehearsal.

By now it was beginning to rain, and I remember putting on my lovely purple dress and new necklace. I also remember playfully asking Mr. Oyster to help me walk around, because I was absolutely planning to wear my cute dress heels, rain or not. He promised, and we were off.



I scheduled our rehearsal at the same time as our wedding the next day, to help with scheduling and also to get a feel for what everything would be like at that exact time. Of course, when I did that, many months prior, I was anticipating some evening sunshine and sunsets and interesting light. There was nothing of the kind. Little did I know how much the conditions at the rehearsal dinner would become familiar to us.

We kept our rehearsal small: Me and Mr. Oyster, immediate family, bridal party, and their spouses. It was an intimate group, but I still completely underestimated the amount of pre-wedding energy that filled the room as soon as everyone arrived. But once they did, I forgot all about my stupid shaper.


The rain had completely snarled traffic, and nearly everyone was late and frazzled and full of apologies. I was totally calm until our photographers arrived, which made everything much more "real" to me, and I think I started to get frazzled, too.

When the children arrived (my nephew, my MOH's daughter, and my little 7 year old brother), they all took to each other immediately and started running around. Despite having a million plans, we spent several minutes not having a clue what to do.



But it worked out. I remember our planner helping everyone get into their places,



And Mr. Oyster made sure to give me a thoroughly embarrassing "practice kiss" which caught me by surprise. Here's my reaction:



We laughed a bit,



This is my mom practicing her walk -- I love her smile.

Then we practiced our walk down the aisle, which was pretty fun. I'll always wonder what the two of us were whispering about.








We went over the schedule one more time, walked around the venue to show everyone where things would be, and then we were off to the rehearsal dinner.

*Photos by the decidedly cool-headed, Chicago based photographers David Wittig and Nancy Beale.

Previously:
It was a dark & stormy night.