rehearsal | rehearsal dinner | before the ceremony| ceremony | reception | day after the wedding
Friday, May 25
Around
7pm, we made our way back to the Tarrytown House for the rehearsal dinner, arranged
of course by Bentley’s parents Roger and Cookie. At this point, it’s
worthwhile noting that after the eventful trip with us over to the rehearsal,
Aunt Grace made sure to go back in someone else’s car. Once at the dinner,
we had two adjoining rooms with tables, one entryway, and one room set up with
the buffet, which was pleasant Middle Eastern food and pies and cookies for
dessert, plus soft drinks. Bentley and Maria gave their groomsmen and bridesmaids
thank-you gifts, which you can see two of the groomsmen opening here. Above
is a photograph of a fascinating phenomenon: all but a few of the younger males
present adopted the same "uniform" of khakis and a blue shirt (though
the shades did vary). Bentley is front and center. 
During dinner,
Bentley’s older brother Rudd played a mix over the music system, and after
dinner, everyone was treated to a slide show of pictures from the course of
Maria and Bentley’s lives, to the tunes of a different mix that Maria and
Bentley selected themselves. It was a very lovely evening.
After the 
slide
show (which was old-fashioned and manual, though very touching and funny--here
are Rudd and Melissa organizing it), Robert and I tried to inject a little new
technology into the evening by hooking my iBook
up to a powered speaker the hotel supplied, and playing a playlist of romantic
.mp3s we’d made up for Maria and Bentley on the trip down. My father and
mother danced briefly to some of the oldies on the playlist, and then my father
danced with Jenna. Maria also opened our wedding gift to her, which was complete
with a card I designed for them, encorporating a digital picture my mother took
at their engagement party, and printed out by Shutterfly,
an online photo service. Then we took some family and group pictures, including
the candids and amusing posed shots on these pages. When everyone dispersed,
we went with my parents, aunts, and cousins Chris and Jeff briefly to Aunt Mary
and Aunt Grace’s room to have Italian bakery cookies and watch a few minutes
of the Lakers playoff game.
Above are two very interesting pictures: at left is a radiant Maria, with her mother, the night before her wedding. At right, is Bentley, the same night, caught by the camera at an odd moment--"What's tomorrow? I thought she said, 'Carry me!'" (Just kidding, Maria--I think he was actually trying to give someone directions to the James House (read more about it here) to ensure they didn't miss the turn-off tomorrow!)
Here I have to pause in my chronological account of the weekend to note that just before we left Boston, I went to the webpage of the hotel we were staying at—the Dolce Tarrytown House—to find directions to the hotel and important addresses and phone numbers. Right on the main page is the personal email address for a Mr. Chris Dolce, General Manager (and presumably, because of his name, owner of the Dolce resorts). I took note of this, but forgot Chris’s first name for the time being. At the rehearsal dinner, therefore, after becoming aware of several unfortunate issues with the hotel accomodations, I decided to write an email to Tony—as I then misremembered his name and even now think sounds much better then “Chris”—Dolce. You can read the text of that letter if you’d like.
On
to the day of the wedding, before the ceremony