More Rehearsal Dinner

This time from my little camera, though several of these were taken by people other than me (obviously).

My bridesmaid Gaby, whom I hadn't seen since 2000.

Jenny (my maid of honor) and I painstakingly made name tags and did a seating chart for the dinner. After a certain number of drinks, we noticed the boys had reappropriated the name tags to identify everyone's glass of wine or beer.

Gaby and groomsman Mark, looking fierce.

Jenny and my cousin Lauren having a good laugh - very likely because of something said or done by our best man.

Everything about this photo perfectly illustrates El Erik, groomsman extrordinaire.

Rico translating my Dad's speech. Rico's maternal grandmother, Maria Antônia, looks amused.

Aside from the incredibly moving speech given by Rico's father, this is my main memory of the rehearsal dinner: cracking up to the point of crying thanks to the stories told by Chocolate, our best man. At this moment, I believe he was telling us about the time he fell asleep on the night bus in London, then, after a hilarious sequence of events, managed to light his hair on fire to round off the evening.

Chocolate, my cousin Jeff and El Erik. And this was just the beginning of the night!

Me and Jenny - our friendship started thanks to this blog. We are currently neighbors here in Maputo, and she managed to fly all the way across the globe to be our madrinha.

I used to hold Lauren as a baby, and now she's a good 6 inches taller than I am. Here, however, my heels make it seem nearly even.

I believe this laugh was thanks to Mark.

Rico and I took this photo when we were back at our hotel room at Praia Ipanema (we were kicked out of the Casa Rosa for the night so that the decorators could get everything ready for the big day). We looked at each other and marveled at the fact that it was our last night as single people...

View of Ipanema beach on the night before our wedding, taken from our hotel balcony.