Tim & Rachel’s Wedding

A few weekends ago, on September 11, our good friends Tim and Rachel got married. Their wedding was in downtown Baltimore. Jeff was in the wedding, so we went down on Friday for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. I ended up being a stand-in at the rehearsal, since one of the guys was running late at work. The rehearsal dinner was at Rub, a BBQ restaurant that Tim and Rachel really like, and that’s near their house. It was a really fun, laid back dinner. Afterwards they had a cocktail party at their house, with was a nice chance for friends and family to hang out and chat.

Jeff and I stayed with his parents on Friday evening, and got to see them a bit over breakfast. It was the first time we’d seen them since we got engaged!

Jeff and I went downtown around 2pm. He headed to the Engineer’s Club (the wedding venue), while I took a nap at our hotel about a half-block away. At 3:30pm, I met up with everyone at the venue. Rachel had put me in charge of coordinating family photos, so I called in the groups of family members to make sure all the different combinations were taken.

The ceremony started at about 5pm. It was a really nice ceremony – there were a few readings, and their vows to each other were really sweet. There was a part where they said the vows they’d written together at the same time, and pretty much everyone cried. I had offered to videotape for Tim and Rachel, so I was focusing on trying to keep the camera still. I think having a job to do helped me to keep it together while watching (usually I’m a huge crier).

The reception was in the same venue – dinner was nice and everyone was really into dancing. I still had the video camera, so I taped the first dance, the cake cutting, and things like that. I also decided to tape people’s messages to Tim & Rachel, and people generally seemed excited to have a way to give them a message. (They watched the tape while on their honeymoon and said they really liked it!)

Afterwards, we all hung out in the hotel. Tim and Rachel had to go to the airport at 4am, so a bunch of us stayed up with them until they had to leave. We made it, but we were all pretty sluggish by the time they left, and there were a lot of sleepy-looking people checking out the next morning.

It was a really fun weekend, and a beautiful wedding. It’s also the first wedding Jeff and I have been to since we got engaged, which was a pretty crazy feeling. You can’t help but think, “That’s going to be us soon!”