Prior to the rehearsal dinner, D has his sister arrange beforehand who wanted to give toasts. As such, D's family in particular had some interesting, memorable toasts planned for the occassion.
D's dad planned out this entire funny presentation complete with embarassing childhood pictures. It got the room laughing so hard that the restaurant closed the room doors on us because we were disturbing the rest of the restaurant. Everyone had a good laugh at the pictures (some of which have now disappeared now that we're home), but his stories were not as memorable to my mind at least as what his mother had to say.
D's mother begins with how D was over 30 pounds by the time he was 1. This is why I have no hopes for a small baby, and I suspect by how quickly I get hungry again after meals that we're gonna have another eater on our hands. She then tells how D refused to talk when he was little. Our friends were aghast at the very idea! D has been renowned as not only a long-winded talker but capable of putting people to sleep with his rambling. Our friends' expressions alone was worth the story. But she confirmed D's intellect from a young age with the story about how he had taught himself to read with the speak and spell toy. D played with the toy for hours at a time, and his mom had no idea that he was learning how to read until he read her the entirety of 3 Little Pigs at age 4 at the library. Now that's an impressive feat for any child, even for someone as advanced as I knew D was.
My parents' toasts contained the same message: how I was my own, independent person from a young age. The subtext from my dad with that message is that despite what he had in mind for me, I had the perseverance to keep pushing for my own path. I got the sense that he had made peace with that idea, that even if I didn't do exactly what he had planned, he could still find a way to be proud of my accomplishments. Mom I think meant it in a more sentimental kind of way, that I've grown up to make my own choices. Whatever their intentions might have been, I was grateful for what they had to say.
D's best man offered up an Irish blessing for us as well as saying how much he considers us to be good friends, that we were the kind of people who would drop everything to come and help him (which is definately true).
D's sister finished off the toasts by alluding to certain family stories she and D had growing up. She only had to name the stories, and D laughed uproariously. But she wasn't there to tell those stories. She knew that D and I (and our baby(s) ) would be making our own stories we would be telling for years to come. So she gave us a leather-bound custom engraved journal saying "The Silverman Storybook" where we could write our own stories. We think it's such a neat idea to have a place for our family stories in writing. A week later, I've already filled the first few pages with some of the stories from our wedding (although in less detail than what I've written in the few posts on here). Although we have stories from our dating years, for it to be a family storybook, we wanted to start when our family began. The ultrasound facepalm story will find its way there, but we have many years still to fill it with the stories we can share with our grandchildren and pass on as a family heirloom.
No comments:
Post a Comment