Matthew and I flew into Amsterdam on Friday night. First impressions of Holland: everyone is blond-haired, blue-eyed, and smiling. It seemed everyone was wearing bright colors (mostly shades of aqua/turquoise), everyone was smiling, and everyone spoke English! Such a difference from France (don't get me wrong, the French are very friendly, but are not known to just smile at random strangers, and they love their black clothes). We picked up our rental car and drove 2 hours south to our hotel near a town called Sittard. Saturday morning Matthew and I drove around to some of the wedding locations. Since I was the photographer for the wedding, I wanted to check out possibilities for taking pictures.
At noon, I dropped Matthew off at Mark's parents' house to start the Bachelor Party festivities. Apparently "what happens in Holland, stays in Holland" so I'm not able to give you many details on what the boys did all day. But I do know that it involved dressing Mark in a very embarrassing outfit, putting him on what looked like a stripped down parade float (pulled behind a tractor) with a pole bolted to the middle. With music blaring, Mark's dad drove the tractor up and down every single street in Mark's small hometown with the rest of the guys making as much noise and drawing as much attention to Mark as possible. I wish I could share some pictures with you, but Matthew didn't have a camera with him.
At 3:00 (the boys being long-gone by this point), the girls all gathered at Mark's parents' house for a little shower for Silke. Petra, the maid of honor, asked each of us to bring a small gift for Silke that had something to do with our friendship with her. Several of the girls had met Silke when they all worked together at a grocery store, so they brought her various food items that held inside jokes for them. I gave her a picture frame to hold one of the wedding photos I would be taking.
Next, we headed to a town about 30 minutes away for dinner. After dinner we walked to a studio for a photo shoot. There were 2 of us that are pregnant (we are due one day apart!) and several of the girls are new moms, so Petra worked very hard to plan a Bachelorette party that didn't just involve bar-hopping. Silke had her makeup done and we started with some fun group shots. Next we each got to take a picture with just Silke. After they changed the lights, we did individual pictures. Petra is going to mail us a cd with all of the images soon, so I will post some later. After the photo shoot, I headed back to the hotel, but some of the other girls continued to celebrate with Silke at the local bars.
After a late night, Sunday was a very lazy day. We helped Silke set-up a few things at the reception site, and Sunday night went to Mark's parents' house for a cookout. We were in bed early, because Monday was the big day!
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