Well this past weekend we celebrated my daughter's Sweet 16 and how in the world did that happen so quickly? I mean one minute she's my baby then walking, going to school and now a young woman! The time needs to slow down a bit because I'm a mess!!! Not only that but the next school year she'll be graduating high school. Wow! How many of us can remember the days we were sixteen or better yet graduating from high school?
I have been planning this party since March so you would think I would of mentally prepared myself for this. But no, it's never easy for a parent to slowly let go of their precious child. I will say this party drained a lot out of me because my husband and I were able to handle all of it by ourselves. Yes you read right, all by ourselves! From the dress, cake, venue, entertainment, decorations, invitations, organizing of the food, jewelry, favors so you name it we handled it all.
So you can imagine how proud we felt of being able to do this for our baby girl especially when it's customary in the latin culture to have sponsors. We tried believe me, we tried. Sometimes when you really know what you want and how you want things done, you take initiative to get it all done even if it's only you putting in all of the effort and money to make it a dream come true. Grant it we had last minute help, don't think we didn't have any kind of outside help. Let's just say it all helped out in the end make it come together. So the day comes and expectations are high. The excitement is in the air and before you know it we had some minor setbacks. But when is a big party always perfect. From a late escort to a band member missing as well as missing cables for set up and sound check to technical difficulties with the sound for our photo collage and to top it off we started one hour late. Yeah one hour late! What else could go wrong? Not only that but the added frustrations others were throwing on me because the set up for the music wasn't right and needed to be changed to people sitting on the supposed to be reserved tables (mind you the reserve tags were not on them until I made them place them on the tables) and not only a missing chair from my table but someone else sitting there that my husband and I couldn't even sit down with our children to finally relax after all the chaos and eat. So we sat with my daughters friend to keep her company. After all of the running around I did nothing relaxed me more than those two lovely shots of tequila my event coordinator hooked me up with. She saw how overwhelmed I was and made every effort possible to tell me everything was going to be okay, to relax and enjoy it! So I did.
In the midst of all of the chaos it turned out beautifully because my daughter was smiling and treated like royalty on her special day. Thank goodness I won't be doing this again for another 7 years or so. In the meantime I'm still sore and trying to recover my strength from all of this especially since now another school year has started. I'm leaving on a good note of how proud I am of my baby girl and pictures for you to see just how beautiful it all turned out.
