Mrs. Daisy, New York
Age and Occupation: 32, Attorney
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 32, Finance
Engagement Date: December 10, 2005
Wedding Date: November 11, 2006
Blogging Since: June 7, 2006
Venue: Metropolitan Club
About Me: My favorite activities used to include knitting, cooking, doing the crossword puzzle and about a million other relaxing pursuits. Since my engagement, well, not so much. Wedding planning has become my primary hobby. So much so that I am downgrading my work schedule to part-time in order to more fully dedicate myself to my wedding (and reality tv, as well, if I'm being honest).
Practice Makes Perfect
November 30th, 2006 @ 6:27 pm by Mrs. Daisy
In theory, anyway. That’s why we decided to do a proper rehearsal at the Met Club the night before the wedding. Make our wedding party earn their dinners and all that.
My wedding planners (Jennifer and Shira of the Wedding Library) were at the rehearsal to make sure everything went off without a hitch. As it turns out, the rehearsal was a *great* idea, because we realized that the way we had planned the processional kind of fucked up was less than ideal.
The dilemma was, our current setup put my brother (a groomsman) standing furthest on the outside of the bridal party. My sister and Mr. Daisy’s brother were already cool on the inside–since Mr. Daisy’s bro was best man and my sister was one of my maids of honor–but we wanted my brother with the rest of the family.
So we called an audible and changed up the order, to go as follows:
- Mr. Daisy flanked by his parents and trailed by his brother (best man)
- Lil E (bridesmaid) and the Thaitalian (groomsman)
- Sam (bridesmaid) and Scott (groomsman)
- The Bean (MOH#2) and the Cuban (groomsman)
- My sister (MOH#1) and my brother (groomsman)
- Then my parents entered and waited at the beginning of the aisle
- When the music changed, I met them and they walked me down the aisle, with me carrying my ginormous shower “bouquet”
The thing is, I had *agonized* over the processional order, even emailing a zillion a few spreadsheets back and forth with my planner Shira to decide if we’d do strict height order, strict role order (i.e. MOH last), modified height order, and a million other permutations. In the end, I thought I had come up with the *perfect* processional. which goes to show that theory and reality are two different ballgames.
Once we had the revised processional squared away and had done another quick run through, we were whisked off by waiting town cars to our rehearsal dinner at Bobby Van’s (more on that amazing dinner to come).
Besides in church weddings, are day-before rehearsals common? Will you be doing a run-through of the main event? Will it be the night before or just earlier on the wedding day itself?
And what are you doing about the processional? Single file? Two by two? …?
6 Responses to “Practice Makes Perfect”
Hi, I just want to say:
http://www.brooksstudio.com (Brooks Photography)
has breached their contract with me.
Alex Oh, one of the ladies who works there has been really horrible when it comes to customer service.. I feel like crying because I had to deal with them. Please relay the message on NOT to use this photography place.. It’s been a horrible experience!
Andrew & I were talking the other day, and if we were to get married RIGHT NOW, I’d have a MOH, 2 bridesmaids, and a Junior bridesmaid…and he’d have a Best man, and POSSIBLY one groomsman. So we kinda figured it out, that in 3 years, if that’s still the same situation(that’s when we plan on gettin hitched!), then we’ll have the MOH & Best Man walk down together, and have the rest single file.
Either that, or we’ll just say screw it, and elope! lol
Most weddings I’ve been part of or known had a rehearsal, but they were fairly quick and painless. Our plan is to have the groom & his men up at the front already (they’ll walk in earlier), and then the women will walk up single file during their processional. For the recessional they’ll walk down 2×2.
We had our rehearsal before the ceremony and it was fine. I conducted Miss Butterfly’s ceremony rehearsal before her ceremony, and that went fine as well. It’s important to do two run throughs I think so everyone knows exactly where they’re standing, how they’re walking…
everyone walked down the aisle single file, but coupled up during the recessional.
The weirdest rehearsal that I’ve been to happened right before the wedding. Unfortunately things ran late and they started the rehearsal when guests were already there so it was kinda anti-climactic when it was time for the real ceremony (they were all fully dressed when rehearsing). For us, we rehearsed the night before, which turned out well b/c a lot of things got worked out, like order and standing position at the front.
Like most everyone else who’s commented, the BMs did single file walking up the aisle and then by pairs down the aisle with the GM.
I find this entry very helpful! Thanks!
