Weddingbee Blog

On Saturday morning, I woke up feeling excited. After 19 months of planning, our wedding weekend was finally here. I sat down and wrote my farewell post, and then we headed off to Pleasanton for the wedding rehearsal. Because there was another wedding happening that night, we had to have our wedding rehearsal somewhat early, at 11 AM the day before the wedding.

As we pulled into the Casa Real parking lot, we could see all our closest family and friends there, waiting for us. I think that was the first time I experienced the feeling that I’d continue experiencing throughout the wedding weekend, that “OMG, I can’t believe all these people are here for us” feeling. It’s an amazing feeling.

Arriving at the venue with boxes full of DIY goodness. This was my first time seeing my MOH, who had come out all the way from Romania to be there for the wedding.

We dropped off the boxes of DIY projects and decor with our DOC and I got straight to business, handing out the info sheets I’d printed out the night before to all of our bridal party.

The info sheets were simple Word documents listing when and where the bridal party should be, as well as a list of contact information for all the important players.

Bridesmaid Lauren let me borrow her hat so that I wouldn’t get sunburned before the wedding. Yay for thoughtful bridesmaids!

Our DOC, Alyssia Jones, orchestrated the rehearsal. I have to join the many bees before me in saying that, if you’re considering getting a DOC, you should definitely do it. We were lucky because our venue offers an in-house DOC option at a very reasonable cost, so we just went with that. It was great because Alyssia knows the venue like the back of her hand and coordinates weddings there probably every weekend, so she made everything run like clockwork. She was even able to capture the attention of (most) of our groomsmen:

I was seriously impressed that our huge bridal party only needed one run-through of the wedding. I don’t think this would have been possible without our amazing DOC (on the left side of the photo below).

We started the rehearsal by doing the “hand off” between Papa Jelly and Mr. Jelly. The officiant would ask, “Who offers this woman in marriage?” to which Papa Jelly would respond, “She gives of herself and we give her our blessings.” Then Papa Jelly would give me a hug and kiss, shake Mr. Jelly’s hand, and pass my hand to his. Here’s our DOC showing us how it’s done:

It was around this time when I realized that Papa Jelly may just be the cutest dad in the world. See his concentrated face above? Turns out, he’d been giving the walk down the aisle a lot of thought. When our DOC explained the proper hand-placement for him while we were walking down the aisle, he said that he’d already thought about it, and that he wanted to hold my hand while we were walking down the aisle, Bill Clinton-style. Apparently he’d studied the Chelsea Clinton wedding photos in People magazine and decided he wanted to mimic Clinton’s stance. How cute is that?!

Inspiration source

vs. reality. I may have been a tad giddy during our rehearsal.

After the hand-off logistics, we practiced the recessional and the saber arch:

The little ones practiced applauding:

My FIL and MIL with our adorable nephews, who were our ring bearers.

Then we practiced the processional. Mr. Jelly walked out first with both his parents, followed by Mama Jelly escorted by Brother Jelly, followed by the bridesmaids and groomsmen in pairs.

When it was time for our ring bearers, who would be followed by our flower pup escorted by my friend SG.

We went through the hand-off one more time…

Taking off our hats so we can give each other a proper hug.

Then we practiced the exchange of the rings and first kiss…

Really excited.

And one more run-through of the saber arch for good measure.

Practice makes perfect.