Weddingbee Blog

OK, so the pictures I managed to scrape together for our rehearsal are so crappy they’re kind of not worth bothering to post. I hope you don’t mind if I hustle straight through this post. We all wanna get to the good stuff anyway, right?

If you remember, when I left off, we were about to leave for our rehearsal, and I was approaching meltdown levels of frazzled. Fortunately, my bridesmaids whisked me away into a car pretty quickly, where I indulged in about ten minutes of no-holds-barred, loud-volume ranting, and my bridesmaids nodded and told me I was totally right about everything. By the time we arrived at Heinz Chapel, I had gotten my frustrations out of my system and was fully ready to move on and enjoy our rehearsal. Phew!

Heinz Chapel is a bit of a wedding factory—they host five wedding ceremonies per day—which does have some downsides. Among them are the very tight, very strict time restrictions and the rules and regulations about music, decor, and photography. However, one of the great upsides of holding your ceremony there is that the wedding coordination staff SERIOUSLY knows what they’re doing.

You know how a lot of brides say that their rehearsal was confusing, and a lot like herding cats, and left them feeling less confident than before about how the ceremony would unfold? Not the case at the Octopus rehearsal. Once we were in Wendy’s capable hands, she gave us a clear and concise description of the ceremony proceedings and whisked us through an easy, focused, and reassuring run-through. Boom! Done! Moving on!

After our rehearsal wrapped up, we headed off to the location of our rehearsal dinner: Bridesmaid Clara’s parents’ house! Our rehearsal dinner was catered by Bistro to Go, and the buffet-style food was FANTASTIC.

Rather than a formal, seated affair, our dinner was more low-key, with tables situated here and there throughout the house and outside courtyard. It allowed for a lot of movement and mingling, and I loved it. It felt so fun, intimate, and relaxed, and it was a really nice precursor to all the big fuss that would follow the next day.

When we all headed back to the hotel after the rehearsal dinner ended, the mood in the air was most definitely festive. By that point, most of my family and many of our family friends had arrived, and they were prepared to celebrate and mingle. People began congregating in my parents’ hotel room, and the next thing I knew, they were hosting a full-fledged hotel-room party like it was their prom night or something.

Mr. Octo and I were having a great time socializing at my parents’ impromptu party, but by the time midnight rolled around, we knew we had to pack it in and try to relax, settle down, and sleep. We were spending the night apart and weren’t having a first look, so it was really weird to say goodnight to him knowing that the next time we saw each other would be when I was walking down the aisle.

After kissing my groom goodnight, I headed into the suite I was sharing with Bridesmaids Katie, Lauren, and Leigha. I took a long, hot shower. I drank some Sleepytime Plus tea. I settled into bed and thought relaxing thoughts. It was 12:30 AM, and the preparations for our wedding day would be kicking off in nine hours.

Previously, in the Octopus wedding…

We did errands all the live-long day.
We ran late, we got stressed, and we argued.