Weddingbee Blog

Rehearsal dinners are not common in New Zealand, but seeing as we had a number of guests coming from overseas, we knew we wanted to do something with them before the wedding day. We figured we would be too tired to have any sort of party the night before the wedding, so instead we decided to throw a welcome dinner earlier on the Wednesday of the wedding week. That way all of our families could get acquainted or reacquainted with each other, and we could spend some more time with our overseas friends.

One complicated and fancy shindig (i.e. the wedding) was enough for us, so we went the relaxed route of booking out the small and friendly Hot Rocks Gourmet Pizza Pasta Bar. I decided to make invitations for the dinner pretty late in the game, so it was Wedding Chicks to the rescue with their cute downloadable bunting invitation suite. Did I mention it was free? You can’t get much easier than that.

With the invitations done and doled out, all that was left to do was throw on a cute outfit and turn up!

Striking a pose with Mr E’s family before we all went inside

We chose to keep the guest list fairly limited (any more than 25 people in that restaurant and it starts to get very cosy) and that way we were able to spend a good amount of time with each person there.

I really have no idea what Mr E is doing in this photo…but it amuses me.

The Welcome Dinner also served as a good time to hand out wedding day schedules to everyone who needed one, and to organise how we were going to set things up on Friday. Oh, and we finally managed to convince someone (the father of the honorary best man) to be our MC. Phew.

The one bittersweet side of the dinner was that it finally sunk in that people like Mr E’s brother and his sister-in-law were not going to be there for the wedding. All in all though, it was wonderful to relax with everyone else. When you get a whole lot of people together who haven’t seen each other in a long time you really dont need to dress up the party too much—the reunion is the entertainment and people just want to spend time with each other again!

Side note: the local artwork at this place is awesome.

Mum and Dad had fun bonding with the little sister of my Aussie flower girl. This won’t be the last you see of this gorgeous girl—she rocked her stuff at our reception!

So that is what we did while enjoying our pizza, complete with locally sourced toppings (mussels from the bay, anyone?) accompanied by wine from the Nelson area. My pizza pick of the night was “The Southern Man,” piled high with four different types of meat (hey, I was hungry after all that wedding planning!).

“The Southern Man” is the pizza furthest away from the camera; up front we have the cheesy goodness of a Margherita

And we all know I am a chocoholic, so I couldn’t resist topping off the night with a slice of delectable chocolate cake.

And with that, we were fortified to face the last two crazy days before the wedding. Ready or not, we were coming!

Did you have a welcome dinner instead of a rehearsal dinner?

*All photos taken by friends & family