Weddingbee Blog

Planning the wedding often makes me want to cry and rip all my hair out, so planning a wedding AND a rehearsal dinner was almost too much to bear. (Yeah, yeah, wedding planning is supposed to be fun, but when you are a stressy, panicky person in the first place, becoming a stressy, panicky bride is fun for no one.)

Luckily, I have an awesome fiancé who volunteered to do a good chunk of the planning for the rehearsal dinner. He’s done a great job—we’ve figured out where we can get the food catered and the cost, and his most recent project was scouting out locations. We settled on a pavilion area with picnic tables at a local park.

Image via Friends of Bidwell Park

I kind of wish I knew where this park is so I could tell someone they spelled “observing” incorrectly. Because I’m That Girl.

While discussing the setup of having a rehearsal dinner in a public park, we came upon a few things that are need-to-know information if you’re considering a public outdoor location. Before you book, look up the park rules! Some of the things we hadn’t considered:

• Do they allow alcohol? If you want to serve it, better find out first! They say it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, but I don’t think that works all that well when cops are involved. In our case, we are allowed to serve alcohol, but not in glass bottles.
• Do they allow candles? I think it would be pretty easy and relatively painless for our budget to just get some hurricane vases and some candles (or vases with floating candles) to use as the RD centerpieces. Doesn’t require much work! But of course we don’t want to burn the park down, so that’s something we need to know ahead of time.
• Does the park close down at a certain time? It would suck for the rehearsal dinner to get cut short because everyone’s gotta skedaddle at sundown. Some towns have park curfews, some don’t.
• Can other people access the park during the rental? Will there be real-life crashers?

Are there any other need-to-knows I’m forgetting? Where are you having your rehearsal dinner?