Weddingbee Blog

I woke up super early the day before our wedding. I had a huge list of things to finish up before our rehearsal. When we were first engaged I told myself I would finish all our projects the Thursday before the wedding…unfortunately, that didn’t happen. My list included: baking desserts for our dessert bar, getting the boxes (…and boxes…and boxes) of dishes and decorations to our reception venue, finishing and wrapping the bridal-party gifts, ironing our linens, and getting myself ready and to the reception. Oh, and I had to pick up my dress, which I completely forgot about until about two in the afternoon. Ladies, don’t forget to pick up your dress—it’s kind of a big deal.

Even though Mr. Pony was around to help, it was clear everything wasn’t going to get done with just us two. We delegated the tasks of moving the boxes to the reception and ironing of tablecloths to Mr. P’s family, which made a huge difference on my rapidly deteriorating mental health.

Eventually all the of boxes were delivered, the desserts were baked, and my dress was safely in my possession. After such a hectic day, I was ready to get to our rehearsal and start relaxing (and getting my drink on).

I realize I never shared anything about our rehearsal dinner, although, honestly, by the time I got around to planning it, my creative and financial resources were heavily depleted. I whipped up these invites in Illustrator in about five minutes:

Nothing fancy, but they served their purpose. You’ll notice on the invitation that our rehearsal was scheduled after dinner. Another wedding was taking place at our venue at six that night, so we didn’t have access to the ceremony pavilion until seven. We didn’t want our guests to go hungry, so we opted to have dinner first.

Another item I didn’t get to blog about was our welcome bags. Since learning about welcome bags while planning, they became a permanent fixture on my to-do list. I made one for every family at our rehearsal, and they included water, snacks, Beer Nuts, a welcome letter, and a nail file (kinda random, but we got them for free, so why not?).

I ordered canvas totes from Cheap Totes and spruced them up the best I could with an iron-on transfer I designed roughly based on this beautiful design that was way out of my price range.

Oh, and I made myself an extra special one to use just for me:

Mr. P wanted to spend the night before the wedding apart, so he left me earlier in the day to check into his hotel. Even though I supported this decision, I failed to fully consider one thing—how we would get to the rehearsal. Mr. Pony was staying at the hotel with our family and friends, so he had no issues. I, on the other hand, was forced to drive myself. On any other day this wouldn’t be an issue, but I was so tired, stressed, and scatterbrained, I really should not have been driving. Ladies, take a lesson from me and ask someone, preferably with reliable transportation and a proven track record of being on time, to be your chauffeur for the night. You’ll thank me later.

Hugging Mr. Pony because he brought the food

Our rehearsal dinner was very laid back. The winery allowed us to use the tasting room to host our dinner, and we were allowed to bring in food of our choice. We decided to keep things classy and delicious with takeout pizza and bottles of wine.

Before we got to rehearsing, we handed out gifts to our bridal party and parents:

Our moms got the typical picture frame, which we filled with our artwork as a placeholder for a picture:

For the guys, Mr. Pony ordered customized coasters based on each guy’s interests:

For my girls, I gave them another “typical” gift of necklaces (which I completely neglected to take a picture of) to wear on the wedding day if they wanted and paid for their hair to be styled the next day.

I also wanted to give each of my ladies something personalized and sentimental without being a giant advertisement for our wedding. I couldn’t find anything that fit my exact requirements until about a week before the wedding, when I stumbled across these books of inspirational quotes.

Since I absolutely love quotes, these books seemed perfect. I added personal notes to each girl inside the book, which I know were rife with spelling and grammatical errors since I didn’t have the chance to write my notes until just an hour or so before the rehearsal and my mind was kind of spinning at that point.

After handing out all the gifts, my awesome MOH presented me with my rehearsal bouquet, made from ribbons from my bridal showers. She also surprised Mr. P with his very own rehearsal boutonniere, also made from elements from my shower, which I thought was the most adorable thing ever:

I think the picture below is my attempt to make Mr. P show off his rehearsal boutonniere, but it is just kind of blending into his shirt.

Since our wedding was set to be outside, we hoped to hold our rehearsal outside where the ceremony would occur. It rained the entire day of our rehearsal, right until we were ready to rehearse when the clouds finally took a break. Our coordinator, Miranda, asked us to show our excitement that the rain had stopped, which resulted in the picture below.

We were ready to rehearse!

What did you do the day before your wedding? Anyone else almost forget to pick up their wedding dress? Tell me I’m not alone!