Weddingbee Blog

After I had reached a decent level of calm, I was able to focus in on the remainder of the rehearsal. Now, at the risk of sounding like a bratty control freak, I had some very clear ideas about the details of our wedding ceremony. I was willing to relent on some, like surrendering my preference to have the groomsmen enter via the side of the church and have the bridesmaids process solo. However, there were other details that I wasn’t as eager to yield on, and, unfortunately, my “don’t mess with me” attitude on these details was aired for all to see. Allow me to explain.

The priest scooted all pertinent parties to the back of the church to work on the processional. We paired everyone up and set the order of the various grandparents, parents, and bridal party members. Mr. Snow Cone and I had sorted out each honored guest’s escort—we aimed to have family walk with family to make it comfortable for all involved individuals. So, it’s easy to understand my minor discontent when our carefully crafted processional was met with a bit of hesitancy from the priest. Specifically, when he asked who would be escorting Mr. Snow Cone’s mom down the aisle, I responded by saying that Mr. Snow Cone’s dad would be (doesn’t that make just a lovely image? A married couple, parents of the groom, walking hand-in-hand down the aisle to watch their son say his own vows? There’s a method to my madness, I swear).
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On the eve of our wedding, Mr. Dalmatian’s very generous parents have offered to host a dinner. Many people would call this a rehearsal dinner, and I admit that most of the time I take the easy route and do this too. But technically, we are not having our rehearsal until the day of the wedding. This sounded scary to me at first, but the lovely ladies at our venue have assured me that it will go smoothly (and quickly), and given the number of weddings they have successfully pumped out I have decided to take a chill pill and believe them. So when we arrive at Cedarwood, everyone involved (minus Mr. D) will run through the ceremony. Then, as I am sliding into my gown (Eek! So excited!), they will take Mr. Dalmatian and run through what he is supposed to do.

ANYWAY, back to the not-really-a-rehearsal dinner. While we will not be rehearsing the day before our wedding, we will be doing something very exciting… attending Mr. Dalmatian’s business school graduation!

So where will we be celebrating? To answer that, let me tell you a little back story:
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So, I’m sort of ass-backwards and shared our rehearsal BBQ invitations with you all before I even told you why we chose to have a BBQ in the first place! Please forgive me, hive. Since we don’t have a groom in this wedding equation, I knew that we would have to plan it ourselves. But I really freaked out at the thought of planning a rehearsal dinner…I mean, it’s pretty expensive, and I knew that our parents would want to invite out-of-town guests, further racking up the bill. Since our venue is so popular, they book Friday evening weddings as well. This ruled out having the traditional Friday-night rehearsal, and this made me want to just skip the rehearsal dinner all together. Our ceremony rehearsal is going to be on a Thursday evening, and I felt like having the rehearsal dinner on a Thursday just sort of defeated the whole pre-wedding excitement that the rehearsal dinner gives to the weekend.

I expressed my whole rehearsal dinner ambivalence to Mommy Eagle, who then suggested we have a BBQ in a local city park. Honestly it seemed like a great idea to me—we could easily buy hamburgers and chicken breasts from Costco for the main dish, and make up some salads and sides, the day of. And since it wasn’t going to cost much per head, we could invite out-of-town guests. Perfect! Mommy Eagle to the rescue.

We were able to book a local city picnic area that comes equipped with charcoal grills, and access to an electrical outlet for $100. I’m estimating that food will cost us max $500, and decorations may come in at $100. I’ve tallied up our guest list, and I think we’ll invite around 50 people…so the whole shebang should be approximately $14 a head. This is very reasonable considering quotes from restaurants were closer to $50.

A rehearsal BBQ isn’t all that un-common in the wedding world. I’ve found tons of great photos and inspiration!

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The night of our rehearsal dinner was absolutely one of the best nights of my life (have I said that enough yet?). It was a night I had been looking forward to ever since Sparks asked me to marry him. The rehearsal just seems so special…everyone is excited to be in town, everything is finally happening, and you know it’s time to soak in every moment. And that’s what we did.

The actual rehearsal was super simple. We all met at the hotel, hopped on a party bus, and headed to the venue.

Yeah. Right.

That’s how it went for everybody else. How did it go for me? Well, let’s just say, the rehearsal was scheduled for 4:30PM, and I arrived in the lobby of the hotel at 4:21PM…in jeans and a t-shirt. I had my hair and makeup done already (thanks to a wonderful afternoon at the Benefit spa…a gift from sister Sparkler and one of my favorite memories of the weekend), and I planned to throw on my red dress and Jimmy Choos, and be on the bus in under five minutes.

Weeeellll, there was a minor crisis at check-in where the concierge mistakenly tried to charge the entire honeymoon suite and security deposit on my poor, tired debit card. This was supposed to be put on our CREDIT card, which was in Sparks’ pocket, at our apartment (yes, he was late too). After a mini-meltdown, they finally agreed to put only half of the charge on my card until the next day. I honestly think they were just terrified of the little bride crying in their lobby…not good for business. It wasn’t my proudest moment, but I was so beyond stressed at that point, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s bride’s back. A big, BIG thanks goes out to my BFF, Bridesmaid Sarah, for saving the day and calming me down. Also to my wonderful boys who insisted the hotel bartender let me walk out the door with a beer in my hand. Thanks

Now, onto the rehearsal dinner!
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I shared with you all in my last blog that I designed my rehearsal dinner invitations in Adobe Illustrator and ordered them through Vistaprint. I felt comfortable using Vistaprint since we’re just having a rehearsal BBQ and the invitations don’t need to be super fancy. Plus, I had used them for my Save-The-Dates, and I was impressed with the quality of the paper, for the price.

We went from this design:

To this printed product (plus I rounded the corners):
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So, does having your rehearsal dinner at a restaurant called Stripburger set an appropriate tone for your wedding? Mr. Mole and I think so. (Its name refers to the Vegas strip, hive, not strippers! Of course, the latter would be more appropriate to the bachelor/bachelorette parties.)

Image via Las Vegas Sun

Mr. Mole and I decided to have a rehearsal dinner, even though we aren’t having an actual rehearsal. (We’re hoping that the first time’s the charm when it comes to performing wedding ceremonies.) We figured that a dinner was a nice way to welcome all of our guests to Las Vegas and spend some time with them before the wedding. Deciding to have the event, however, was significantly easier than deciding where to have it.

Maybe it’s just me, but I completely underestimated how much a rehearsal dinner would cost.
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I consider myself to be a traditionalist, but if something else works out better then I am not afraid to go in that direction. This is why we will be holding a rehearsal lunch instead of a dinner.

When we started researching options for rehearsal dinner locations, I was absolutely flabbergasted. It seemed anywhere decent I found cost nearly as much as the food at the wedding. I had a hard time wrapping my head around why a large amount of money is going to be spent the night before the wedding (where a large amount of money had already been spent).

Then a thought popped into my head about our venue. Our venue is fairly popular and tends to get booked up every weekend pretty quickly. There is a good chance that there will be a wedding the day before ours. I decided I should check with them on this because if that is the case, then a rehearsal dinner the evening before was not going to work. Sure enough, there is a wedding that Friday evening before ours. Our options are either to hold our rehearsal Thursday evening or a 10AM rehearsal Friday morning.

Well, shoot.
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One of the things I’m looking forward to most with this wedding, besides actually getting married, is all of the eating activities. There are all types of excuses to scarf down food. Besides the dinner at your reception, you can fill up on good food pretty much from throughout the entire wedding planning process. Engagement dinners, multiple bridal showers, bridal luncheons and of course, the rehearsal dinner. Ah, the rehearsal dinner. I don’t know why most people only have one; I think I’ll need a few rehearsals to perfect my yummy face.

Early on, we considered having it at a great Mexican restaurant a few blocks from Mr. Warbs’ parents house. Since they’re regulars, the owners gave them a really good deal that included pitchers of margaritas, beer and platters upon platters of food. My kind of party! But, it wouldn’t have worked out logistically. The Mexican restaurant is in Whittier which is nearly 60 miles away from Malibu. So our options were to have the rehearsal dinner Thursday, have the actual rehearsal on Friday and the wedding on Saturday. There was way too much back and forth involved in that plan. We could also have had the dinner a couple of weeks before the wedding, but that just seemed odd to me. It just made more sense to have the dinner in the Malibu area. No enchiladas for us.

We checked out a few over priced restaurants before we settled on Buca di Beppo.
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Choosing to throw a rehearsal party was one of the best decisions we made. Not only was it mega-fun…it gave us an opportunity to spend as much time as possible with our guests—guests that had traveled very far to be there in support of us.
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With our bellies full of brunch, we made our way to the space in the backyard that had been set up for rehearsal.

Grammy Waffle walked me down the “aisle” while I was obviously being silly and my “bouquet” was in front of my face instead of my belly button like Magic Alie told me to do. Normally, I am not a person who behaves this way at rehearsals, but my nerves (and mimosas) must have been kicking in…just a pinch.
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On Saturday morning, we woke up a little fuzzy from our stag and hen dos, but were soooooo very excited to skip over to Captain Toes’ and MOH Sweet Pea’s house for our waffle bar rehearsal brunch!

We arrived to the smells of bacon frying and waffles being cooked on their irons! Yummmmmm!

Magic Alie, MOH Sweet Pea and my other amazing friends had created such a wonderful set-up for our brunching and rehearsing! If you look closely, you can see how they used our save the dates and other wedding related invites in the decor. So clever!

They had a mimosa and bloody mary bar…
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I’ve told you how I’ve bounced around everywhere from a cool little Mexican BYO to a Polish place known for their pierogis for the locale of our rehearsal dinner.

While life was still in Part Uno, Cousin Sweets decided that she’d love to be in charge of the margaritas. This lady is someone who loves food, cooking, experimenting,  planning just as much as I do, so she took her task pretty seriously researching some yummy tequila-laced infusions. And then I think I broke her little heart when I told her that I thought that we were going to try out Rosmaryn.

She loved the idea of it all. After all, she’s 50% Polish too and thought that everything from the traditions to the potato vodka would be a hit.

But as I told her that I wasn’t sure if people would get lost along the way and that I wasn’t sure of the neighborhood or where people would park, she told me the nicest thing. Cuz Sweets said that she would be honored if I let her cater our rehearsal dinner. She said of course, not to feel any pressure, but to just play with the idea in my head.
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Besides all the hours upon hours of planning that goes into a wedding, there seems like there is an awful lot of rehearsing too!

Optional—but not mandatory—practices include a hair trial, a makeup trial, and perhaps a few drafts of the invitation. But one things that is practically a must for any sort of ceremony involving a few folks is the rehearsal.

Via WordArtWorld Blog

We already have it all planned out to do a dry run at our local church the evening of the Thursday before the big day. Simple. But the thing that got me stuck was the dry-run chow.

You may or may not remember that food is a big deal to me. And so is party planning. And while I am at it, so is being thrifty.
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OK, y’all! Here goes nothin’! Let the Brooch recaps begin…

I have the fondest memories of the day before our wedding despite all the last minute running around. My Maid of Honor, Chelly was really helpful, too! She picked me up from my apartment and we loaded a ton of stuff into her car. She drove me to the mall where she basically sat me down to get my nails done, and then she ran off to get me some food. Hello Chipotle! Yes, you are picturing that correct! I was literally eating beans and rice the morning before the wedding while getting my nails done! Glamorous, ay?

I also had to run a few errands in the mall, but Chelly made sure we were on schedule. We arrived at the National Harbor right in time to check into my hotel suite and unload. Phew!

Just a few hours later, I met up with Mr. Brooch at the Westin Hotel’s restaurant. They were nice enough to let us use the area (free of charge!) right before it opened for our rehearsal.

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So, the rehearsal dinner was a part of the wedding that I kind of forgot about completely at first. If you go back to my budget post, you’ll see I didn’t budget for it. Oops. Oh, well, I’m not planning anything too fancy so it shouldn’t cost too much, and Mr. Cannon’s parents have graciously offered to cover the cost, so my booty got saved there. Now we’re trying to decide where to hold this special occasion.

Mr. Cannon and I agree that we should have pizza. We were thiiiiis close to going with pizza for the reception because, quite frankly, we really like pizza. So, it was a total no brainer to go for pizza at the rehearsal dinner. Somewhat recently, Toledo was blessed with a branch of a Detroit based deep dish pizza place called Pizzapapalis. It’s downtown near the ball park, and Mr. Cannon and I really like the pizza. They have a banquet space and offer pizza buffets for a reasonable fee. It seemed to be the perfect solution. We were pumped, and I asked Mr. Cannon to call them and get information about renting the space and setting up the dinner.

Image via Skyscrapercity.com/ Picture by Jay Smith Photography]

Here is where things started getting iffy.

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