Let me back up.
Friday morning, things were coming together better than Thursday but there was still quite a few things to do. Thankfully Friday also brought with it helpers. Cousins, friends, bridal party significant others, etc. We were finally able to delegate some tasks like taking the rest of the OOT bags to condos, decorating the picnic area and moving stuff over to the reception site.
Finally, at 2pm, it was time to rehearse. What's worse than having to rehearse something you have never done before with a bunch of people who don't want to set off the stressed out bride? Not much. They don't know what to do, they certainly aren't used to listening to you tell them what to do (parents, older siblings, best friends.) Thus, herding cats. Can you herd cats? No.
Thud.
Note to self: never use that one again.
Thankfully we had a small bridal party and very helpful family members. In the end, the rehearsal went over pretty well. Two things I took away from the rehearsal after everything was said and done:
- Hire a Day-Of Coordinator. Let them bother themselves with telling people what to do, where to stand, how the processional and recessional are going to go. They also would then take care of any major (to you) issues that may come up on the day of the wedding. If I had to do it all over again, that's the one thing I would change. I would knock out something else to pay for a DOC.
- Have your musicians there for the rehearsal. We forgot one very important tidbit that might have been important for the violinist to know ahead of time.
After we rehearsed, we got to party!
Dan and I had some things to do before we could head over to the pavilion where we were having our rehearsal dinner/picnic. We sent our MOH and BM, as well as our parents, cousins, Aunts and Uncles and siblings away and told them if they would like to help, we would appreciate it. Dan and I arrived at the picnic site an hour later. Everything was practically set up already! Dan's sister Pam was putting out tablecloths and tying them down with hooks she and Lauren found in the bathroom. Steve was putting up the chinese lanterns. My cousins and Aunts and Uncles were carrying beer, coolers, wine, etc.
The day had started off really buggy. A hurricane had blown through two weeks before and the ground was still soggy. Add soggy wetlands to warmish weather and what do you get? Mosquitos. We were so very worried about the bugs. The last thing we all needed were big fat mosquito bites on our foreheads for wedding photos the next day. Somehow we really lucked out, though. The wind picked up and although it was tough to keep things in place at the pavilion, it cleared out the bugs for a while. The wind died down just in time for dinner. We planned it that way, I swear.
We had chopped pork with 4 different types of sauces, fried chicken, two types of cole slaw, hush puppies, banana pudding and more. I love living in the south!!
One of my favorite things about the picnic was what Dan's sisters did. They wanted to make a "grooms cake" for Dan. I was all for it because I had talked to our bakers about it and their prices were way out of my budget for his cake. Pam and Beth went above and beyond. They put together a picture frame with shots of him through the years and made the whole event Batman related. Apparently when Dan was younger, he enjoyed running around the house in his Batman costume....long after Halloween. :)
He also loves Whoopie Pies
We were so surprised/excited by the amount of people that were able to make the picnic. We had 76 people at our wedding and 52 of them came to the picnic the night before!
Like Mother like son...
I'm so glad we finally decided to have this picnic as our "rehearsal dinner." It was some serious quality time to chat with our friends and family when we otherwise would have just seen them on Saturday. It was a very relaxing night and a great way to get ready for the next day!!
1 comment:
Everyone is crazy. I totally get 'herding cats.'
That BBQ was crazy good too!
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