a small town wedding: the beginning.

Remember when I used to blog here?  It's been awhile.  But my 1 year anniversary is coming up on September 5th and I'm determined to finish my recaps before then.  I'm getting ahead of myself though, because in order to finish them...I need to actually start them.  So I'm going to skip through the madness that happened the week before the wedding and start at the beginning of the wedding weekend...the rehearsal.

I don't have any pictures of the actual rehearsal, which I think is actually a good thing.  Our rehearsal didn't exactly go smoothly.  Lots of people and even more confusion made me a very stressed bride-to-be, and our priest was even more stressed than I was.  Let's just say I was more nervous about the wedding after the rehearsal than I was going into it.  In the end we got everything straightened out for the most part and could move on to the more exciting part...dinner!  

Our rehearsal dinner took place at my future in-laws house.  The weather was beautiful and all of the tables were set up outside overlooking the lake.  

We really wanted our rehearsal dinner to be low key and somewhat casual, and my in-laws did a fantastic job putting it all together.  When we arrived, my FIL was already passing out glasses of Italian sparkling wine.

We had gourmet thin crust pizzas from several different places in the area for dinner.  Pizza (and Italian food in general) is what the town is known for, and we really wanted our family and friends from out of town to experience the local cuisine.  For dessert, we had a groom's cake....ice cream cake from Dairy Queen!  My husband is not a fan of any other kind of cake!  

After dinner we just kind of relaxed and visited for awhile.  It was nice to have a little down time to recover after all of the work we'd been doing to get everything finished.

After visiting for awhile, we posed for a few pictures with the wedding party.

MOH (and sister) Dani, Me, Mom, & BM (and sister) Gaby

The groom and his groomsmen (and ushers)

Me with my bridesmaids

Us with my sisters

Us with his parents and sisters

Next up, gifts for the wedding party!