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!

another invite.

Last week I sent out our rehearsal dinner invitations! While not completely necessary, I really wanted to send out invites for the rehearsal dinner so there was no question as to who was invited and to make sure everyone knew what the plan was for dinner. Also, since our RD will be at Mr. M's parents' house on a lake outside of town, I wanted to make sure people knew how to get there!

I found my inspiration for the invitation design a few months ago, and even put them together a few weeks ahead of when I needed to send them! I was pretty proud of myself of being so on top of these.

The invitations were made with the same ruby stardream metallic cardstock, green flourish paper, and white linen paper we've been using throughout all of our paper projects. I added a teal blue ribbon to tie in the ribbon we had our wedding invites, and used the same fonts we used on those as well. We opted to use kraft envelopes for these, simply because I love kraft paper. Mr. M printed the addresses on the envelopes using our printer, which ended up being the most frustrating step in the whole process. Let's just say our printer does not share my love of kraft paper!

Printer difficulties aside, this was the stationary project that I enjoyed the most. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that there were actually a manageable amount of invites that needed to be made! 32 RD invites versus 215 wedding invitations is a HUGE difference when DIYing (and even when not DIYing, for that matter)!

Did anyone else send out rehearsal dinner invites? Did they make life easier for your guests?

a white dress to rehearse in.

I have been searching for a dress for our rehearsal dinner for a few months now. I originally wanted to take advantage of the fact that, as the bride, it is perfectly acceptable for me to wear a white dress. Alas, I don't think that is in the cards for me. I have searched and searched and searched and cannot find a white dress that is semi-casual (since our rehearsal dinner is being held outside at Mr. M's parent's home) and that you cannot see through. I don't think those two criteria are very stringent, but apparently they are.

Exhibit #1.

Oh yeah, I can't even show it to you. I fell in love with this cute strapless white and metallic silver BCBG dress at Lord & Taylor months ago, but they didn't have my size. Anywhere in the US. I looked all over the internet for it as well and couldn't find so much as a picture of it. Sad.

Exhibit #2. This dress made me swoon from the second I laid eyes on it. I waited for it to go on sale online and ran (okay, drove) to the nearest Banana Republic to try it on. In the store it was only $39.99, and I grabbed the last one in my size. I tried in on and it fit perfectly. It was flowy and silky and wonderful. Imagine my disappointment when I looked in the fitting room mirror and could see everything I was wearing underneath it. I felt like I was wearing an invisible sheath. Again, sad.

(source)

Exhibit #3-23. I'm too lazy to find the pictures. I have tried on at least 20 dresses at various department stores and all of them are either not flattering or completely see-through. Sad, sad, sad...

I did try on a very cute dress from Anthropologie today that I have been eyeing for awhile now. One thing it is not? The bridal white I was going for in a rehearsal dress. But it is pretty, light-colored, semi-casual, and you can't see through it! It's also a dress I can wear again! Needless to say, I gave up on my dream white dress and bought this one instead.

(source)

So it's not white. But metallic linen is close to white, right? Okay, no it's not, but I like it anyway!

Did anyone else want a white rehearsal dinner dress? Where did you find one?

in love.

I'm pretty much in love with this rehearsal dinner designed by Amy Nichols and featured on Style Me Pretty. I want to know what the wedding itself looked like if the rehearsal dinner was this beautiful!

If I wasn't having such a hard time finding ribbon in our wedding colors, I would totally use this idea for chair decorations at our reception! Who knew something so simple could dress up a wooden chair so much?

Photos by Timothy Teague

I'm also loving the way the napkins are rolled and tied with ribbon. This one, I think I may try to replicate!

With only 3 months left to go, I've been trying to limit my intake of new ideas, because honestly there's just not enough time left to implement any more ideas! But its so hard to not be inspired while looking at wedding blogs! Is anyone else trying not to be inspired as their countdown starts winding down?

jumping the gun.

I still haven't finished the design of our invitations, but since I am easily distracted, I couldn't help but move on to finding ideas for our rehearsal dinner invites. Imagine my excitement when I came across this lovely invitation from paper loving bride! I love the kraft paper, the simplicity of the design, and the address block on the envelope. It even has the flourish pattern that we've been carrying as a theme within all of our paper goods! Perfect!

To be honest, I'm now more excited about making our rehearsal dinner invites than I am about our actual invitations! Thanks Lisa for letting me share these!

Are you planning on sending out rehearsal dinner invitations?