A Woodside Wedding: Rehearsal Dinner Under The Trees

After the scramble to get everything set up for our rehearsal dinner, we could finally relax as our guests started arriving. Since we had invited all of our out of town guests, and knew not everyone was familiar with the area, we’d planned to have drinks and appetizers from 6:30-7:15pm, to make sure anyone running late didn’t miss dinner.

This time to mingle was a great opportunity for both of our families to meet each other. Our parents had met once over dinner about 6 years ago, but hadn’t seen each other since. And I’d hardly met any of Mr. Cola’s family before our rehearsal dinner, since most live on the east coast.


At 7:15 our buffet dinner from Armadillo Willy’s BBQ was set up, my signs were put out, and everything was ready to eat, so Mr. Cola and I gave a quick thanks to everyone for joining us, and let everyone know it was time to eat. And then I had to repeat it all again, because apparently only half our guests could hear me the first time!


Once everyone had helped themselves to the food, Mr. Cola and I had a chance to sit down and eat ourselves. I was terrified of getting BBQ sauce on my white rehearsal dress, so I opted to eat with a very fashionable napkin tucked in the front of my dress.


The rest of the evening was spent chatting with our guests as the sun went down behind the trees. At some point our groomsmen passed out Its Its ice cream sandwiches for dessert, which were a big hit for everyone not on a diet!


Toward the end of the night I was starting to get a sore throat from talking so much, so I had to switch from wine to Sprite. At about 9:30pm we started to wrap things up, and our wedding party was wonderful enough to help with the tear down and loading the décor back into our cars. And then some of the groomsmen were nice enough to load the speaker system into our Uhaul truck back at the hotel, and help me move the after party supplies from my car to our hotel room, since my feet and throat were killing me. Mainly the after party supplies were just a whole lot of liquor, beer and mixers, so after it was brought up to our room, it didn’t take Mr. Cola and I very long to set it all up for the next evening.

For the rest of the night, I’m not sure what everyone else did, I think they hung around the lobby bar, or in their hotel rooms. Mr. Cola spent some time with his groomsmen, promising to wrap things up and be back in our suite by midnight or so. I took the opportunity to take a really long, super steamy shower, drink some more Sprite, and give myself a French manicure.

I’m not sure what time Mr. C fell asleep the night before our wedding, but it was definitely before I did. The last time I remember looking at the clock it was 2:30 in the morning, and I was still tossing and turning, and hoping my sore throat would go away before the big day.

How early do you plan to get to sleep the night before your wedding?

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time

(All pictures in this post are personal photos, taken by myself, my family or our wedding party)

A Woodside Wedding: Decorating for the Rehearsal Dinner

With our ceremony rehearsed, and after killing a couple hours at the hotel, we headed out to go set up for our Friday night rehearsal dinner.

I was in my car by myself, and after swinging by my mom’s house to pick up the Its Its ice cream sandwiches we would be serving for dessert, I arrived at our RD venue, the San Mateo Garden Center right at our rental start time of 5pm. Unfortunately (or luckily, at least they weren’t late), the guy who was delivering the speaker system we were using for the weekend through my work hook up was there already. And I was there, by myself.

I started to panic a bit, because for one, uh, I was there by myself for the first half hour of our rental time, and didn't know where everyone else was. And this AV tech guy was trying to tell me stuff about things I know nothing about, and my sister’s boyfriend (who would be running the AV equipment) wasn’t there yet to get the instructions. To make matters worse, I had very little of the rehearsal dinner décor in my car to be able to start setting up; I had mostly just the after party stuff.

**Pause for a few minutes of a bride-to-be pulling out her hair**

So where was everyone else? Well, Mr. Cola and a couple of the groomsmen had to stop by Safeway to pick up ice and our appetizer trays. But because Quiznos had refused to let us place our Sunday luncheon food order in advance, and weren’t returning my calls earlier that afternoon, he had to take time to put in a new order with Safeway for Sunday’s food. Unfortunately this took a while longer than it should have, and he happened to have almost all the RD décor in his car….so I was panicking about the set up happening in time, and franticly texting him and everyone else.

Luckily, around 5:30pm Mr. C and the rest of our wedding party showed up, and we scrambled to get the drinks on ice and all the décor set up (have I mentioned already how much I love our wedding party for all the set up help? 'Cause I do!). And it all turned out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself! Everything looked pretty dang close to these Photoshopped mock ups I’d done last fall.


And once the sun set later in the evening you could better see the paper bag luminaries that Mr. Cola decorated, as well as my DIY centerpieces.


With only a few minutes to spare before everyone else arrived for our 6:30pm rehearsal dinner, I could finally relax with a glass of wine, try not to look too sweaty from the set up scramble, and get ready to meet most of Mr. Cola’s family for the first time!

(Ahhh, a much needed glass of Gewurztraminer!)

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony

(All pictures in this post are personal photos, taken by myself, my family or our wedding party)

Rehearsal Dinner Centerpieces

Since we're tackling all the wedding day flowers ourselves, I didn't want to have to add the rehearsal dinner centerpieces into the mix; we would be busy enough arranging flowers as it was. So even though I just know David Tutera* will be shaking his head in disappointment at me, I decided to pre-arrange the centerpieces using silk flowers. (*he tends to mock the use of silk flowers in weddings on his show)

I already accounted for the cost of the blue LED lanterns that I bought from Luna Bazaar in my post about decorating our rehearsal dinner location, like this mock up I designed:


But I still had to buy the silk flowers, which I got from Save On Crafts. The quality of the fake gardenias at Michaels just wasn't that great (i.e. they really looked fake), but I was quite happy with these that I ended up getting online. They are actually supposed to be used for unity candles, and are a mix of gardenia, stephanotis and leaves. These were $4.19 each before shipping, and I ordered 12, two for each table (actually, I'm thinking we'll only need 5 tables at the RD, but made an extra, just in case).

Then it was time to construct the centerpieces. As a base, I used the laser cutter to make 9" circles out of cardboard (the LED lanterns are 5" wide at the base, and I needed 2" of overhang around the lanterns for the flowers).


I then cut the silk flower rings in half, using 4 halves (or 2 rings) for each cardboard circle, and hot glued them to the cardboard.


Putting the LED lantern in the middle, between the silk flowers, it looked pretty good, unless you were sitting down, looking at it lower and from the side.....

As you can see in the picture directly above, from the side the cardboard is still visible, because of the way the silk flower stems curve up. Boo! This was definitely not something that I could live with, so I searched through my random craft supplies and came up with a green sharpie marker and old ceramic mosaic tiles in blue and white to save the day. The green sharpie would make the cardboard blend in with the flower stems, and the mini tiles could be used to make a short planter of sorts once they were glued to the side of the cardboard circle, covering the stems and edge of the cardboard!


Good save! These looked much cleaner from the side after the addition of the faux tile planters!


I had just enough tiles on hand to make 3 with alternating blue and white tiles, and 3 with all white tiles. And Hailey, one of my fur babies, helped!


Have you done anything ahead of time using silk flowers? And were you surprised at how well they turned out, or did you have trouble finding good quality silk flowers, like I did at first?

(all pictures in this post by me)