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)