We are still sans pastor (and the church has "forgotten" to contact their other pastors, which is awesome since we're paying them a sh*tload of money to have our ceremony there WITH A PASTOR since we need to get married and all), but the rehearsal dinner has been successfully booked!
We were really scattered when it came to the rehearsal dinner. We originally set a small budget with the hope of having a casual pizza and beer kind of a deal, but the budget we set was just too small. The church wanted to charge us $70 to have it in their fellowship hall (which I think is stupid since we're already paying them a ton of $$ for the use of the building) and we had trouble finding a pizza place in the area. Once we branched out past pizza places though...we found a place that could do pizza and beer. Weird. I basically searched through "Kirkwood restaurants" in UrbanSpoon (I definitely just googled "Kirkwood restaurants", but hey, it worked) and looked at all of the restaurants listed to determine which would work.
Mike Duffys in Kirkwood actually answered the phone when I called (I'm on a bit of a streak where vendors won't call me), has a private room we can use, and can do a buffet with pizza, toasted ravioli, salad, pasta, and a drink for $10.95/person, which is right at $14/person with tax + tip. We're not going to purchase alcohol for our guests, since we've never once been to a rehearsal dinner where alcohol was included and we're getting them liquored up the next day.
So yeah, it's pretty much perfect. It's only a block or 2 from the church and there is plenty of parking. We've actually never eaten there (we tried to on Sunday, but they were closed), but everyone says its really good and the price was right. We didn't want to risk someone else booking the room, and we do plan on eating down there soon. We need to walk around in that area and check out possible picture locations anyway.
Once we established this was where we wanted to go, it took a whopping 5 minutes on the phone. Done. If only it could all be so easy...and if only I didn't feel the need to research every freaking restaurant in a 20 mile radius to make sure we got the BEST POSSIBLE DEAL. I'm exhausting to myself, I can only imagine what my family and friends think of me at this point!
I'm glad this is taken care of, and we ended up getting exactly what we wanted (for a slightly higher price, the budget we initially set was way too low).
Where are you having your rehearsal dinner? Do you feel compelled to research everything and wear yourself out?
Aaaahh, the rehearsal dinner.
ReplyDeleteWe're doing a welcome dinner for everyone who will be around and in town the night before the wedding. All I had concretely envisioned for the weekend was a casual, backyard BBQ the night before the wedding -- but then the reality hit that there just wasn't a place to have a backyard BBQ in the middle of downtown Baltimore for up to 100 people. It's been sad for me to let it go! (We thought we had lucked out by finding a penthouse with a huge deck for a not-so-bad price, but it's booked on our date.)
So we've had to move on to restaurants in the area, although we still want that kind of buffet-chat-mingle atmosphere. We thought we found a place that would work; it's overlooking the water and they offer a crab feast! How fun! But it is a bit pricey, and we have to see how much himself's parents had planned on spending. There is always the restaurant in the hotel where everyone is staying, I suppose . . .
While I don't feel the need to continue to research everything once I've found something, I do always feel the need to step in and take charge. As in, 'WHAT? We don't have a place for the rehearsal dinner yet??? I have to take care of it!!!' ' WHAT? We don't have music yet? I have to take care of it!!!' It's exhausting. I need to learn how to delegate and just trust that things will get done.
We're doing our rehearsal at a local pub and grill that's across the street from the church. I normally research the hell out of everything but this was actually relatively easy and I didn't research at all--we have frequented this place before, the price was right, the location was PERFECT, and everything was done via phone. We're right around the same price point as you, but we are hosting alcohol, both because we wanted to and because that seems to be the norm around these parts!
ReplyDeleteHooray for getting another thing checked off your list...feels good, doesn't it?! :)
one of my pet peeves is that businesses
ReplyDeletea)don't answer the phone during normal business hours
b) they don't return phone calls when they PROMISED you they would call.
your party plan sounds great though- I don't think it's necessary to pay for everyone's alcohol. My uncle told me that while all family and out of town guests should be invited I shouldn't feel obligated to pay for anyone's food besides the bridal party and immediate family.
I'm feeling super smug right now that half these new American "traditions" still don't exist in the UK. No rehearsal dinner, no groom's cake, no dollar dance... ahh, less things to get fleeced for!
ReplyDeletei'm glad the lingering annoyances are finally starting to work out for you! we had the opposite problem, where mike's dad wanted to do a big fancy rehearsal dinner embracing his chance to "do whatever he wants." he wanted to go really fancy and we started to fear it might overshadow our rustic casual wedding. we were also really hoping for something a little more low key that we could invite all of our guests flying in from LA and over seas too. we really felt like - if they are traveling so far to see us we want to spend as much time with them as possible. we're excited that it worked out that we will be having the "welcome" dinner at the restaurant adjacent to the hotel, easy for everyone to mosey over, not worry about driving and parking (mixing driving with drinking) and casual enough that we can have all of the people we want to spend time with there.
ReplyDeleteThat place sounds perfect and a bargain!
ReplyDelete