Practice Makes Perfect

Sooo....we got our pro pics in Friday night. Yeah, 5 days later. How lucky are we! She told us at the wedding that she was leaving for Maui, so it'd either be 1 week or 4 weeks. I had braced myself for 4 weeks, so waking up Saturday morning to an e-mail from our fabulous photog was fantastic. But I have no clue how to do recaps. I don't want to do anything exhaustive (I'm absolutely guilty of doing a quick skim of "Family Pics!!!" or "All the Groomsmen!" posts) and to be honest, I am still gathering my thoughts about the wedding. The pro pics look f*cking amazing. Like, they exceeded my expectations by 100000x. Anyway, as soon as I get my sh*t together, I'll kick off the recaps, but until then, I had to blog about the rehearsal and dinner. Because it was SO FUN!

So I had been running around St Louis all day with Ryan, and met up with my fam at their hotel about an hour before the rehearsal. Alli packed her body pillow. Bad*ss.

It had been a long day and I guess I was a little stir crazy. That must explain this:

We're all ready!

We got to the church first. Waiting waiting....

WOOHOO open and affirming churches! I made them keep the sign up for the wedding. Not really made them but just asked nicely. You catch my drift.

Then Ryan and pretty much everybody arrived all in one fell swoop. Apparently the itinerary had said West Argonne Street when it was actually East Argonne Street, which led to a panicked discussion as to if the invitations said East or West. Luckily, they said East. Whew. Also Ryan was super excited to kick off the most photo-heavy weekend of his life. Obviously.

Our amazing officiant arrived and we knocked out the rehearsal in 40 minutes or so. We ran through it twice and figured out logistics...it was all pretty easy since it was so simple. We didn't have big bridal parties or anything, so it was lots of "who opens what door when" and "who walks down with who when." So exciting I forgot to photograph it! Then we all headed a block or so over to Mike Duffys, the sight of our rehearsal dinner.

Confession: I had never once sat foot in the restaurant before that night. I booked it sight and taste unseen and kept my fingers crossed. And wow did it work out...they had a private room all set aside for us, happily accepted a cake delivery, and kept the yummy buffet stocked. It was great.

I didn't tell you all about this, but I surprised Ryan with a groom's cake from a bakery he loves. I told the bakery that Ryan loves Werther's and caramels, and they hooked it UP. Caramel buttercream frosting with white cake and candied pecan filling (they even let me drop off pecans from my MeeMaws farm to use in the cake). Omega Falcon is Ryan's running team. I think he liked the cake.

The thing that surprised me so much about the rehearsal dinner was how well everyone got along! Ryan's runners, my friend Melissa, Ryan's friends and fam and my fam...everyone mingled and had a great time! The officiant (who I LOVE) even stopped by and everyone loved him, especially my mom. Everyone was having a great time, which was fantastic because it was Ryan and I's nearest and dearest and everyone was thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Mary and Melissa tried to take a picture but Dad had other ideas....

Family picture!

And everyone loved their gifts, which was great. I got my girls handmade tote bags and jewelry rolls and a pashmina scarf while Ryan got his guys laser engraved wooden bats.

I thought the rehearsal dinner would be on the tedious side, but it was a blast!

How was your rehearsal dinner, work or play?

Rehearsal

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.

Source

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?

Ryan hates it when I brag on him, so I really try not to do it often.

But I can't help it.

I called the restaurant that we were hoping to have our rehearsal dinner at yesterday. Every time I called, I kept getting a busy tone. I was browsing the internet to see if there was another number when I found out that the restaurant had closed, putting us back to square one with the rehearsal dinner.

I told Ryan and he said "I am going to find us a place so you don't have to worry about it, you have enough to do."

Love my involved groom.