rehearsal dinner review

Here's a recap of the rehearsal dinner...

Hors d'oeuvres: the usual cheese and fruit options, mini egg rolls, sauteed apple-sausage slices. Particular yum on the latter two.

Buffet: roast pork with cranberries and a merlot reduction sauce; chicken with mushrooms in an herb cream sauce; vegetable medley (over which my husband, the vegetable lover, keeps exclaiming with joy and exuberance); smashed yukon gold potatoes with garlic and some other secret substance that made them irresistable; salad and rolls; an array of desserts that included a chocolate trifle (sorry, no photo to make you drool--see, I was thinking of you!). Iced tea, coffee, water, red and white wine.

It turns out that the centerpiece idea was salvaged by reducing the size of the hurricanes used. The problem then became finding smaller candles to fit into those hurricans. We searched all over Augusta and came up empty-handed, finally resorting to stacking votive candles with some minor effort at fusing them with melted wax. The centerpieces were comprised of cute planters with the hurricanes in the center, and fresh potted flowers on either side: yellow gerberas and purple/white petunias. These were placed on a mat of John Deer fabric. Napkins were folded in a way that allowed forsythia to be inserted and all held together with ribbon. Click on the image above for a larger view that includes the table setting. There were also little color coordinated pinwheels stuck in a plant, and little boxes in the colors of the day on each table as decoration. It was sort of a garden theme, all told.

The best part, however, was afterward, when we played "almost newlywed bingo" using card sheets that I had made with pictures of the couple on every other square. A huge hit. Hershey kisses were the bingo pieces. Amazingly enough the same two people won the two games we played! Then we played the almost newlywed game, which was hilarious and lots of fun. The final piece of adventure for the night (also pictured above) was that we had a table set up on which a jigsaw puzzle of Kenneth Trisha was placed. It attracted the hard core attention of a few puzzlers, who completed their quest shortly before the party broke up. The photographer was particularly pleased by this activity, as he had met his girlfriend over a jigsaw puzzle.

The best complement of all was the repeated thanks offered by guests who claimed that they had never been to a rehearsal dinner like this one, and that they had more fun than ever. The bride and groom agreed, and that was what mattered most.

Next post, next wedding story. See you on the flipside!