The rehearsal supper comes to life

The weeks leading up to the wedding were filled with lots of parties as well as much discussion about where the rehearsal supper would be held. I could go into great detail about the rehearsal supper drama, but I'm not gonna. Just know a decision was finally made to have the supper at our church gym and from there the planning went into overdrive. And I'm not even kidding. And with the decision to have it at the gym, so began an ongoing text message amongst the four core sisters with the discussion ranging from jars and how many jars, to burlap and how much burlap, and ribbon and how much ribbon and then flowers and how many flowers and tablecloths and length of tablecloths and what kind and what color. Ay yi yi. Then ordering flowers and ordering ribbon and ordering burlap and buying candles. And OMG where's the tequila? At some point, about 5 minutes into the texting discush, my eyes rolled back in my head and I ignored the incessant dinging of my phone. Don't get me wrong, I knew it had to be batted about, but the details is where the little hamster in my brain quickly leaps off the wheel.....seriously...and takes a nap in the corner hidden under the cedar shavings. But when the discussion swerved exclusively towards fabric and measuring fabric and how much fabric and how many yards and what's the width of the fabric and OMG. SERIOUSLY the hamster needed a shot of tequila. But then little elves came along and magically measured perfectly and voila! We had plenty of all things needed. Piece of cake. Ahem.....

But going to pick out flowers for the centerpieces? Hamster's back on, wheel's spinning fast. Because walking into the wholesale flower place is like walking into a fairy land...even though the people working there can sometimes be a bit surly. I love to look at all the pretty choices and colors and kinds. So our field trip to the flower store yielded many flowers ordered. And not one time on the day we were making arrangements did I say any of the following......

"We bought too many flowers!!" 

"What are we gonna do? We don't have enough flowers!! 

"Who the crap decided we needed all these flowers!?" 

"Why didn't we buy more flowers!?" 

Moving on.....

Come see the pretty flowers....

Even though we didn't pick these, we loved them. Olivia said they look like snowflakes...and they totally do!

Stock....LOVE....bought the purple...

Green hypericum berries....ADORE.....bought SO MUCH.

Look at all those beautiful roses! Didn't buy any....

But the serious dilemma was how to make a gym not look like a gym. Because all gyms look like a gym. So our the goal (no pun intended) was to try to make all things offensive to our eyes disappear and create a banquet hall. Our first wish was for it to look like a barn, but that just wasn't gonna happen. Now all gyms have bleachers, and so do we. Big hulking bleachers. My suggestion was to shove them out the door. But then Carrie said, "Let's turn them around." And then Melanie said, "Let's light em up!" And then I thought, "OMG, surely there's some tequila in the church kitchen." (FYI.....there's not.) Anyway that's why the whole discussion about burlap and how much burlap and the width of the burlap....was necessary. Here's what we did. And I promise I really did help. 

Moving to the DIY portion of this post. 

First we strung some lights from the top to the bottom of the bleachers, and then we put the burlap in front of the lights. Loved it. Looked good. But you could still see the bleachers. THEN, on a suggestion from our favorite church lady, Mrs. June, she told us to put a white plastic table cloth in front of the lights and then lay the burlap in front. So we did. So it's lights, plastic, burlap. THEN, Judy, our other favorite decorator person came in and told us she liked it better when the lights were right next to the fabric. I.E plastic, lights, burlap. Sadly, Judy was right. Surely someone's got a stash of tequila somewhere! The problem was, we'd already strung most of the lights, because we thought we were gonna put the plastic up after the lights! It was not good. SO then we had to go back and add plastic behind the lights that were already hung and OMG...they've hidden the tequila from me! I know it! 
  

This was our prototype to make sure it would work. LOVED IT. So we knew we had to do it all. 

This is with lights only and before we knew white plastic had to go behind. Ugh. See how much we'd done before we knew the correct order!? Mrs. June always says, "You'll know how to do it when it's finished." So freaking true.

This is when we stopped putting on lights and started threading the plastic behind the lights. At this point I was thinking, "If I can't have a shot of tequila, can someone at least loan me a freaking sombrero?!"

Yep, the lights looked better in the middle. 

And with the snap of a finger and the wave of a hand and hours and days later, it was done.

Success! Gorgeous! I was always on board with this idea!

In the meantime as we were working, the groom dangled precariously from this scaffolding while changing light bulbs. It was quite nerve racking to witness. 

Seriously......dangling....

It was a busy week for Dale as well because he did most of the hard labor of preparing the room for the dinner. 

One day, during our outside work, we had a visitor.  

He was quite helpful. 

However union issues held him in check. 

By Wednesday, tables were in place and tablecloths were fussed over and ironing boards were brought in to try to iron out wrinkles, which barely helped. Denise and Andrew folded all the napkins perfectly...you'll see them later. Then we collapsed, only to meet later that night to discuss hats and wearing hats and whether or not to wear hats and why do we have to wear hats. Because there was gonna be a hat shower on Friday, and I could only hope they were gonna serve tequila. 

Now it's been well documented and discussed that my huge head was not meant for hats or the wearing thereof. Carlie's particularly cruel to me about it. It's a little sad because there are some hats I've seen that I'd love to consider maybe thinking about possibly wearing. But it ought not be. Because they all look so bad on me. ALSO, our grandmother Bessie....God love her....had terrible taste in hats. And this is important because when Becky came to town, she brought all the "Bessie hats" she had inherited and when we got together on that fateful night to look at them, there was a trying on session. 

See for yourself. 

Bell hop

Idiot.

Squinty eyed pill box wearing idiot.

Closed eyed pill box wearing idiot. Maggie's werqing the bellman.

Wedding cake head. Just flew in from Mother Russia.

Sideways look wedding cake head idiot. 

Priest beenie.

Breaking Amish. 

After reaffirming to myself that hats were not an option, I went hatless. 

On Thursday, it was time to begin making table arrangements with all the lovely and gorgeous flowers we had. No tequila was necessary because this was gonna be fun! And it was....for some number of hours. 

This was at the beginning. Beautiful.

Then we took a break to go to a party and later reconvened back at the church where I found a little green lizard inside when I got there! He was just as shocked as I was as I shrieked at his discovery, and we both began looking for the tequila. Then Becky, Melanie and Carrie arrived and Melanie found a bucket to trap him under as I quickly called John and demanded he drop everything and come get the creature. And he did. The minute John arrived and picked him up, the lizard bit him! Which is what I knew was gonna happen and therefore used as an excuse to not to pick him up and feel his weird lizard body. I'm happy to report the lizard was safely relocated and then we continued on with the flower arranging. 

When all was said and done at 11:00 that night, we'd done more than 125 ish arrangements from tiny to large and all in between. 

See for yourself. 

We were quite pleased with our work and glad to have most of Friday free since the hat luncheon was convening at 12:30 and then the afternoon was filled with beauty parlor appts. and then it was back to the church to light the 3 million candles we had. 

Colby at the hat luncheon wearing a cute hat that looks cute with her cute niece/cousin Ava Drew. The cuteness of the wearing of the hat kind of annoys me. 

Love Whitney's hat....annoying. Mollie's? Here's what I'm gonna say. After the event Mollie, Aaron and I had a conversation about her hat. Mollie said, "He was rude about my hat." Aaron said, "I was not rude about your hat. I just told you you looked ridiculous. And given two paper plates and some tin foil, I could make one to look as good as the one you were wearing." The end. 

Putting on the finishing touches after the hat luncheon. Look at those lovely folded napkins.

Looks even better with low lighting.

Success!

We were very pleased with our finished product. 

And our greatest compliment was someone saying she didn't know she was in a gym until she looked down at the floor! Exactly what we were hoping to achieve. 

The B and G table.

A picture hanging in the hall. My fav pic of the engagement photos. 

Candles, flowers, and pictures lined the hall.

I have no pictures of the meal, but it was delish. 

After the dinner my fam took a pic to document clothing and happiness. 

The bride and groom with Grandma. Gmaw looks fab in that blue!

The blurry decorators after it was all finished and there was nothing left to do but shots of tequila! 

And even though I never had one shot of tequila, we all made it through the arduous process of seeing a huge project from the inception of the idea, to the end. And I was pleasant as a daisy through the whole thing. Muahahahaha. People who never leave comments on my blog will have any comments refuting the daisy remark summarily dismissed by the author! 

Dismissed I say! 

And there you have it. The rehearsal dinner was a huge success and is by far our biggest project ever tackled. And we were happy with all our decisions. Except for having it in an actual barn. So need a barn

This took multi days and many words.

Up next....

The wedding day.

Check it out sometime soon.

Ta ta turkeys.