Wedding Wednesday: Rehearsal Dinner

First a little background on our rehearsal dinner.  During the planning process Nick and I talked a lot about what we wanted in a rehearsal dinner.  Some of the things on the list included an intimate dinner with our families and friends in a setting that was conducive for conversation, a way to say thank you to all of our family and friends for everything they have done both for the wedding and well our whole lives, and we really wanted dinner to be a representation of us.

So how did we accomplish all of that.  During wedding planning we had talked about ways to incorporate our love of baseball into the wedding, but just couldn't come up with a classy, traditional way to do that as part of the reception so Nick suggested making our rehearsal dinner baseball themed.  Nothing over the top, just some cute baseball touches here and there and I think Nick's parents did a great job capturing that.  We also wanted the food to be something we both loved and ideally a St. Louis-y food that we could share with our non St. Louis-y guests (yes I just made up the word St. Louis-y).  Enter Dewey's pizza.  This is on the top of our favorite St. Louis restaurant list and definitely my favorite pizza in St. Louis.  We also thought it would be easy and who doesn't like pizza.

The location of the event kind of also just fell into our laps.  When we were looking for a place to have the reception Nick had called the Kirkwood Train Station, knowing they held events but nothing more and discovered the space was really only big enough for about 50 people.  Not going to work for our reception but then we thought what a cool place for the rehearsal dinner.  It definitely lent itself to a nice intimate dinner and had some great character as well. As a bonus it was also very convenient from the church and the hotel- pretty much a no brainier.

The night turned out to be a great chance to relax and chat with all our family and friends.  Here are a couple pictures from dinner:

Thanking everyone for being there

Lilia and Emily with her new jewelry/music box

Gabie, Katie and Sara

Jenna showing off her new tie for Saturday

My grandparents and a good shot of the cute centerpieces Nick's parents made

Unfortunately we didn't get a ton of pictures from dinner, but it was a good time with good people and good food and life doesn't get much better than that.  

During dinner some of the guests also excused themselves to vandalize my car (some of which I still haven't managed to get off).  Here is a little sampling of their lovely work:

Obviously it was my family not Nick's based on their choice of team (this also got cleaned off quickly- didn't think it was a great idea to drive around St. Louis with this on my car- especially on my wedding day)

Turns out we also got off pretty easy.  One of my brother-in-laws friends who was supposed to attend the wedding and then couldn't was in on the original plot which included rewiring my brakes to the horn so that every time I used the breaks the horn would sound.  I will take window chalk any day over that!  

After dinner we went back to the hotel and opened a few early presents from family so they could be there when we opened them and then it was off to bed.  

 

I stayed at our house with my sister and her family and Nick stayed at the hotel with one of the groomsmen.  When I got home and climbed into bed I found a wonderful gift and letter from Nick.  He had gotten me a pearl necklace and earrings set and wrote me an absolutely beautiful letter.  We had never really talked about exchanging gifts but we both ended up getting something for each other (he got his on Saturday).  I was very touched by the gift and both the pearls and the letter are something I will always cherish.  I was initially disappointed that I already had jewelry picked out for the wedding, but I did quickly think of a way to incorporate the pearl necklace into the wedding but more on that later.  It was time to go to bed for the last time as a single girl!