Flip It and Rehearse It
Remember that Missy Elliot song? Love it.
Hey do you also remember that we’re celebrating our wedding week with a slew of themed posts all about our nuptials – two years later? This morning’s post is all about our rehearsal dinner. Which took place at Chad’s Aunt and Uncle’s home in the hill country outside of Austin, Texas.
Our rehearsal dinner enjoyed perfect weather, which is a heck of a lot better than we can say for our wedding day. We know rain is good luck but what about hail and tornado sirens? For an outdoor ceremony?
We had a lot of friends and family coming in from out-of-town – including all of my peeps from Alabama. Yes, I say peeps. Because of the distance we were sure to invite all of said peeps to the rehearsal dinner for some real Texas BBQ and even a Texas country band.
Feeding about a hundred folks in the back yard wasn’t an easy task and one that we never could have pulled off with great friends and family to help us - because it was pulled off on a budget fo’ sho’. Okay, I get it, enough with the Missy Elliot right?
Here’s the run down.
Chad’s parents graciously paid about five hundo to rent a tent, tables, chairs and linens. This was an amazing price for a rentals budget, which we scored from Musical Chairs in Austin.
Chad’s cousins were saints on the big day and set everything up for us, including hanging the family’s icicle lights from the inside of the tent via extension cord from the house. Nice ambiance right? And F-R-E-E.
To feed everyone we hit up the hook-up we had with a good friend who manages a Rudy’s BBQ in Austin. I can’t remember the total cost but it was mere dollars per person to feed our hungry mob. Plus Chad’s family pulled out a random snow cone machine halfway through the night. Who knew?
Oh, and my slick hubby-to-be somehow got all our beer for free from a hook-up at Real Ale. More pennies saved.
This is one of my favorite photos of the night. Chad saw that I had not eaten a bite because I was too busy running my yap all night (my words not his), so he brought me a little BBQ sandwich/taco… right when the toasting started. I don’t even remember if I ate the thing, but this picture just reminds me of his thoughtfulness, even on a crazy night. And then our attempt to hide it.
After toasts came the band. The story of our awesome band is one of our favorites to tell about planning our rehearsal dinner. We scored a six person band, a really good band at that, for $300. If you don’t know much about bands that’s pretty insane, let us just say.
How did it all go down? Well, we hired a wedding planner just for the big day (more on Wendy to come, she was wonderful though) and through a string of emails one day, we asked her if she knew any great low-key bands that might play our rehearsal dinner. Her neighbor was looking to get into the event business, after hanging around the Austin bar scene for a while so she suggested we give him a call. Boy are we glad we did. Billy told us that we were his first referral from a real event planner and they were so excited to gain referrals that he’d play it for $300. The whole band.
A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.
Harmonica.
Look ‘em up.
The remainder of the night was filled with lots of DIY and personal touches. We cut out our own Mexican inspired wedding banners as a tribute to our honeymoon location (we didn’t really just come to Durham) after discovering they were not so cheap ordering custom versions online. Stay tuned, there is a how-to for that project coming this week too!
Our decorations consisted of boots we purchased from Goodwill filled with grocery store bouquets and small framed signs naming each table after a Texas dance hall. We printed the signs ourselves and used frames that a friend gave us after his wedding the previous year.
We used a guitar that we had lying around the house as our guest book, asking guests to sign it with either a black or gold Sharpee marker.
For favors we ordered koozies from Custom Ink for about $1.00 a piece with free shipping. We designed the logo ourselves, completely from scratch in Microsoft Word. Not too shabby eh?
No. You’re not seeing things. There was something camouflage involved in our wedding.
I’m from Alabama people! It’s what we do!
In all seriousness when we decided koozies were in order for the rehearsal, Chad requested camo. It was one of the only things he asked for during the entire planning process so I chose not to stand in his way. We still have a million of them leftover, two years later. For real. If you want one email us, we’ll mail you one just to get them out of the house.
For attire we both wore clothes we already had, I actually wore my mother’s wedding dress from the 70′s. This was one of our favorite details about the entire weekend.
And last but not least, how did everyone know about the party? Our DIY invitation.
We search online quite a bit and were looking for an old country music poster type feel – very Hatch Show Print. These were pricey for a couple who is always on a budget, so we got our creative juices flowing and made a little Word Document template of an invitation, printed them on brown paper cardstock and mailed them in clear vellum envelopes. Easy peasy.
If you notice a few blanks in the photo above it’s because we photo-shopped out Chad’s parents’ phone number and e-mail address as well as Chad’s Aunt and Uncle’s address. We trust you guys of course but aren’t sure the fam wants their personal info plastered online – even to upstanding readers like ours.
So that’s it in a nutshell. In a 1060 word nutshell. More than you ever wanted to know about our rehearsal dinner.
Psst! If you want to jack our invitation, the file can be found right here.
Photos 2-7 and 14 (basically the good ones): Sarah Snider Photography
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As for me & my family, we had a blast! We enjoyed our trip from Alabama, then to Florida (to pick up a bridesmaid & her cute little one) & then made it to Texas. We had a great weekend & enjoyed everything! Thanks again & Happy 2nd Anniversary, love you guys!