The wedding weekend has arrived! Guests are flying in. My folks are pulling their hair out. And I'm a bundle of nerves. Ah, rehearsal day.
Hosting a wedding in your parents' backyard, without a wedding planner, is no easy feat! There was so much going on, my mind is still a blur. I'll do my best to remember how it all went down...
The wedding party drove to our house in the "boonies". Out on the Key Peninsula of Gig Harbor. Most of them were from California who had either never been to Washington or ventured away from Seattle. I loved seeing their reactions when they arrived. I got a lot of... "wait, you grew up here"?!
I've yet to attend a rehearsal that wasn't semi-chaos. Everyone gets all excited, talking, goofing around and not paying attention. Mine was no different! But it probably didn't help that I had an intricate exit strategy and some wacky post-ceremony ideas involving tambourines and cow bells. Special thanks to Hal's best man, Eric, an assistant director in Hollywood, for taking charge and whipping this rehearsal into shape!
Then we put our friends to work! Setting up tables and chairs, hanging lights, testing the sound system, constructing a teepee (yes, I said teepee), and other last minute preparations. Thankfully, my dad, Hal and our buddy Tim, hauled down the crazy heavy ceremony seating the day prior.
The story of the theater seats is a fun one. A few months before the wedding, I came across a Craigslist posting that blew me away: 29 antique theater seats for free! A 100-year old Masonic Lodge in Portland was renovating and needed them gone. I begged the woman to save them for me and had her sign a 2-line contract I drafted up. She held her promise and the strenuous 3-hour U-Haul trek was worth it.
29 ceremony seats were obviously not going to be enough. So I scoured Craigslist for another steal and found vintage church pews (not shown). It's amazing what you can find in the "free" section. My dad, my extremely awesome dad, picked them up for me in his truck, which he later regretted after almost breaking his ankle transporting them.
While the men did the heavy lifting, the women (and one helpful dude) did the flowers and bouquets. Earlier in the day, my mom picked up the dahlias and greenery from Bea's Flowers, the neighboring flower farm down the street. Our entire flower bill was roughly $100! Budget brides, take note: local flower farms are the way to go.
The vintage beer and medicine bottles were being used as vases, so they needed to be rinsed free of dust and filled up with water with a single dahlia placed inside for an easy set-up the next day. Not only that, but we had to make bouquets. I remember my girls, Cara and Alissa, asking me how I'd like them done. I gave them a freak-out face and pointed to some ferns, leaves, hops (shown above), and another secret ingredient to be revealed later. I came back 30 minutes later and poof, eight gorgeous professional bouquets, done and done. I was in awe.
We were racing to get everything completed before rehearsal dinner, so it was a massive group effort. When I think back on this time, I have a very distinct and happy vision of 20 of us working our tails off in an assembly line, washing bottles, arranging flowers and laughing. Sigh, I love my friends.
Meanwhile, in the garage, our little gilded dinos were drying.
SEE THE REST OF MY WEEKLY WEDDING SERIES HERE.
{Images by: 1. Lauren Santiago; 2. Heather Gilson of One Love Photo; 3. Regine Ali; 4. Donna Bachmann; 5. 6. 7. Lauren Santiago; 8. Cara Johnson; 9. Regine Ali; 10. Hal Shafton; 11. Lauren Santiago}
