Rehearsal for Rachel's Wedding

It is becoming apparent that my blog posts will not really be in the most logical order. I am back from my wonderful birthday weekend in Puerto Vallarta and will be sure to post details and pictures soon. However, I thought I would post some pictures of Rachel and Brian's rehearsal and dinner as well as a tutorial on how to make the rehearsal bridal bouquet. I had a hard time finding this so someone might actually find this part helpful.

The rehearsal took place at Heritage United Methodist Church on July 30th. This is where the ceremony and reception were both held.

Here is Rachel with her wonderful dad, David. This is the first practice run down the aisle.

These are the groomsmen and the fellow bridesmaids, minus me since I was the one taking the pictures.

Practicing with the imaginary bridesmaids bouquets =)

The bride and her maids.

L to R: Angela, Sara, Rachel, Me, Keri

Here are the bride and groom. This was after the full run through. You think they were starting to realize they were really getting married the next day?

After the rehearsal, we all headed over to The Lighthouse for dinner. The food was fabulous. I love their fried pickles. Truly the best I have ever had. The dinner options were grilled tilapia, fried shrimp, some sort of red meat, and a veggie plate for the vegetarians. Everything I had was really tasty. Unfortunately I was a bad blogger and didn't take any pictures of the food. I did take a picture of brother of the groom/best man Brent making a toast. He hates public speaking, so it was really sweet that he did this.

After dinner, some of us headed out to MoJo's, which is the new piano bar in town. It is a really nice place and the piano players were very entertaining. Rachel and and I were roommates in college with Angela, another bridesmaid, and Suzanne, who did the guest book. The four of us never seem to get a picture of just us anymore, so we were pretty excited to finally all be in the same place at the same time and to have a camera.

L to R: Rachel, Angela, Me, Suzanne

Now on to the tutorial of how to make a rehearsal bride's bouquet. I think this may be a southern thing, but believe it or not, it is a very helpful prop during the ceremony rehearsal. It gets the bride used to holding something and helps her and the MOH get the timing down of when to pass it back and forth.

Here is what you need:

Bows and ribbons from all bridal gifts (you will not use them all, but you will definitely want them all so you can have a good variety to choose from)
Paper plate
Hole punch
Hot glue gun and glue sticks for the gun

I started by weeding out all the ribbons and bows I didn't want and was left with one really big purple bow and a whole bunch of smaller white ones. I got a paper plate and cut off the rim so that the plate was completely flat. You will definitely want to use a sturdier paper plate so that there won't be any riping. I then punched holes in the paper plate. One directly in the center, then three more around the one, then five around the three. I pulled the purple bows strings through the center hole and then continued that process with all the white bows. You will now have a pretty bouquet on top, with lots of loose ribbon on the bottom. I gathered the loose ribbon together and cut to the desired length (you want to make sure it is long enough to hold). I then used some extra purple ribbon to hold all the loose ones together. You might need an extra set of hands for this part. I had my sister hold the loose ribbons tight, then I hot glued  one end of the extra purple ribbon to them and then wrapped it around the loose ribbons hot gluing at random intervals until I had covered them all. I think it turned out really cute!