meta content='Bridelines: A Wedding Blog'name='description'/ meta content='brides bridesmaids wedding friends'name='keywords'/

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Rehearsal Dinners - The Kickoff Event


It’s the day before your wedding and despite feeling anxious and nauseous, you prepare yourself for the biggest pre-game event of your life thus far…..the Rehearsal Dinner. Rehearsal Dinners are more like the kickoff to the wedding weekend than an actual chance to rehearse for the wedding. I mean, once you’ve seen one wedding you’ve seen them all….walk down the aisle, try not to trip and stand for an hour while vows are engaged and tears are shed. It’s not that complicated.

If rehearsal dinners are intended for people to rehearse getting drunk for the actual event, then I think we have succeeded. We have seen more drunk people at events leading up to the wedding than at the actual wedding.

Traditionally, the pre wedding dinner is a chance for the groom’s parents to throw a party for the betrothed and their closest friends and families. But often times the event becomes too large and overdone, making the wedding almost anticlimactic. If you are having a big wedding you do not need a pre party the size of Madonna’s pre-Oscar party. Of course you need to do something, especially for out of town guests and your bridal party, but it does not need to include the entire guest list. Do you really want your friends already exhausted by the time you say ‘I do’?

The most successful rehearsal dinners are the ones which are small, understated and end early. As the bride you want to make sure that you are in bed early the night before (even if you stay up watching reruns of John and Kate Plus 8 because you can’t sleep). Do not for one second consider ‘going out after’ the party. We don’t need to tell you why that’s a bad idea.

Enjoy your Rehearsal Dinner; listen to your friends give speeches about you, have a glass of wine, eat the food (because you won’t at the wedding) and then say goodnight….and go home! Enough said!!!


No comments: