Married Melodies: We Rehearse

The morning of our rehearsal I woke up to the sound of a bride's worst fear: rain. The week of our wedding, it rained nearly every day. Heavy rain. The forecast showed a slight chance of rain on the days of our rehearsal and wedding, so I went to bed Thursday night confident that the weather would cut us a break. But literally the second I woke up, I was filled with dread. I just knew our wedding would get rained out.

The weather was so intense that we were forced to hold the rehearsal indoors because the grounds were flooded. The rain didn't look like it was letting up any time soon. As you can imagine I was freaking out.

Ha, look at our faces!

Sadly, that was the only salvage photo from the rehearsal. At one point we decided to line up outside when the rain was a bit lighter, but we ended up rained out almost as soon as we started. Eventually, we got all of the logistics down and headed back to get ready for the best part of the day: dinner!

MOH J5 is just waiting to dive into that pizza.

By the time the rehearsal dinner rolled around, the rain had stopped. And (spoiler alert) it didn't start again. Bridal freak out averted! We celebrated by stuffing our faces with delicious pizza and pasta from Buca di Beppo. We feasted, we drank..

Annnnd Mr. Warbs and I were drunkenly out of sync.

Seriously?

Happily thanking our family and friends.

After the dinner, one of our guests surprised us by taking care of the bill. Our waitress brought us a note from the generous person that simply said "congratulations". We definitely were not expecting that. We still don't know to this day who paid and I am still moved by their generosity. Little did we know we were in for more surprises!

When Mr. Warbs and I got back to our hotel room, everyone from the rehearsal dinner was waiting for us. BM Tata had a gift for us...a slideshow!

Let me tell you, that girl is resourceful! I had never even seen some of those photos she threw in there (stalker). Again, it was kind of overwhelming seeing all the love everyone was throwing our way. Weddings are great that way, in that you feel the love from all sides, not just from your partner. You just feel happy. Like Santa Claus. On Prozac. At Disneyland. Getting laid. Ten points for the reference!

After the slideshow we toasted with more wine and champagne. Mr. Warbs and his family turned in for the night (aka went in search of hard liquor) so I decided to give the bridal party their gifts.

The ladies received bracelets.

BM Tata's mama made them. She's so crafty.

 MOH J5's gift was a little less conventional...

Back in February, I shared the details of MOH J5's awesome RSVP in which he confirmed his attendance in the grandest of fashions. He also included his list of demands and a reader commented that it would make a great gift. One demand was for four hundred and twenty six Reese's peanut butter cups. Be careful what you wish for, MOH J5!

Not pictured: cheesecake scented Post-it notes, a pint of water from the dead sea and an invisibility cloak. Oh, excuse me the cloak is pictured, my mistake.

After a few more hours of laughter, reminiscing, drinks and vow writing (totally waited until the last minute), it was time for me to get some much needed beauty sleep. Big things were ahead!

Catch Up!

• Check out our super fly wedding video.

Rehearse Eating Dinner? Yes!

One of the things I'm looking forward to most with this wedding, besides actually getting married, is all of the eating activities. There are all types of excuses to scarf down food. Besides the dinner at your reception, you can fill up on good food pretty much from throughout the entire wedding planning process. Engagement dinners, multiple bridal showers, bridal luncheons and of course, the rehearsal dinner. Ah, the rehearsal dinner. I don't know why most people only have one, I think I'll need a few rehearsals to perfect my yummy face.

Early on, we considered having it at a great Mexican restaurant a few blocks from Mr. Warbs' parents house. Since they're regulars, the owners gave them a really good deal that included pitchers of margaritas, beer and platters upon platters of food. My kind of party! But, it wouldn't have worked out logistically. The Mexican restaurant is in Whittier which is nearly 60 miles away from Malibu. So our options were to have the rehearsal dinner Thursday, have the actual rehearsal on Friday and the wedding on Saturday. There was way too much back and forth involved in that plan. We could also have had the dinner a couple of weeks before the wedding, but that just seemed odd to me. It just made more sense to have the dinner in the Malibu area. No enchiladas for us.

We checked out a few over priced restaurants before we settled on Buca di Beppo. Family style Italian food. For those not familiar with Buca, their food portions look like this:

Yum. Get in my mouth!

Image via ashleysbrideguide.com

Those are huge plates! Although you can get individual plates, most of the food is made for sharing. I'm a big fan of family style dining, because its bound to get everyone talking which is sometimes a problem at these events. "Hey, hand me that plate of chicken parm over there!" "Aunt Sally, stop hogging all of the lasagna!" Or something a little more friendly.

We figured that with the huge portion and our small bridal party, we could really get the most for our money. And our stomachs. Remember, we're big eaters. We've dined at the restaurant enough times to try a fair amount of the delicious menu. In my opinion, it's one of the better chain Italian restaurants. I love the stuffed shells and baked rigatoni. And pretty much everything on the menu.Yum.

After perusing their website, we found that they regularly accommodate large parties of 20 or more. They host all kinds of wedding events, even bachelorette parties.It was pretty easy to make the reservation with their catering manager, who advised us to select the menu before hand to cut down on costs. She also gave me an idea of how many servings a dish yielded so we could determine how much food we needed. For example, a large order of garlic bread serves 16 people. Super helpful! The best part is that the restaurant is only ten minutes away from the hotel, so we don't have to worry about too much driving. We're pretty confident that it's going to be a hit!

What kind of rehearsal dinner are you having? Formal or casual?