Rehearsal Dinner Recap

Before you say anything, yes, I am aware that I am about to do a recap of our rehearsal dinner almost a full year after it happened. I realized a while ago, after some rummaging through old blog posts, that I never actually did a recap of our rehearsal dinner or our wedding day. So I wanted to go ahead and do one. I love writing things down on here so that I won't forget them. I've already forgotten some of the minor details of the rehearsal and dinner and want to document what I do remember before losing that too :)

Our rehearsal was at our church, St. Mark United Methodist, on July 24th. I can't remember everything I did that day, but I remember it being a very busy day and being stressed. My sister, Jennifer, had just gotten in town from Tampa the day before and I know her and my mom and I all went to get our nails and toes done together, which was a lot of fun. I got ready at my mom's house with my sister. Not gonna lie, my sister looked freaking HOT that night. She had gotten a new dress and her accessories were fab as always. I remember making the statement to Jen "man it sucks when my matron of honor looks better than me". We both laughed.

My mom did my hair. I got my dress from David's Bridal. The more I look at the pictures of the rehearsal, the more I actually start to dislike my dress. It was pretty, don't get me wrong, but it wrinkled INCREDIBLY easy. My shoes....well, I actually wore my wedding shoes to the rehearsal dinner. They matched perfectly and I didn't want to waste money on another pair of shoes!

I remember that Justin and I were constantly laughing through the entire rehearsal. Partly because I was an idiot at the rehearsal. I kept misunderstanding Don (the minister) and talked at the wrong time or said the wrong thing at the wrong time and everyone was just laughing hysterically the entire time. Finally I just told Don to ask Justin all the questions (the vows) first because I was going to be WAY more nervous in front of all those people. He agreed, for the time being that is. I only say that because on actual wedding day, Justin and Rob told him to surprise me and ask me the questions first. When he did, the look on my face was unforgettable and caused a wave of laughter throughout the wedding party mid-ceremony. You can see this moment in the wedding video, not my face when Don asked me questions first, but particularly my sister's face and Gordon and Rob's faces. It's quite hilarious. One day I want to try to figure out how to put our wedding video on youtube or something and put bits and pieces of it on the blog. Not sure how to do it, but I'll figure it out one day.

Here's some pics of the rehearsal:



Marcie getting made fun of again for not knowing something...



The whole wedding party. Check out that ring bearer in the background being bored and running around behind the wedding party. That was a foreshadow of wedding day ;) I'll save that for another post though.



The rehearsing of walking down the aisle together after the ceremony. A little more dancing than walking for me though...



The Maids. From left to right, Lillian Turman, Tiffany Lobdell, Lauren Kelly, Lindsey Limbaugh, Carina Sanchez, Jennifer Gault, Jennifer Cowley, and Lindsey Smith.



The Groomsman. From left to right, Gordon Morris, Rob Pettigrew, Aeron Gault, Wade Trimm, Justin Yarbrough, Devin Taylor, Trevor Lobdell, and Chase Williamson.

After leaving the church, we all headed to "The Club" in downtown Birmingham for dinner. We got the room that had the door where we could all go outside and take pictures in front of the amazing view. Here's some of those pics:



The spectacular view!



Me and Lauren Kelly



Justin and I



Carina and I



Me and Lindsey...yes, her and Lauren are twins.



The gang



My beautiful sisters



Me and my mom



This is one of my favorite pictures of the sisters and their spouses.

These are the gifts for our bridesmaids and groomsmen. The bridesmaids got brown robes with their initials in lime green (brown and green were our wedding colors).





The groomsmen all got steak branders for the SEC team that they rooted for. Rob actually got two branders. He got an Auburn one, the main team he roots for, but he also got one for Duke. Why, you ask? Well, when Auburn sucked it up last football season (ehem....Roll Tide!) Rob swore he would start rooting for some random team instead of Auburn, and he picked Duke. So Justin got him and Auburn brander and a Duke one. To Justin's surprise, his mother actually order me and Alabama one, too.





Oh and real quick...see that awesome scar on my right arm?? Yeah, Justin doesn't ask me to iron his work clothes anymore. My poor photographer had to edit this out of most of the images. I've gotten better at being domestic since then...except for the ironing part.

Below is the picture of the "memory wreath" that was made for Justin and I. This was so cute and it was set up at my bridal tea as well as at the rehearsal dinner.





Me and my mother-in-law giving Justin some lovin :)

The sunset that night was breathtaking. We definitely took time to get a few pics:





We had steak for dinner, and it was FABULOUS! I made our wedding slideshow myself and Justin and his mom and I all went to this room earlier during the day to make sure the projector worked and all was functioning for the DVD. It worked perfectly that afternoon, however, it was not functioning during the dinner. After having employees mess with it for about 30 minutes, they finally moved us to another room to watch it, which was incredibly inconvenient, but I guess it was better than nothing at all. I was so frustrated!

Several of our close friends and family gave toasts. The two most memorable came from my sister, Jennifer, who wrote a poem that you can see here. Also when you click on that link to see the poem Jen wrote, you can also see the wedding slideshow as it's in the same post. The other memorable toast was from my brother-in-law, Jeff Smith. He said the kindest words and two other people told me they teared up at his toast. I wish I'd had it on video or something.

After the dinner was over, a couple of us went out for a quick round of drinks at Barking Kudu, but I went home shortly after. I was actually exhausted and unlike what I hear from most brides the night before their wedding, I slept like a baby :)

I've already done a wedding post in pictures, but again didn't actually write anything down in words for me to remember. I'll have to do a post like this one for the wedding day at some point. It's hard to believe that we've been married almost a full year!