Wedding Rehearsal Dinner

I wasn't sure what we were going to do for the rehearsal dinner. But somehow, we decided on holding it at Buca di Beppo. For those of you not familiar with the campy Italian-food chain, it has every kitchy Italian thing x 100 on the walls and ceilings inside the restaurant.

Food is served family-style, is affordable, and importantly, is delicious. Plus, there was something fun about it foreshadowing our upcoming honeymoon destination of Italy.

We expected about 20 people total for our dinner and made our reservation a few months in advance. This was a smart move, because it turned out Buca is a popular destination for wedding rehearsal dinners. (I believe there was actually one or two more rehearsal dinners that same night, in addition to ours!)  We also chose to order our menu in advance which helped greatly in knowing what our costs would be for the night. The only wild card would be the drinks in the bar before we sat down at our table for dinner. Our friends and family like to drink, whether it is a celebration or not!

Lesson Learned: In the bar, while waiting for our table to be ready, the bar staff had told us to have our guests let the bartenders know that they were there for the Miller-Camarillo party when putting their drink request in, since we wanted it all to go on our master tab. However, we found out later, after the fact, that folks in the bar whom were not with our party, had put their drinks on our tab as well. Why? They overheard the instructions to our party guests and pretended to be a part of the party.

In hindsight, if knowing we'd be in a public area for a period of time, I'd give out drink tickets to our guests to turn in to the bar when placing their drink order. Start everyone out with one ticket and if they needed more, let them get more from us. This way, the bar can keep accurate record of what was ordered and Joe Stranger doesn't get to get drunk on our tab.

Our guests were a mix of omnivores and vegetarians, so we made sure to have something for everyone. Two salads (one vegetarian, one not), a couple types of pizza, two pasta dishes. Pre-ordering simplified the process for the night and let us know where we'd be on the bill at the end of the evening instead of letting folks order off the menu. Plus, in pre-ordering, the food could come out to the table around the same time and made it more efficient for the restaurant and our night to flow smoothly. And, there were enough leftovers that we were able to take them home and throw them in the freezer for a couple future meals once we returned from our honeymoon.

Creative Wedding Rehearsal Option

We were fortunate that we were having a small wedding, with one attendant each and no small children involved in our ceremony.

Stay with me, here, and I'll explain in more detail.

To get married at the Four Seasons, they charged $500 for the wedding rehearsal to be held at the venue. If we had small children involved, rehearsing at the actual location would have been money well spent. But since we didn't, we were free to find a location that we could have a practice run-through, and for those involved in our wedding to know what to expect and all of this for hopefully, next to nothing in cost.

Which we found right under our noses.

My husband worked in a large business park that had several open green spaces throughout the blocks. And right across the street from the building his companies office was in, there was the Wells Fargo Bank tower, with a more park-like area in between the street and the parking lot. This area included trees, lawns and a wide cement path and courtyard that was professionally landscaped and maintained. And, if we played our cards right, free and nearly around the corner from our rehearsal dinner venue.

Invitations were sent to those family and guests who were involved in the actual wedding ceremony, with a map to the spot within the business park and details about the rehearsal dinner, afterwards. After getting dressed for the rehearsal that evening, we picked up some balloons at the grocery store to attach to the street sign at the corner where people needed to turn, to alert them that they were in the right spot.

The rehearsal was scheduled to start at 6 pm, which in the desert in late October, still gave us enough light for one, maybe two run-throughs before we needed to be moving on to the next part of our evenings pre-wedding festivities.

Parking wasn't an issue for anyone with the parking lot directly next to our designated rehearsal spot. It was a Friday night and most people who worked in the tower across from us were either already gone for the day or just leaving by the time we and our wedding party participants got there.

We had two run throughs of the sequence of events for the wedding and answered any questions folks had before we departed in our cars off to Buca di Beppo for our 6:45 pm dinner reservation.

I have to say, I was pretty happy with how this turned out and thought it was creative and clever while it cost us nothing, other than a couple balloons from the grocery store!