The Oyster Wedding Rehearsal Dinner

Almost from the moment we were engaged, we knew we wanted to have our rehearsal dinner at Cafe Veracrúz. It's one of the first places we had dinner when we were dating, and it's some of the best Southern Mexican food around. We love it, and we wanted to take an opportunity to share something of ourselves with our families and friends.



The restaurant has an "intimate" atmosphere (read: small), so it was perfect for our little group. Once we got there and settled down, I spent several minutes sitting with my mom and grandmother.





Here I'm listening as my mom tells us the story of the day I was born. She said she remembered being with her mom when she went into labor, and now here the three of us are again, and I'm getting married. The things moms remember!



I have two maids of honor, and we worked it out that one would give a toast at the rehearsal, and the other gave a toast at the wedding. My MOH here is telling some funny stories about the way we met. Her sexy little dress and sweater are the ones I helped her pick out for her rehearsal dinner a few years ago.





And here is one more DIY project.

Since we were hosting this thing ourselves, we needed a way to keep costs down without telling anyone we were doing that, and also avoiding the awkward "Who will pay?" at the end of the night. I decided to make my own simplified menus, putting a few of the restaurant's best dishes on there, a kids' selection, and dessert selections. There were no prices on them. The restaurant was fine with this, and it simplified things while giving us a way to at least have a budget; a necessity when you are feeding 19 people.

This was an easy project; I just got some blank "computer ready" birthday cards and some pink cardstock (for you Dallas-area ladies, I bought the birthday cards on sale at Paper & Chocolate and the cardstock at Paper Source), and printed them onto the cards with my printer. I changed the font color to a dark green, to match the background in the design there. I attached the cards to the cardstock with a glue stick.

Everyone really liked these... my mother-in-law kept hers as a keepsake. So cute!



We gave out some toasts, and gifts...




and hugs...


and plenty of laughs.








But when we saw this,



... we knew it was time to go. It was almost "go" time -- and I still had a crisis to solve. But in the meantime, we'd had a wonderful evening, and I was feeling much better about everything.




*Photos by the Chicago based photographers David Wittig and Nancy Beale.

Previously:
A dark and stormy night
Our Wedding Rehearsal