The Nolte Fam: Our Wedding: Rehearsal & Rehearsal Dinner

On Friday, June 7th, both of our families were in full-force hectic mode, or so it seemed!
I remember
Mom and I up in the bonus room {aka...upstairs den} looking around at ALL of the wedding stuff, and making sure everything was packed in boxes. Since we weren't going to be the ones setting everything up, I made sure to include notes in all of the boxes, directions, diagrams, labels, etc., etc. To say I was a bit OCD/anal/very organized, might be an understatement! We carried all of the boxes down and then loaded up Mom's and Matt's vehicles to deliver everything to the Science Museum.

Before going to the Science Museum, Matt and I went to our house to make sure we had everything for our wedding party gifts. We had kept everything laid out in an upstairs room in our house, because we knew we could keep everything unwrapped and organized, and could just look around and tell if anything was missing! So, once we finished there, we headed up to the Science Museum. Our parents had already all met up there to unload their load of boxes and had gone to get ready
for the rehearsal. Matt and I unloaded everything then headed off to The Berkeley Hotel. My parents were already there, as well, to get changed. We unloaded a few things for the rehearsal dinner, then got ready ourselves! As we headed back to the Science Museum, my mom called to warn us to take an alternate route......I never would've thought there would STILL be graduation traffic at 5:00 in the afternoon! We had luckily asked all of our wedding party to arrive before the time the rehearsal would actually start, for reasons such as this! Good thing we took that into consideration and had an extra 15-30 minutes for people to get there :)

I'll never forget walking into the Science Museum Rotunda when we got there--it was so great seeing so many family and friends there, all ready to get started! Everyone stood around talking, greeting each other, while we waited for others to arrive.

When it came time to start the rehearsal, I just knew some people were going to get upset with me when they found out we were still doing the rehearsal outside....in the rain... But that was a decision Matt and I both made, along with our Science Museum coordinator, Andrew. It wasn't raining too much or too hard, and there were plenty of places for people to stand where they wouldn't get wet.

We all took the elevators down to get outside, and then, we were in for a surprise. The grass was holding SO much water {this was the end of the week of Hurricane Andrea}, so chairs and peoples' shoes would just sink straight down into the ground. Here is where my panic mode started to come in for a few minutes. It caught me SO off-guard that we were going to have to change most of the set-up of our ceremony! Our coordinator, decorator, {I'll introduce them later!}, Matt and I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what we were going to do. Long story short, Andrew gave us an idea, Dad set up some chairs to measure out how things would be, and we had our new set-up! And, much to my surprise, when all was said and done, I ended up loving it even more than our original plan! What are the odds?

With everyone holding umbrellas, trying to stay dry, and our DJ walking around with his laptop so we could hear our songs, we ran through the ceremony several times and all seemed good! So, off to dinner we went!

All of the pictures shown in this post were taken by Matt's mom! She did such a great job documenting the evening for us, and I've looked at these pictures just as much as I have our wedding pictures! The whole weekend was so wonderful and I love having the pictures to look back on!

Here are some from the rehearsal!

Getting all the grandparents lined up.

My Aunt Kandi & Uncle Xel stood in for Memaw & Papa :)

Discussing details with our coordinator and decorator.

This was really funny--we told the flower girls to follow the bridesmaids when walking.

I think someone said something about them catching up to Abby, who was the last bridesmaid walking, and they started running!!

Here's my "oh-my-gosh-I'm-so-cold-and-I-really-need-chapstick-but-I'm-still-excited-to-get-married" face:

My sister did such a great job using the ribbons and bows from my bridal shower to make my rehearsal bouquet!

Matt's parents worked with The Berkeley Hotel to plan out a great dinner event! We had all of the courses of food, several of the guys spent some time out at the bar, haha, there were some toasts, and we recognized our bridal party and presented them with special gifts! It was such a great evening. And I think I leaned over to Matt quite a few times during dinner, and said phrases such as, "I can't believe our wedding is tomorrow," or "We're getting married...Tomorrow." or finally, "HOW is the wedding already here?!" haha

Finally, here are some pictures from dinner!

The theme of the dinner was coffee and sugar!

The centerpieces Matt's mom put together had coffee beans and votive candles, and little sugar hearts that she made!

And how awesome are these favor coffee mugs with our wedding logo on them?! Love them!!

They even had mine and Matt's made to say "Bride" and "Groom" on them under the logo!