Wedding Wednesday: Rehearsal/Dinner

I'm slowly but surely getting all of the pictures and videos from our wedding and rehearsal and the dinner together. Luckily, a trip to PA lent itself to a lot of pictures and videos from the rehearsal so that's what I'm gonna share with you all today!

After getting our nails done and having lunch with my girls, we headed back to the hotel to check in and then get ready for the rehearsal and the dinner.

Having the rehearsal at the church REALLY made it all feel real to me (although, to be honest, there's an element of it all being surreal, even when you're walking down the aisle).

My dad looked extra sharp in his new suit:

We ran through the ceremony, and our niece Amanda practiced singing her song. And then I proceeded to bawl my eyes out. She just stood up there, singing her little heart out, and laughing at me while I cried haha.

My love :)

My ladies :)

The guys, with one stand-in girlfriend as a groomsman 

They had a bit of an interesting time figuring out how to lock arms  

The flower girls definitely had a good time :)

After the rehearsal, we all loaded up into our cars to head to dinner at Clyde's. Silly me was getting into the car, and trying not to show my lady parts...add in a car that's parked on a slant...and you get a crushed hand in the door. Luckily it wasn't my left hand, and someone had a drink in the car with ice that I shoved my hand into. The swelling went down and the bruise wasn't too noticeable. Phew! (Something always HAS to go wrong, doesn't it?)

The room we had reserved at Clyde's was perfect! We had time to mingle and talk with our wedding party, family and friends and the appetizers were super yummy! 

We sat down to eat dinner, and soon after that, the speeches started.

MG got up and thanked our family and friends for coming, and then thanked me for all of the planning and work I'd done to make it all happen (his words, not mine). And then said how we had talked and thought it was crazy that this is the one time in our lives that all of our friends and family will be in one place. It'll probably never happen again. And there's something really special about that.

Then MG's sisters got up to start their speech. They had arranged for each member of our families to share a word of wisdom from Winnie the Pooh. Cue: me crying again.

MG and I handed out our bridal party gifts, which everyone seemed to love, and we all eventually made our way back to the hotel. It was supposed to be a kinda low-key night at the hotel bar with the friends and family who were already in town, but turned into a party in MG's hotel room lol.

yes, I made this face a lot before the wedding....no shame in my game :)

My girlfriends and I stayed for a little while and then made our way back up to my hotel room so that we could get some rest before the big day!

("some rest" ended up being me sleeping until 5am and then being WIDE awake)

I think my next post is gonna fast forward to the ceremony because I just can't wait much longer to share it :)