Rehearsal Dinner!

Seriously, I had no idea what rehearsal dinner was the first time I got married. I don't know if it's got to do with being 23 or being married in the LDS (Mormon) church, it does have a different culture, there wasn't much to rehearse because everything was in a particular order, there was really no deviation. Then, the first time I heard the term "Rehearsal dinner", it was from the movie, "Freaky Friday". In the movie, there was a big wedding and the rehearsal dinner looked just as big as the wedding. I thought, humm, that was weird, they didn't rehearse anything in the movie, it seemed like it's an extra dinner before wedding, maybe only really rich people do that.

Then my big brother Eric was getting married. Eric wanted me to sing a duet with a very nice gentleman  from his church at his wedding, so I was part of the rehearsal party. It was at a park, he had a barbecue place cater to the park. It's not big, nothing like the movie, and we actually rehearsed. Basically, who's going to walk down the isle first, and the order of the steps taking place at the wedding. It was really good, I knew exactly when I'm supposed to be standing by and getting on the stage. And the dinner was small, just family and people that had a job at the wedding. I saw it as a great opportunity for immediate family to get together and visit before the wedding day.

So, with the actual wedding venue and dinner in order pretty much within the first week after we were engaged, we knew it's time to take care of the rehearsal dinner arrangements. Since we were going to have a Chinese wedding banquet, we should have a western flare rehearsal dinner, so we picked Willows Lodge http://www.willowslodge.com. It's a beautiful hotel/spa in Woodinville, WA; event catering is done by the adjacent restaurant, the Barking Frog. The chef, chef Bobby is a usual, featuring in food magazines; Rob and I have dined there before, and everything we had was delicious. I sent a mail to them a couple of weeks ago requesting a proposal. They sent back the venue rental cost and a set of menu. Like most places, you could choose between buffet or plated dinner. Rob and I preferred plated dinner. I was, however, confused about the plated dinner price and menu, there were so many options to choose from but I wasn't sure how the cost map to different options. We also would like to see the place as well. There were different rooms accommodate different party size, we had our sight set on the library.

We arrived a bit early, Rob started taking photos of the place, by the way, the photos are on Facebook, check it out, it's a beautiful place. The event manager came and showed us the library, it's just as I imagined, Rob seemed to like it as well, though I didn't know if he had any expectations of the library. He did notice one feature, there was a big flat screen TV on the wall. He asked if we could put football or baseball on if it's a game night. I gave him the "look", and he just started giggling.  Eventually, we did settle for no talking about putting any kind of games the night of the rehearsal dinner. I also asked the event coordinator if she could put something up to hide the TV, just in case, so nobody would be tempted. :-)

After that, we set down and the coordinator explained how the plated menu worked. Everything just fell into place, we paid the deposit, signed the contract, and we had a place for our rehearsal dinner. The only thing that's left is wait until Nov when their menu for Nov to May comes out, we can send that to our guests and have them choose their main course, then we'll be all done. We are looking forward to rehearse. :-)