Since changing our theme and everything, I've had a few crazy long emails to some of our vendors trying to change everything but needed to meet with at least the florist and our cake baker to change the designs. I did both of those this afternoon, so that was pretty fun! It was my first big WR thing in awhile.
The florist meeting was a relief after not hearing back from him in awhile. It made me feel good to get all of that squared away
Anyway, I pretty much have no idea what our bouquets or centerpieces will be. I told him a few basics (a range of bright red flowers, with white accents for both) and decided just to leave it up to him. I am usually a major control freak, so this will be good for me. And, besides, I don't really care. I just want pretty red flowers. We'll see what he comes up with! He also has a really pretty Tiffany blue taffeta tablecloth that we're going to use for the guest tables and other table linens, a blue/silver fleur de lis tablecloth for the cake table, and a red satin fabric for the popcorn/snocone tables at the wedding itself. He's also going to make red chair pad covers for the reception chairs, and 10 envelope style covers for the wedding chairs (to basically line the "aisle"). That said, all of these linens will only happen if they fit into my new budget, otherwise I will go with one of the local vendors I've found. I'll find out soon! I'm excited to have this stuff mostly nailed down AND to realize that he costs the same for chairs as the local vendors once you factor in delivery so I can stop trying to deal with a billion chair vendors. That was ruining me since no one carries the right chairs for both, and it was exhausting.
Anyway, after that, I went over and met with the cake baker and sketched out the new cake and got it all written down in her computer! That was really fun for me because I had all of these pictures of cakes that I was cobbling together into one cake and it was hard to really know what anything would look like when it was all combined but her sketch is awesome and I totally love it! Plus, she gave me a piece of cake for my fiance, who begged me to get him some cake, so that was nice
On to the question. Rehearsal dinners and alcohol. What are you doing about it if you're doing the whole restaurant thing? I'm trying really hard not to turn the RD into a mini wedding because we are likely to have a lot of OOT guests. So, it's going to be at either Tutta Bella or Miposto (i.e. fancy'ish pizza joints). We're ordering a bunch of food ahead of time so it's all a set menu, but I can't figure out what to do about alcohol. I want people to be able to have a drink but my family has proven in the past that they will consider any event hosted by me as an opportunity to drink a ton of my dime (seriously, we had a $250 bar tab at a 1 pm baby party!!), and I just plain do not want to spend hundreds of dollars on alcohol for the RD.
I was thinking about perhaps ordering two bottles of wine per table (one red, one white) but are two bottles of wine enough for tables of 10? They also have cocktails so maybe I could offer a signature cocktail at some point during dinner and just have that be the only alcoholic beverage offered? (I was thinking of this cocktail or something like it since it would be light and summery: "
Our version of the Italian Bellini, Prosecco and our seasonal gelato.)Would you, as a guest, rather have wine or a cocktail?
Unfortunately, I am afraid that my family will STILL try to order drinks off the menu. I don't want to make guests pay for their own alcohol, but don't want to host a full bar for 30-50 people, either. We solved this problem at the wedding by deciding to go with beer/wine/two signature cocktails and that's simple enough since that's the only alcohol available but at a restaurant my family can still order other stuff and then it will become an issue as to who pays for it.
And, no, talking to them ahead of time won't work. I specifically talked to my mom about my fears that we'd get stuck with a big bar tab at the baby party and she ordered like 5 drinks between her and my stepdad anyway. Argh.