one of the biggest pains in my ass a far as wedding planning has gone is the rehearsal dinner - to me, its almost as important as my wedding day, and in a few ways, its MORE important - i feel like the rehearsal dinner is the time when, if your family and your groom's family aren't really acquainted, they GET acquainted, and get familiar with each other before your "big day"(that was a little redundant, but oh well...) - at first, i wanted a traditional sit down dinner somewhere, but the more i got to thinking about it, the more i realized that it just wasn't our style - plus, most of the rehearsal dinner scenarios i'd looked into were really putting a strain on my budget AND nothing just felt quite "right," and most of the rehearsal dinners i've been to have just ended up being kind of awkward groups of people sitting at tables of four or six people, making small talk and just trying to get through a meal....i didn't want for there to be an obvious separation between our families at the rehearsal dinner, and definitely not at the wedding itself - i want our families to mingle and form friendships and really get to know one another and understand why gene and i love each others families so much - i racked my brain for a while for some neat, creative alternative, and all of a sudden one night while i was sitting at my parents house, a light bulb went off in my brain....
i suddenly had this thought about.....baseball? weird thing to think of in the middle of talking about pink flowers, fondant, and string quartets, right? anyway, my parents have had season tickets at autozone park - home of the memphis redbirds - for the last few years, and going to games is one of my favorite things to do in the summer (well, not really this summer since the heat is unbearable, but usually, im all about the baseball) - its a family thing, and just being in that atmosphere makes me really happy. gene is a big baseball fan, so i knew he would be on board, even before i got his enthusiastic "YES" to my idea.....
it just so happened that the day after i had this great idea, mom and i were in memphis doing some wedding stuff and had a chance to stop by the park and take a look around - i didn't really expect for anyone to be available to actually seriously talk to, but to my surprise, an amazing usher at the park (who had just stopped to answer a "where is the...." question for us) led us to the event coordinator for the park AND the catering coordinator! they were amazing, and took us on a tour of 4 different areas where we could host my rehearsal dinner - the one i fell in love with (and mom loved it, too!) was the party suite - it has plenty of room for everyone to mix and mingle, 34 box seats, and is on the third base line - the view is incredible, and everything about this idea just felt "right" the second i stepped into that room -
the only problem with the plan has been finding out the game schedule for next summer - while they can still have events at the park even when there's not a game, i really had my heart set on watching some baseball and giving everyone a little bit of entertainment that night - we finally got word today from the people at autozone park that there is, in fact, a game scheduled for the night of my rehearsal dinner! i can barely contain my excitement, and as silly as it sounds, this very second i'm MORE excited about my rehearsal dinner than my actual wedding....
as for the food....they can cater pretty much anything there, but i figure if i'm having my rehearsal dinner at a baseball park, then i'm doing it right with the traditional baseball park foods - i never thought in a million years that i'd be having hot dogs, peanuts, beer and nachos at my rehearsal dinner, but now i cant picture it happening any other way. its going to be INCREDIBLE!
it feels like everything is really falling into place for our wedding.....i'm so incredibly lucky.
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