t'was the night before our wedding...

We were pretty excited about the rehearsal for the wedding. I couldn't wait to hear all of the music come together and finally hear that gorgeous pipe organ do its thing. It was also the first time that the entire wedding party would come together in one location.

I think we all ended up crying more at the rehearsal than we did at the actual wedding. The music was just breathtaking. I chose songs that meant a lot to me, but may not be the most commonly heard songs at weddings. We asked a long time family friend to arrange all of the music for the piano, vocalists, strings, and organ and he agreed. He also sang a part in each of the songs. It was nice to be able to put all of that in his hands and trust that it would no doubt be beautiful. And it was.

Here's a run down of our song choices. I wanted a mix of sacred songs, classic love songs, and beautiful classical music. I will do a separate post on the ceremony program later so you can see it, but this is just the music I chose:

Prelude:

Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Nessun Dorma, And So it Goes, Someone to Watch Over Me

Vocal Trio:

Doxology by Rick Vale

Greensleeves

Canon in D

Bride Processional

Highland Cathedral (really beautiful with piano and organ)

Vocal Trio

Shine on Us

Seekers of Your Heart

The Prayer

Recessional

Rondeau

Oh Happy Day

Anyway, it was a lot of fun to hear everyone rehearse and plan the timing of the ceremony. Here's a shot of us at the rehearsal.

I really wanted to wear white to the rehearsal, but wanted to give it some flair. I purchased the white dress from J.Crew on a clearance sale about a year ago. J. Crew has the most amazing clearance sales-- the only catch is that you cannot return it a lot of times, but luckily, this dress in the size that I ordered fit perfectly. It didn't originally have a sash. I kept looking for satin hot pink peep toe high heels and couldn't find any. Finally, in March, I looked at Stuart Weitzman and found the shoes I'd imagined in my head. My tailor made the pink sash for me to match like the wonderful man that he is!

My brother's girlfriend, Lauren, was my stand in bride for the rehearsal and she carried the GORGEOUS bouquet of bows that my bridesmaids made from all of my shower gifts.

After the rehearsal, we went to the very nice rehearsal dinner at High Cotton. We were able to include about 65 people, so a lot of Todd's out of town friends were able to come even though they weren't in the wedding party. It was a great meal and some really kind words were shared.

Then we went over to the Lounge at Restaurant O for a dessert and champage party. My parents' friends hosted this for us and we invited everyone that was invited to the wedding. A lot of people weren't in town (Greenville) yet, but this was a great opportunity for us to get together and catch up with a lot of our guests. It also helped make the wedding reception more laid back for us because we didn't have to have those, "oh, so good to see you" conversations the night of the wedding and we could do it at this party. We stayed up late and had so much fun catching up with everyone. This is one of the things about the wedding weekend that I'm so glad we had the opportunity to do. It gave our guests something to do and we were able to really have fun the night of our reception. Here are some pictures from the dessert and champagne party.

how cute is it that my dad and brother wore pink ties because pink was one of my wedding colors?