Rehearsal Dinner

The rehearsal dinner was held at a house in Westminster that Andrew found by searching online for a rental house in the area. It ended up being the only house for rent in the town...you'll understand if you ever visit the area.  The house was originally owned by a mother that passed away and her son's were hoping to keep the house in their family.  They hoped that by renting it out to vacationers to nearby Gettysburg they'd be able to financially keep the house. I was anxious at first to rent a house we had never seen, but after emailing I received a phone call back from the son who now owned the house. It was an Alaska area code and he explained that he now lives in Anchorage and was sorry that he was sorry he was calling so late and explained the time difference. Of course I knew the time difference and I thought it was so crazy that the one house in Westminster that worked for us was owned by another Alaskan (Andrew is from Anchorage....duhhh.)  Turns out that much of his whole family lives in Anchorage and they travel back and forth frequently.

When we first pulled up to the house to visit we were so pleasantly surprised. The pictures were beautiful, but we first had to travel down a .75 mile long driveway.  It was gravel and you could only go maybe 10-12 mph the entire time. Not to mention I had a nail in one of my tires and it kept losing air so I was a little worried...

Once you arrive at the end the house sits at the top of a hill surrounded by corn fields. The corn had just been harvested, so I was a little disappointed we didn't have that for the atmosphere but it was nice to be able to look out and see everything.  We held the rehearsal dinner on the back porch of the house and had our caterer from the wedding come out and also provide tables and chairs. The porch fit all five tables and was able to comfortably seat 40 people for a seated dinner.

The decor was all Andrew's idea and I loved it! We bought burlap and cut 1' wide strips to use as table runners.  The picture above doesn't show the floor length white linens because they hadn't been delivered yet. On top of the burlap were thin wood things? I don't know what to call them. Wood slivers...wood circles...wood slabs...anyway, they were from Michael's and we used coupons to buy all of them. He then used a wood burning kit to carve our initials and placed mason jars with candles on top. 

Andrew's dad ordered the generous favors for the guests.  They are ulu knives and are symbolic of Alaska.  The whole theme was "East meets West" since Andrew is from Alaska and I'm from Maryland! :) He used the same font we had on our wedding invitations "Scriptina." They came out  awesome!

 

Andrew's sister Erynne ordered a cake through a friend that was half covered in an Alaskan theme and the other half Maryland. 

We found out later that there was also a table set up at the rehearsal dinner covered in postcards of places that meant something to us like Alaska, Maryland and New York.  People could write a note or wedding advice and a post card would be mailed to us once a week! We got the first one yesterday, I'll have to think of something creative to do with all of the postcards. 

Everything about the rehearsal dinner was great, the food, the venue, the decor, the company! We really had a great time :)