A&C Wedding - Our Rehearsal Dinner & Welcome Party

When planning our wedding we knew one thing for sure, we wanted it to be more than just one day that flew by. We wanted to make it an entire weekend that we could celebrate with those that we're closest to. That's one of the main reasons we chose our venue, Portside Manor so that we could have the entire weekend (Thursday - Monday) to celebrate and never have to leave the venue.

On Thursday we arrived with our wedding party and parents and got settled into the main house and quarters. On Friday vendors were able to begin setting up while we handled last minute details. We hosted our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner right at the venue on the deck of the house overlooking the water. We enjoyed steak, lobster, and even cake for our best man's birthday! It was a great way to kick off the weekend.

We then invited our entire guests to join us for a Welcome Party at the venue Friday night. We had live music and drinks and it allowed us to visit with our guests who traveled to celebrate with us. We laughed, danced, and enjoyed heartfelt speeches from our parents. Our pups ran about playing (more like interrupting) cornhole.

Not only did having a welcome party extend our wedding celebrations, it also took a lot of pressure off of us the day of the wedding. We knew that 'making rounds' at the wedding reception was something we didn't want to do - not because we didn't want to talk to our guests, but we wanted to enjoy our wedding day with each other and dance the night away. The welcome party gave us that opportunity to connect with friends and family that we hadn't seen in a while or even the ones we see regularly.

We kept the decor and planning simple so that it was as stress free as possible. We reused a lot of decor from the shower and even things we had rented or planned for the wedding day.

As wedding photographers, and as a recent married couple, we highly recommend having a welcome party to start your weekend off! These are some of our favorite memories and we are so grateful we had Lex Nelson Photography there to capture some sweet moments for us. Also thank you to Natalya DeSena for grabbing my camera and grabbing a few of the rehearsal dinner set up so I can now look back and remember this beautiful night.