Wedding Recap: Part 3 – The Rehearsal Dinner

When scouting the hotels where we would book our wedding block, a nice restaurant where we could have our rehearsal dinner was one of the criteria we looked for. The Marriott at the Renaissance Center had a ton of wonderful amenities and the beautiful set up at 42 degrees North sealed the deal. The restaurant’s patio overlooked the Detroit River and Canadian skyline. On the day we visited in March the temperature left something to be desired, but the day before our wedding the weather was blue skies and perfect!

When we originally spoke to the assistant manager, she quoted me a $500 fee to reserve the patio for our party of 26. Since the patio sat 50 people, I decided not to pay the fee to make our dinner private. As luck would turn out, we had the whole patio to ourselves anyway! So, the evening before we tied the knot, we invited our bridal party to dinner on the beautiful patio at 42 degrees North.

When we walked out and saw the set-up, it reminded me of something out of a Top Chef episode. The silver tables were set up banquet style in a long line. At each place setting was the customized menu that I slaved over during my bridal crafting sessions. The beautiful blue sky and matching clear water in the river. The scene was picturesque.

The beautiful view as we ate was just extra to the wonderful company of our friends and family. We were entertained by Michael’s stories about how he used to work on the big cargo boats that cruised up and down the Detroit River. He told us the secret to how you identify what country of origin the boats are from. If they have a Canadian flag, they are Canadian boats and if they have an American flag, they are from the United States. That logic seamed simple to follow until the next boat drove by with both flags waving.

The dinner was a really nice time to welcome and thank all of the people who traveled to be part of our celebration. The thank you gifts we brought for our bridesmaids and groomsmen were wine glasses and beer mugs that were painted with caricatures to look like each person in our bridal party. I found the etsy site, Fizzy Artist, through an update that our day of coordinator sent out. They were a little silly, but definitely a hit.

The final surprise of the night was a little something that my mother-in-law and I had planned. I wanted Evan to have a grooms’ cake and thought it would be nice to do it as a surprise for him at the rehearsal dinner. Evan has always been a big fan of Kid Rock and since we were getting married in Detroit, I thought we could do something with the Kid in his hometown. Evan’s mother had a great idea to put a picture of Evan in an outfit very similar to something the Kid would wear on the cake with a Detroit message, “Ain’t no party like a Detroit party”. So I sent the picture of Evan and she did everything else. She had it made at a store in Evan’s home town, Kalkaska, and had to bring the edible photos with her all the way to Detroit to put them on the cake herself. It was a total surprise.