As I mentioned yesterday in part I of my wedding recap, we wanted our wedding to really be a destination experience for our friends who traveled. So, we knew we needed to choose the perfect spot for our rehearsal dinner.
There are a lot of varying opinions about who should be invited to a rehearsal dinner. If you traveled, then you had an open invitation to attend.
Rehearsal Dinner
Now, we put our wedding party guests up at the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach, and they were beyond accommodating. It’s a beautiful hotel right on the water. When we were thinking of a spot for a rehearsal dinner, we wanted it to be a spot that was easily accessible. The Baleen Kitchen is the hotel restaurant for the Portofino.
They had an extra room that they were were able to close off just to our guests for the evening, and we had ourselves the best time! The setup was long tables, and my amazing florist created some arrangements for the tables. If you are getting married in California, you must use Taka with Be Buds Florist. He was absolutely incredible. I have never seen wedding flowers so unique. He is truly an artist. I cannot say enough good things about Taka other than he made my wedding floral dreams absolutely come true. (And I will show you my wedding flowers in an upcoming post).
After we went through our rehearsal at the Wayfarer’s Chapel, everyone was ready to get the wedding weekend started. We started off with open bar for cocktail hour on the patio and some passed hors d’Oeuvres. I included the short rib grilled cheese, crab beignets and the lobster quesadilla.
The Menu
Dinner was a set menu that consisted of either the shrimp or clam chowder as the starter, a salad, your choice of the salmon, pork chop, chicken or steak and a dessert. The meal was delicious. While everyone was eating we gave out our gifts to our wedding party.
My bridesmaids all received their earrings that I wanted them to wear for the wedding. They were these Kendra Scott Corley earrings. They each received their tank tops for getting ready and some other fun goodies that my mom picked out! The groomsmen each received a special bracelet that Aaron had made at Manready Mercantile.
After we gave our gifts out, we did speeches. Then, we took the party out to their patio that had some firepits and chairs set up right by the marina. We didn’t stay out too late because the next day was wedding day!
