Rehearsal dinners have been around since the beginning of wedding ceremonies.
As a wedding venue, rehearsals are the hardest part of a wedding to accommodate for our brides. Most rehearsal traditions are held the evening before a wedding. As a venue, this is hard to do since the odds are the venue will hosting another wedding at that time.
The only way a venue can guarantee you a traditional rehearsal time is if you are willing to spend the extra bucks to secure that time. Again, this can be hard to do. We are a facility where we host only one wedding per day, so you would have to rent the entire day for a rehearsal. Some venues rent their venues by the hour, with a minimum of hours you can rent, but we don’t do that.
At the Ellis Ranch Event Center & Wedding Park, we host more than 100 weddings per year and most are held May through September, Thursday through Sunday. That makes it is almost impossible for us to offer the facility for rehearsal in the traditional manner.
Instead, the Ellis Ranch has set aside Wednesday evenings for rehearsals. This works for many brides, but some brides find it is impossible, because most of her wedding party will not be in town yet.
For those brides, some do their rehearsal the morning of the wedding during their rental hours. That is easy at a venue like ours, which hosts only one wedding per day and allows the couple to have the venue for a 12-hour period.
We try and explain to all of our couples that a rehearsal truly does not need to be held at the wedding location. Most venues either have a wedding coordinator or an event supervisor — or if you hire your own wedding coordinator, which we recommend — he or she can assist the day of the wedding when it comes to the ceremony.
All you truly need to know is how you will be making your entrance to the ceremony, either by walking in or by horse-drawn carriage, and from where you want to come.
Other questions to consider:
Who will be walking whom down the isle?
In what order do you want to have the procession?
Which side of the altar do you want your bridesmaids and groomsman to stand on?
Will you be doing a candle ceremony?
What songs do you want played?
This can all be done in your back yard using a chair to mark the altar.
As for rehearsal dinners, these can to be done in your back yard, too. You can host a picnic or hire a caterer. This is what we did with both of our children’s rehearsals.
This truly is an area of stress that really doesn’t need to be. Talk to your event supervisor or wedding coordinator and they can help you decide what is best for you.
Ellis Ranch Event Center & Wedding Park
2331 Ellis Ranch Lane Loveland, Colorado 80538
970-593-9570
