Rehearsal Dinner Decor on a Small Budget

In September, I shared all of my plans that worked and didn’t work for the Galveston, TX Bachelorette Weekend Getaway for my friend, Connie.  She knows how much I like to party plan and research, so she asked if I would help her with her rehearsal dinner decor for her late October wedding.  The rehearsal dinner was held in a hotel business room where a large number of guests (including the wedding party) were staying the weekend of the wedding, so it was a really convenient location for all of us.

Connie knew she wanted to order tacos and some side items from Torchy’s Tacos.  I never had Torchy’s before, but the tacos were great, and the queso was superb!  All that was left to do was plan all of the decorations.  I wanted something fun and casual (which fits Connie and Yung), but still a bit elegant and classy since it is for a wedding rehearsal.

I stuck with navy, gold and white, which were her wedding colors, but I also used dark green as an accent color, which worked great for flowers/greenery!  The hotel had navy linens for their round tables, which was perfect and something I didn’t need to take care of on my own, which meant I had more money to spend on other things.

After I had my color scheme, I browsed and browsed and browsed looking for unique ideas for a fun rehearsal dinner.  The first thing I saw was a cute chalkboard sign that said “Tomorrow is going to be the best day ever!” and that was perfect!  I made some cute 5×7 cards (with rounded corners of course) with that phrase and planned to put them on the tables in the room.

Next up, I needed to find some plates, cups, napkins and flatware, but I had a budget to stick to, so high quality plastic was the way to go.  I knew for tacos I wanted to find some cute plates.  I planned on round plates (as you can see below), but then I saw some cute rectangular ones.  I figured that was least expected, but would look pretty cute with tacos lined up on the plates.  I found the cups, napkins and flatware at a local grocery store.

Once I gathered up those items, I created my layout using photoshop, of course!  Here’s what I planned for the tables (before I settled on rectangular plates):

 

I also wanted to create some small little favor bags that could be used as a late night snack after the rehearsal dinner.  I made little small bags of Hershey Kisses and Hugs and found some gold striped bags at Hobby Lobby.  I made little tags for each bag that said, “Hugs & Kisses from the soon-to-be Mr. & Mrs.”  Cute, huh?!

 

Once I figured out that tablescapes, it was on to decorating the rest of the room.  When you walked in the room, the first big wall you would see was the wall with two windows on it.  I really wanted to make that wall stand out.  I planned to put one long rectangular table along the wall with some of the tacos, and then I wanted to create a backdrop behind the food table.  I had a white curtain that had round circles on it, which was perfect for a backdrop.

After I picked out the material for the backdrop, I had to figure out how to hang it (which luckily turned out to be fairly easy) and what I wanted to hang from it.  I knew a monogram would be perfect.  So I ordered one from 48 hour monogram on Etsy!  They shipped the monogram on time, and I had it in plenty of time to spray paint it before the dinner.

Above the monogram, I really wanted to hang a lot of greenery from it.  I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it until I made it to the room, but once I got there, I was able to figure it out.  I probably would have planned this part a little better in advance, but it all worked out just fine!

Here was my plan for the backdrop wall:

I also wanted to create something to hang over the “boxes” that covered the windows, but in the end, I ended up leaving them alone.

Once I had a plan for that big wall, the other two walls were a piece of cake.  The wall to the left had a very long ledge (approximately 7 feet long), so I knew I wanted to frame some of the couple’s photos on that wall.  I scored some frames on sale at Target, which were perfect.  I used a large variety of 8×10, 5×7, 11×14, and we had one large frame for the middle that was 12×18.  Above the picture frames, I really wanted to hang their wedding hashtag on the wall, so I used my silhouette to create the banner, which turned out really cute if I say so myself.  😉

Here was my plan for that wall:

 

The last wall was where I planned to display the sweets.  Connie ordered some cookies for dessert, and I also supplied some after dinner mints and some extra Hershey Kisses.  I also wanted to create a little banner to hang above or on the sweets table.  Here was my plan:

This wall was probably my most difficult because once I arrived, what I thought was a chalkboard wasn’t, so I had to improvise a little bit, but I think it worked out just fine.

So those were all of my plans.  Of course, I hadn’t seen the room and wouldn’t see it until we arrived to decorate it the day of the rehearsal dinner.  My husband, Jacob and I, were able to get it all decorated within about 4 hours, and I think it turned out really nice for a $225 budget!

And now the big reveal… here’s what the room looked like once it was decorated.  All it needed was yummy food and great conversation to celebrate the bride and groom-to-be!

I think it turned out really nice, and major props to Jacob for helping me so much on the day of the dinner.  I was a little stressed and worried it wouldn’t come together as I had envisioned, but he was so helpful and helped calm me down!

Unfortunately, we didn’t get any pictures of all of the yummy food, but trust me, it was great, and I would definitely have Torchy’s again!  I guess we were just too busy enjoying the night.  I had a lot of fun planning this event for Connie and Yung… maybe there will be more event planning in my future?!