Rehearsal Dinner/Welcome Party in Dahlonega

When T and I decided to have our wedding in Dahlonega, we knew it would be a destination wedding for the majority of our guests. Dahlonega is an hour north of Atlanta and most of our family and friends live in Florida. For this reason, we decided to skip a fancy rehearsal dinner and instead have a more casual rehearsal dinner followed by a welcome party for our out of town guests who made the trip to Dahlonega on Friday.

After our rehearsal at Wolf Mountain, we all met at Corkscrew Café for our rehearsal dinner with our bridal party and immediate family. We decided on Corkscrew Café because of the ambience and it’s location in Downtown Dahlonega. We wanted a location where our guests could walk home after the party since Dahlonega is such a small town and doesn’t have Uber. For our rehearsal dinner we chose chicken, trout, and a vegan dish as our three options and everyone loved their meals! After the rehearsal dinner, our welcome party began. We hired a local musician, Nathaniel Shapiro, to sing and play guitar for the party and he was amazing (I would highly recommend him if anyone needs live music in the Dahlonega or Atlanta area). We provided beer, wine and appetizers for our guests to enjoy while listening to the music and socializing.

We wanted to put a few personal touches on the party so we strung up pictures with clothes pins from our past six years together and they were a huge hit. Everyone loved seeing pictures of T and I together at 18 with a few bad hairstyles and some questionable fashion choices from college. We had cake pops made by my bridesmaid’s mom and they were personalized with our monogram and the colors of the party. We also created personalized cocktail napkins that had fun facts about T and I from Wedding Paper Divas. For the décor, I wanted a rustic backyard BBQ feel so we went with sunflowers and white/wood/tan accents. I chose my MinkPink dress with the backyard BBQ vibe in mind and decided against the traditional white mainly because I just loved the dress.

Overall, I am so glad we had a welcome party. It was so nice to chat and visit with friends and family we hadn’t seen for a while and to celebrate with the people we love. For our pictures, we hired Brandon and Michelle Horn from Horn Photography to document the night. Capturing memories through photography is so important to me but I didn’t want the pressure and responsibility of capturing those memories myself. This way, I was able to enjoy myself and knew I would have beautiful pictures to remember the night by.

What are your opinions of a rehearsal dinner vs. a welcome party? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below!

Photo Credit: Horn Photography