DIY wedding rehearsal.Advice needed

[glueck]

Ladies, I need some help.

We have an celebrant for our symbolic ceremony who is a friend and he has never done this before. The venue is not a church, so there is NO ONE who can run the rehearsal. There is no such thing as a DOC here in Germany. I have to do it. I need some serious help.

With a room full of people with no experience, do we do a dry run of everything? The whole ceremony? ALL thoughts are welcomed. Please share your rehearsal experiences and any advice for this particular situation. I can use all the guidance I can get!

 

[zoebartlett]

To be honest, it''s not really a big deal to rehearse on your own. I''d just bring a copy of the program and hand it out to those in attendance of your rehearsal. We did have our officiant with us at our rehearsal, and she ran through the ceremony with us. Our ceremony was only about 15 minutes long (or so) though. We had our readers practice reading, and the officiant made suggestions to them regarding speaking slowly and clearly. We practiced walking down the aisle, and that''s about it. We made notes about who was standing where, as well. So, yes, we did a dry run of the whole thing, but again, it didn''t take very long since the ceremony was so short anyway.

Do you have a friend who is really good at organizing things? If so, could he or she be there to help out? Just a thought, but I''m sure you''ll be fine.

 

[glueck]

Thanks for the advice Zoe. I am the organizer in my circle of friends-read: big mouthed organized and bossy
So I will bring a program. I think our ceremony is pretty long... lots of music within the ceremony. Those numbers I guess we wont have to do, only the entrances and exits. We can skip the vows and practice them later, but i think we should do the whole thing.....
Copy of the program for everyone, good advice....thanks!

 

[Elmorton]

Mine was a really similar situation - I actually let a loudmouth (in a good way) friend run the show. I told her how I wanted things, gave her a copy of the ceremony, and she went to town as the "reheasal coordinator". If she started to have someone stand somewhere that I wasn't a fan of, I'd just say something to her quietly and she'd revise it.

Our groomsmen had all sorts of choice words for her since she was being a little drill-sargeant-ish, but it took some of the pressure off of me and DH and let us enjoy the rehearsal instead of stressing. Being the "boss" wasn't really a role I wanted over our wedding weekend.

The only major issue was that our officiant wasn't even there but half the people at our rehearsal didn't know that, so a friend was standing in and reading most of the ceremony so people would know what their cues were (and yes, I recommend doing this if it's a non-traditional ceremony and if your officiant has never done a ceremony before) and all of a sudden the bridesmaids started yelling "NO! NO!" and we couldn't figure out why - everyone was worried that we were crossing the line of actually "being married" during our rehearsal - they didn't realize that our stand-in wasn't the officiant. It was pretty funny. So, do remind your officiant to maybe skip over the part with the vows/I dos, pronouncing parts (though I didn't think it was a big deal even if we DID say all that stuff since DH and I wrote the ceremony together and had said it to each other about 100 times already - didn't make us married then, either).

Also - from what I understand from other friends, the rehearsal is always a mess. Don't stress about it if people seem to not know where they're walking/going, because they'll pretty much figure it out on the day of. I couldn't believe how choatic our rehearsal felt, but the ceremony looked like we'd all been doing this for years.*

*With an exception - pull your ushers aside and make sure that they know EXACTLY where Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa are supposed to be seated.