To recap: The night Sarah got in town Mathew and I decided to spoil her and make her dinner. The three of us love to cook, so although we planned on cooking dinner FOR her, she couldn’t resist helping us. I’d been able to grab a whole bunch of fresh rosemary from my parent’s garden, so we made steaks with a rosemary compound butter on top. Throw in some asparagus and some broccoli cheese rice. It was AMAZING (and I should’ve taken a picture!).

After eating such a large meal, Mathew suggested I take Sarah to David’s Bridal to try on bridesmaid dresses. Maybe not the smartest idea- but we went with it. I already picked out my bridesmaid dresses so I knew I wanted Sarah’s dress to have the band across the middle like the bridesmaid dress, as well as be of the same color and fabric. We ended up picking out this beauty:

Recognize that lovely frock? Yeah, you may have seen it on Bridesmaid Beth Anne in one of my past posts. When thinking of what dresses I’d like Sarah to try, I definitely couldn’t get that v-neck dress out of my mind that Beth Anne had tried on before!

The next day, we thought we’d go to Marshall’s and try to hit up their awesome cheap prices and buy some candy jars. I found some but definitely not what I was really looking for.

With that idea nixed, I told Sarah I’d love to show her our reception site. Boy, did we get in LUCK! The Hilton was set up for a wedding reception! It was perfect.

So this was set up for someone’s wedding and I know one thing: we now will be having floor length table cloths because that halfway down thing just isn’t cutting it for me. Another thing, notice how some of the lights are blue? Yeah…that’s pretty cool. I’m not having uplighting at the wedding because- let’s face it- it’s just TOO expensive. So…how to we remedy it? Do what these people did and change the white light bulbs to colored! We’re definitely going to try to find some pink or purple lights now! Also, we took note of how small their dance floor was but where it was placed. My floor will be larger, but in the same area (middle of the room). They had 18 tables with 9 people and CLEARLY had lots more room for an additional person. So..we’ll be having 10 people at 20 tables. Done and DONE! Now…I’m not too crazy about the floor or chairs, but who even really remembers those things? The main point about seeing this set up was that I finally got a clear vision of how the room would look with tables and chairs and a dance floor. Luckily MOH Sarah got pictures for me so I could remember what it all looked like later.

We also talked to the event coordinator as well, and told her I’d like to add in hot chocolate and apple cider to the reception like a “cocktail hour”. There will be part of the time where guests will be signing the guestbook and knowing that signing may take a while, we thought we’d have drinks available since we’re not having alcohol at the wedding. She thought it was a great idea and suggested we use this awesome fountain for the cider!!!

Silver fountain? I think yes! Now…to buy monogrammed napkins!

We also talked to Libby (the event coordinator at the Hilton) about blocking hotel rooms for our guests. Sadly, they only have availabilities the actual day of our wedding and not the night before. We went ahead and blocked the rooms, and then trekked our way along town to about 4 or 5 other hotels around town. We got a look and feel for the rooms and were able to get pretty good deals on the rooms, which I’m very happy about. Sarah was an amazing MOH that day with the hotels too. She had paper and her pen and wrote every little thing I needed to know about each hotel. I was such a happy bride!

We ended up blocking 3 different hotels (I’ve got tips on blocking hotels on Weddzilla) and hopefully that’ll be enough! If not, I’ll definitely have to add more!

All in all, the weekend was awesome and Sarah was super helpful. I’m so lucky to have such a great friend!

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links and/or product(s) sent from companies or their PR team for editorial consideration. For more information, please view my disclosure policy.