Mexican Fiesta Wedding Rehearsal Dinner

I wanted to take some time and post some pictures of my son's recent wedding rehearsal dinner we hosted. He got married on November 24th and because he and his bride love Mexican food, we decided to host a wedding rehearsal fiesta. This worked out great because everyone had already had Thanksgiving dinner the day before and they all seemed to enjoy eating something a little more spicy. The dinner was held in a conference room in the hotel where we were staying. We hired a popular Mexican restaurant to come and cater the event.  We had a fantastic time! Here are a few pictures of the festive evening:

Before I show the items from the dinner, here is the invitation.
We ordered it through ETSY. We printed out copies and then
mounted them on bright colored cardstock. We were able to find
some bright colored giftcard size envelopes from staples to use to mail
them in. I really believe that invitations truly set the tone for any
event! 

I ordered these cute maracas from Oriental Trading.
I used a Sharpee pen and wrote the name of each guest on the handle
and tied a bow around each one. I used them
as place cards.

This is what each place setting looked like. I bought the patterned plates from Oriental Trading.
The solid plates, napkins, and utensils came from Party City. I used solid green and orange plates, yellow
napkins, and purple utensils. The place setting was quite  festive and colorful. It may be difficult to see, but I made a bag of chocolate candy for everyone with a bag topper that said: Muchas Gracias! The guests loved it! I ordered the bag toppers and the through ETSY.  I made the napkins rings by gluing the little squares(I had them made through ETSY) on strips of cardstock and then we staple each ring around the napkin with the utensils. These took some time, but I'm so glad we did it!

I bought these cacti from an online company called cactuslimon.com. I LOVED this company!! I had 4-5 different types of cactus. The circle labels were ordered through ETSY and I printed them on my printer.
 Dan and I took each cactus and wrapped them with tissue and tied with curling ribbon.
This was quite a tedious endeavor, but so worth it!! The guests LOVED taking them home. 

These ornaments looked a little cheaper than I thought they were going to be, but nevertheless they were cute!
On the back, I wrote in dotted format: Daniel and Anna 11-24-12 with a paint pen.
Since it was close to Christmas, I thought everyone would enjoy taking one home. My original idea was to attach them to each cactus, but that didn't look so good, so I just laid one at each place setting. These came from Oriental Trading.

Ok---this idea came from Oriental Trading. I bought a set of sombreros. I placed 2 to a table and then I lined them
with paper napkins. We used them as chip platters. I bought salsa cups and put 2 of those with each sombrero.
Again, it added a wonderful festive touch to the tables. 

This was a cookie station. I made homemade chocolate chip cookies and mexican wedding cookies.
I found the material at Hobby Lobby. I also cut the fabric to fit small bunched up pieces in the center of each
table. The little pails were from an online company called: amols.com Everything from this company was reasonably priced.  

I had a drink bar with these Fiesta cups. I bought the cutest sombrero straws for everyone to make on their own and use.
Everyone took a cup home as well. These were from Oriental Trading.

Here is my son and his precious bride. I hired a frozen yogurt company to come and  serve frozen yogurt for dessert. It's their favorite dessert and that's why we chose to serve fro yo for dessert. You can see one of the sombrero straws in the picture. I thought they were so cute!!

You can see balloons in the background. Every other table had a bouquet of balloons on it
held down by a sombrero weight. I ordered the balloon weights through the amols.com company.

The flowers came from amols.com. 

It was a fantastic party. My goal was for everyone to have  a great time and  I truly believe they did!! OLE!!