How does the rehearsal dinner work?

No official invitations. no decor for that night. its just a run through of your wedding day. we are doing something casual as we dont want to spend money at a restaurant. the bride and groom pays for it so keep that in mind with whatever you plan. but either plan is completely fine

We had supper at our venue but that's where the rehearsal was and we just had my DH's Mom's side make the food. Had we not had that we would have went the route of the pizza and booze though!

Invitations - not necessary, they have to be there so it's more like you are telling them

Decorate - if you have the venue the night before and are all together then yes!! Use all of them to make it go faster!! I doubt they would let your set up by yourselves anyway.

Pizza and beer is always an awesome way to go!

For our wedding reception, our families and wedding party are coming to the hall to help decorate everything. Then once everything is done, we invited everyone back to our place for a BBQ, we wanted people to relax before the chaos happens the following day. We aren't sending formal invitations for this but we will ask some other family that has traveled quite a ways to come for dinner as well.

For sure! I think its just nice to have all these people together so they can meet and know each other and then hopefully create a seamless wedding day of team.

This sounds right to me!

I actually read a ton of "what to do for the rehearsal" articles today as this was on my mind, and boy oh boy does it sound like it can be quite the thing. Some made it out to sound like a pre wedding to the wedding! That being said, we are keeping it very simple - I just want to actual REHEARSE and then have some take out and mingle a bit with the wedding party & parents before heading off to our night before spots. I think we will also invite our emcee and a couple other people who are "friendors" as a nice thank you for working on the day of our wedding and also so they can meet all the VIPS!