Rehearsal Dinner

My FFIL has graciously taken on the task of the Rehearsal Dinner which is really sweet of him. We've paid for 95% of the wedding ourselves so it's greatly appreciated to have something off our plates.

He's hosting our entire wedding party and spouses + my parents and FH's sister and husband (for a total of 26 people) at his swanky country club. Seriously, it's so much fancier than our actual wedding - as in this will likely cost him around $5-6k - but he's so excited. He even asked if I could make invitations for it, so I went on Vistaprint and made invitations that matched our wedding ones. He lives in London, UK so we don't get to see him often and it's really nice to have him involved.

We went to a local Mexican restaurant and did a verbal run through with our wedding party during the dinner. We had our parents, my husband's sisters, my uncle and his wife (they were hosting the wedding on their property), my 2 cousins (uncle's kids), our officiant and his wife (a friend of ours), my godmother and her husband, the photographers, some close family friends, and the wedding party with their significant others.

We are doing just our bridal party and our immediate family (parents and siblings of both sides). Our rehearsal is being held at the same place as our wedding, so they are also being tasked with helping set up after dinner.

The rehearsal dinner will be one week before my wedding (date set by our wedding venue coordinator). One of my bridesmaids is flying in 10 days before so it works out fine. Everyone who will be helping out at the wedding will be invited to the rehearsal dinner. We will also use it as a meeting to inform everyone about their roles for the wedding and go through the timeline. We're planning to buy or cook food and serve it in the amenity room in my condo to save cost!

Our rehearsal will be the night before (Friday). We're having it at our venue since most out-of-town guests will be staying there with casual finger foods. We will have an actual rehearsal with parents/wedding party/officiant before the dinner.

We are inviting our wedding party (and their SO's/families), parents, siblings, our officiant, some of our out of town guests that are coming a few days in advance to help with last minute things, and some others that will be in town that night. We have roughly 30 people attending.

We are doing our rehearsal on the Thursday before because they have a wedding the Friday night. We have a huge airbnb house rented that has a big barn and tons of seating that we will be staying at the whole wedding weekend. Only inviting our immediate family and bridal party and their spouses and kids.

My Future In Laws are hosting ours. All I know is that my FMIL says no spouses are invited. My Parents and the Wedding party only.

The rehearsal dinner was a welcome dinner for our fmailies and wedding party paid by my dad. Just something we do .

Our wedding venue offers rehearsal dinners with the rehearsal, however, they are either on Wednesday or Thursday nights because they host weddings on Fridays. We decided to host the dinner separately from the rehearsal on the Friday at the hotel and conference centre that everyone will be staying at for the wedding (less than 10 minutes from the venue). They have a very cute restaurant that will be perfect for everyone to share a meal before the big day! The wedding party, parents, and my fiance's family from England will be joining us - so around 25 people.

We are hoping to have our rehearsal dinner at our reception venue, most likely - we are thinking of buying several lasagnas to bake in the ovens, along with ceasar salad and garlic bread. Super simple and relaxed.

We'll be having both our families, our wedding party and their SO's, and anyone who has helped that day with the setting up of the reception hall. I figure there will be 30-40 people at the rehearsal dinner - mostly we're using it as a 'Thank you for helping us' and a 'Let's relax before the craziness of tomorrow' time.

We are not having an official rehearsal dinner. What we are going to do is, offer that after the rehearsal (booked 4.30-6.30pm on the Friday), we will go out to dinner together somewhere, for anyone who wants to go for an extra something to do. We have a group of 20 people with just the Bride/Groom, parents & bridal party (no +1's)... so an extra dinner for 20 people, or a dinner for 30 people (to include significant others and more siblings)... it's just too much.

We won't be paying, we can't, but it will hopefully be a nice time all together to relax before the big day.

I had won some gift certificates for a bbq food truck at a wedding show, so we used those to help cut the cost.

As for who we invited: the bridal party, our MC (also family), the pastor and his wife (also a friend), the gentleman doing the music for the ceremony (also a friend) our parents, and we told the wedding party they could invite their spouse/significant others, but would have to pay $25 for them (the exception being the MC whose wife was making our bouquets, and the wife of one of the groomsmen because they were hosting the dinner: since they were helping out, we paid for them)

We did our rehearsal with just wedding party and parents at the park where our ceremony was the night before the wedding and then we invited everyone back to our house and ordered pizza. Not everyone came over because we had a lot of stuff to prep for the wedding still and we had a couple close friends who also showed up for pizza.
Probably had 14 people or so over? It was very casual and relaxed and went well.

For the rehearsal dinner we will be having it at our wedding venue. It will probably be a potluck or bbq. The people we will be having is: Wedding party, parents, siblings, and then my only grandparent left - my Baba, and his Nana. (His Amma will come out with aunts/uncles the day of as she is a little too fragile for a 2 day event.) As well we were thinking of having his uncle who lives with his mom and step dad officiate so he would be there too. Of course S/O's will probably be there too as long as they don't work.

Total of roughly 25-30 people