Rehearsal Dinner

I think you should only invite your wedding party. the least amount of people is better! its just a rehearsal!

I'm not sure why you would have anyone there who isn't part of the wedding party. It's a time to make sure your wedding party knows what is going on for the next day. If you have that crowd it'll be harder to keep on task as far as I can see. Last thing you need is for a confused bridal party the next day.

For ours we are only doing the wedding party, their partners and our parents. Our wedding family is all our siblings so it’s really just family.
We don’t have anyone coming from super far out of town so that’s not something we needed to worry about.
Again, it is your rehearsal and you guys make the final decision. Maybe let your mom know that you only want it small and will see all the out of town guests at the wedding

This is a dilemma I'm also struggling with! Right now, we only have the wedding party (and their S/Os) parents on both sides, our MC and his wife, and my godmother who's also our decorator and coming from Louisiana. This is 25 people including us.

FH's dad is hosting (paying) for the rehearsal dinner but my mom is suggesting/asking to invite out-of-town guests, which is almost the entire wedding but then she elaborated just the ones that would be in London that night anyways (mostly her side of the family in Ottawa region and our friends in Thunder Bay) which is quite a few extra (it would put us at 30 EXTRA people so 55 in total).

I basically keep reminding her that FH's dad is paying and we only want 30 MAX at the rehearsal - we'll see everyone the next day at the wedding. Plus, some of the people she's talking about haven't even RSVP'd to the actual wedding yet so if only a handful end up coming, I may consider it - but I won't tell her that!

I like Tori's reasoning, if they are coming from out-of-country, it'd be nice to extend an invite (so those 2 from the Netherlands) to the dinner part only (there's no reason for them to be at the actual rehearsal).

For our rehearsal only the wedding party and our parents are invited. Including us that's already 15 people and that just seemed too big for me. So I didn't want to invite more people because it's one of those situations that if you invited this person you have to invite these people ect.

I think, given the distance they are travelling, I would invite them. They may decline the invitation to the rehearsal dinner, but I would still invite them.

I’m not inviting the out of town guests to my rehearsal dinner.

The rehearsal dinner for me is only for those needed for the rehearsal (parents, wedding party and those who will do readings).

The only people we have invited to the rehearsal dinner (which my father and uncle who owns the venue are hosting) is the wedding party, immediate family, and significant others of the wedding party.

Your opportunity to party with all the out-of-towners is the next day at your actual wedding! Tell your mom you just want to keep it quiet and casual for the night before. You don't want to be up too late or pressured to see and talk to everyone, when you're just going to have to do the same thing the next day!

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Okay....like pretty decently out of town....I have 2 coming in from the Netherlands, 3 from Ottawa, and 2 from Edmonton.

I was going to suggest to my mom to ask them if they even wanted to come, because....who actually wants to sit and watch people rehearse?

IMO - nope! That costs more money! lol

Plus, I see that you are having a Friday wedding so I doubt people would come out either a second time or if the rehearsal is on the Thursday that people would take off more time from work than they already might have to.

How out of town? I mean, I get asking those who are flying in but at the same time... you don't want to invite everybody and have basically 2 weddings right?

I would say out of country people can get the invite.

To tell your Mom just try explaining that you don't want to have 2 weddings and then maybe you could invite them to a day-after brunch? Those are getting more and more popular.