Brides who have planned welcome parties/day after brunch

That's awesome that you're thinking about how to make the whole weekend fun for your guests. I had a rehearsal, then rehearsal dinner just for those involved with the wedding and their immediate families (to keep costs reasonable), then welcome drinks for everyone. Then the wedding was Saturday and we had an after party, again just with drinks (and with wedding dessert leftovers!) to keep costs reasonable. And we hosted a brunch at the guest hotel on Sunday morning after the wedding. To afford all these extra things we had to cut costs elsewhere (videography, DIYd favors and makeup, delayed our honeymoon for a year...) but we absolutely would make the same choice again since our guests having a great time was most important to us

So, even though we're hosting both, I'm expecting people will turn us down to do their own thing. It's why we're keeping it casual at places where we've already discussed that we can stagger food orders as people come and go. Everyone has to travel for our wedding (which would have been true of any location we picked) - so we want to be sure that nobody HAS to pay for food or something to do from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. But given that it IS London, I expect alot of our US guests will want to do London-y stuff rather than our welcome dinner.

We are doing a Welcome Party at our house on Thursday night (we just ordered catering from a well-known bbq restaurant in Dallas) and are doing minimal decor and drinks/desserts. Just an informal gathering to say thank you to everyone who came in from out of town and a chance for our friends/family/wedding party to meet/hang out and enjoy themselves. Since FH's parents are hosting our RD and my parents are hosting our wedding, we wanted to do something ourselves to say thank you. We are leaving the morning after our wedding for our honeymoon so we aren't doing a next day breakfast/brunch.

We'll be doing an after party for Out of state family and bridal parties but it won't take away from the wedding, it just adds to the fun and it lets everyone involved relax.