Rehearsal Brunch - Half the wedding

1. Have it outside of a traditional meal time, and serve heavy appetizers. Or don't hold a rehearsal at all, then you won't need a RD. If you want to cater, you can get BBQ or Mexican easily for $10 per person.

2. Ours is costing around $3,500 for 75 people. Italian family style meal, room rental, and beer and wine.

1) Maybe have it at a home and bring in brunch/breakfast platters from a local deli

2) Ours was just over $6k for 50 people (including transportation to and from hotel). It was sit down with beer and wine and we had the entire restaurant.

Do you HAVE to have that many people? We didn't. Kept it to wedding party, their spouses only and his parents only.

1. Skip the rehearsal all together, then a meal isn't required. Or, look into local restaurants. Olive Garden is inexpensive, pizza and beer? Chipotle? It can be something extremely casual.

2.Ours is about $1000 total for 35 people. We rented a room in a local museum for $50 an hour (total 3 hours) then we are bringing in a caterer for a served Italian buffet. We are also having beer and wine only plus the cost of linen rentals and china that the caterer doesn't provide.

We had a welcome dinner with anyone who wanted to come. We only had 40 guests total for the wedding so we had about 25 guests at the welcome dinner. It was a semi-DW so we found a local BBQ place within walking distance from the hotel. We bought out the restaurant (it was a very small place) so our group was the only one there. I paid close to $700 which included several meats, sides, bread, cookies, and beverages (sodas, beer and wine, water, etc.).

I have 20 people and the rehearsal dinner is going to be at a Chinese restaurant, and instead of ordering from their banquet menu ($400 per table that feeds 10), we are going to order items off their regular menu: Appz, 8 to 9 main dishes that has scallops, shrimp, fish, beef, chicken, vegetables (more than enough). So far the estimated bill is about $400 for 20 people.

The meal after the rehearsal is a "thank you" to the wedding party so making the wedding party pay for their own "thank you" is rude. A rehearsal is not necessary so if the bride and groom can't afford to feed everyone after one then they shouldn't have one. That's the equivalent of having a friend come over to your house to do a favor for you and you take that person out to eat but make them pay for their meal.

This was the exact reason that we're just limiting this to our parents, bridal party & their SOs, and others involved in the ceremony (readers & ushers & their SOs). Otherwise about 90% of our guest list are technically out of town & it didn't make sense to me since we're paying for it all to essentially throw 2 parties for people just for coming to town to celebrate.

Ours was at a restaurant in a private room. We had a 3 course meal that was ordered table side (2 salad options, 3 entree options, and 2 dessert options) and an open bar. It cost roughly $2,000 for 35 people.