Rehearsal dinner guests

It's traditional but we are in the same boat - we just cannot accommodate that many! We left it at bridal party, parents, grandparents. Our ring bearers mom is doing the reading so we included her mom and brother (so my aunt and cousin). This kept our list under 40.

I think in this case it’s ok not to invite out of town guests

A lot of etiquette says to invite out-of-town guests because it's a "pre-wedding" event, but personally I see it as truly a REHEARSAL of the wedding, so for us it's just going to be us, our parents, our officiant, and our bridal party. Anyone who isn't walking down the aisle on the wedding day isn't invited.

We're trying to keep it low-key, mostly because my FMIL looked up who is supposed to pay for the rehearsal dinner and saw that it falls under 'grooms family' so she's taking it upon herself to fund the dinner, and thus I am trying to keep it as inexpensive as possible because she footed the $5k bill for the caterer too, so I'm not trying to squeeze her dry here.

If you want the intimate dinner, do that and your out of town guests can entertain themselves for one night since you're having them come to a party the next day/night.

It’s not traditional etiquette to invite out of town guests, that’s a newer thing that people are doing.

We are not inviting out of town guests. Wedding party only.

We’re having a destination wedding and only inviting the immediate family to the rehearsal dinner. There are about 10 of the 25-30 in all that would not be included.

If your in laws are hosting, I'd let them invite who they want. We had 70 people at ours and did include out of state guests.

I don’t think it’s necessary. We were out of town guests for a wedding recently & werent invited to rehearsal dinner, we had no issue with it. We are also limiting our rehearsal dinner to wedding party/parents/grandparents/siblings only otherwise we would also have 60+ for rehearsal dinner

My in-laws also paid for our rehearsal dinner— we called it a “Welcome Dinner” since it included out-of-town guests as well.


Out of our 170 guests, 80 of them also attended our Welcome Dinner.
I think since your in-laws are hosting, it’s all going to be dependent on what they’re comfortable paying for. Are they deciding where the rehearsal dinner will be held? Have they given you a budget yet?
My MIL suggested a venue that she thought would be nice and I ended up loving it as well. I ran all the meal choices with her and let her decide if they wanted to host an open bar or not. Our rehearsal was probably on the higher end of rehearsal dinner costs ($10k), but I made sure it was all approved by my in-laws who were more than generous with hosting it.

Some people do, most don't. It is not covered by etiquette, which does not say it is in any way necessary . In my rural area, many people do, so people are not driving 17 miles each way for anything but gas station food. But if there are places people can find for themselves, you are not looking for an extra reunion night, or the numbers get like a second wedding, so the point of a thank you gathering of wedding party gets lost, then don't do it.

All of our guest are from out of town.... so we are having a welcome party for everyone with just drinks and appetizers.

Almost all of our guest list is out of town guests. We wanted to spend more time with them so there was less pressure at the wedding. We’re going to do a morning rehearsal followed by a rehearsal brunch with immediate family and wedding party and then later in the evening we’re having a cocktail party with light appetizers and we’re inviting all guests (not everyone will come).

We are doing wedding party and his sister and her family only.

I am actually stuck because my aunt is officiating so she and my uncle will be invited, but I am not inviting my other aunt and I can see it starting an issue

We only had about 30 guests at our wedding. It was sort of a destination wedding as we were all pretty much out of town. If we had invited everyone visiting, we would have had about 24 plus us at the dinner. We didn't have Bachelor/Bachelorette parties because my husband got sick and had surgery around Christmas so we basically cancelled those. We did a quick rehearsal and invited the bridal party and their spouses to pizza and drinks at a local restaurant. We ended up going out to some bars afterwards and it was a really fun night. I know that's not traditional, but not much about our wedding was traditional. The only one bent out of shape about it was my aunt but she didn't end up flying in until the day of the wedding anyway.