Rehearsal Dinner? Is this mandatory?

The rehearsal dinner is held after the ceremony rehearsal. If you don't have the rehearsal, the dinner isn't necessary (the dinner is a thank you for the BP attending the rehearsal itself). However, if you are having a rehearsal, you do need to have the dinner. It can be as simple as pizza or wings, or a sit down meal at a nice restaurant.

The rehearsal is to practice the flow of the ceremony for the day of with the wedding party, parents, anyone else involved in the wedding and the dinner is to feed the wedding party, parents, everyone involved and sometimes out of town guests. If you do not do a rehearsal you do not need to do a dinner but if you have a rehearsal you should be feeding and paying for everyone's dinner (usually the grooms parents pay for this, but not always). It can just be pizza and wings or a BBQ at your house, if money is an issue, if not then you can do a nice restaurant or something.

We may just do pizza and beer at a park pavilion!

I was thinking like a "his" drink and a "her" drink and lots of yummy pizza. I negotiated some prices if we buy in bulk from a local pizza place. Also I want to have the dinner because I want to do a slideshow and have people make toasts.

As PPs have mentioned, a RD is only necessary if there is an actual rehearsal prior to the wedding. If so, you can do simple bulk meals (i.e., Chinese food, pizza, etc.) for everyone to save $

We are just having a BBQ. Our venue is allowing us use of the site to have our dinner at no extra cost and we're bringing a grill and tables and chairs and our parents are bringing sides like potato salad and stuff. Simple and not overly expensive.

It's practice for the ceremony. You can do casual pizza and beers if you want.

A rehearsal dinner is important if you have a wedding rehearsal. It’s a chance to spend time with the bridal party and close family before the big day. I really enjoyed mine

Are you going to have a rehearsal? If so, it is necessary to feed people after. If you are not having a rehearsal, a rehearsal dinner is not necessary.

We really wanted a rehearsal dinner because it was important to us to get to spend a little extra time with our bridal party and our families— most of our bridal party and most of our relatives were all flying in from out of town. It was really wonderful to get to spend a couple hours at the rehearsal dinner surrounded by our relatives and closest friends and to get to devote that time to just focusing on those important people. Then at the wedding we could distribute our time evenly among all our guests. If we hadn’t done a rehearsal dinner, I definitely would’ve felt like we hadn’t gotten enough time with our out of town relatives and bridal party!

I am not sure if we are going to have a rehearsal now, but my sister offered her restaurant up for catering so I will have a dinner with our families (that is our BP too anyway) just don't know what I will call it except a thank you dinner maybe

To add to what has been said already as well as answer your second question, at the rehearsal dinner you usually thank your wedding party and give them their gifts. Sometimes the parents (both sets or just one set) will give a toast especially if there won't be time during the wedding reception for them to make a toast.

View Quoted Comment

Exactly this. Your rehearsal dinner is to thank your bridal party, parents, etc. for taking the time out of their lives to celebrate you and your day. It's kind of a one last YAY before the big party. But again, if you're not having a rehearsal, it's not necessary to do a full rehearsal dinner.

And for what it's worth - we did just pizza at a place down the street from our ceremony venue.

The rehearsal dinner is just a quick thank you for the people involved in the actual wedding rehearsal. If you're not doing a rehearsal, you don't need a dinner, but if you are - you should host something after for the people who attended. It can be simple like sandwiches and sodas or as fancy as you want as long as it's something!

So I didn't think of it til last minute either. If you're going to do a rehearsal I think it'd be better to do a dinner or something after. It's also a good way to say thank you to your wedding party and to have them all mingle before the big day

View Quoted Comment Once we decided on the bridal party we invited them all for a meet and mingle night and pre ordered pizzas our little get together started at 5pm at the pizza place we didn't leave until after 11pm they partied hard like it was wedding night. my pre order of about $130 in pizza ended up at about $650...they getting taco bell this time lol

I skipped out on the rehearsal dinner. It made absolutely no impact on the wedding day. Unless you have a small army of kiddos involved in your ceremony then I think you'll be able to skate by without having to worry about ANOTHER wedding related event. If you don't want to miss out, a cheaper and less stressful option would be to host a pizza party or backyard BBQ event the week of the wedding for your family members and wedding party. I also just printed out a little packet with all of my timelines (ceremony broken down, reception broken down, morning of and after) and it was enough information for everyone to get through the day smoothly and without any mishaps. But in my opinion, unless you're having something extremely complicated, your party and guests will be able to figure out what's going on. Take it from me, the lazy bride lol.

View Quoted Comment

I'm thinking that I will skip it as well.