Thursday or Friday Rehearsal Dinner?

I've never heard of doing this, but I can see why some people would do it!

I would touch base with your wedding party first and make sure everyone can take an extra day off of work etc. Friday-Sunday for a wedding is pretty easy to take off for, but Thursdays can be a little tricky depending on your employer!

I would have it the day before the wedding. I get wanting recovery time, but the most important thing is convenience to the people involved — almost none of our wedding party would’ve been able to come a day earlier. Most worked on Friday and traveled after work it took half days, in fact, so we ended up skipping a proper rehearsal altogether bc I knew it’d be a big ask to have them travel in early (at least one of my bridesmaids had a relatively new job and could not leave work a minute earlier than 5pm Friday!), and it would’ve cost them all an extra night in a hotel as well. We did have a welcome party the night before the wedding and we did stay up too late haha and one of the groomsmen was ultra hungover but everyone rallied 😂

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I agree with Shelly! I would first check with everyone about their thoughts on the Thursday rehearsal dinner. If everyone can make it, I think it's a great idea! Since it sounds like you know that you might end up drinking a little more at the rehearsal dinner, I think the Thursday option for the rehearsal dinner would be easiest. That way, no one would be recovering on the wedding day. I also love the idea of spending Friday with your wedding party. If wedding party can't make it on Thursday, Friday would still work! If you do end up holding the rehearsal dinner on Friday, I would maybe try to find a way to limit the number of beverages per person to keep things a little more low key and prevent people from being hungover for the wedding.

I think the first step would be to talk to your bridal party to see if this would even work for them. Since they are from different areas, it sounds like they would most likely have to take both Thursday and Friday off from work. Additional, they would also have to spend another night at a hotel which to they might not want to do or have the money to do. If they are good with it then confirm with your venue that you can use the space on Thursday rather than Friday.

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I agree with this. Plus it will be fresh in their memories where it won't with a day in between.

I was in a bridal party that had thursday rehearsal dinner and i hated it haha. because 1. pretty much everyone had to travel there so it meant taking way more time off and 2. it also meant just having more downtime there to not really do anything. but if yours is local for majority of the party that's fine!

If my best friend asked me to attend a Thursday rehearsal, I'd be super annoyed but I'd do it. I don't think it's an appropriate ask of out of town people, just so you have time to recover. You can easily refrain from drinking so much the night before the wedding and party on Saturday and Sunday.


Arriving on Thursday means an extra day off work, an extra day at a hotel, an additional 3 meals away from home. Were you planning to pick up the tab for the spa and golfing? If not, that would be even more added expense.

I agree that the idea of a Thursday rehearsal sounds lovely and especially the spa day. But like everyone else I am thinking it might be to much to ask everyone to take an additional day off of work.

We’re doing our rehearsal on Thursday (4/1) @ 1 with our dinner at 430. Our wedding is on 4/3/21 which is a Saturday. I wanted that Friday for last minute things plus I’m getting my nails & a pedi in the afternoon.

Personally, I don't really think it's fair to have a Thursday rehearsal dinner if you have members of the bridal party who will have to travel from out of town. They already have to pay enough to stay Friday night and Saturday night, and asking them to pay for yet another night (and take an additional day off work) is a lot in my opinion. I definitely would NOT recommend asking the bridesmaids and groomsmen to come a full day earlier just so that you can have a Thursday rehearsal dinner. If everyone were local, then that would be a different story.

For us, a Thursday rehearsal would have been our only option because our venue had a wedding booked Friday. We just didn’t bother having a rehearsal/dinner. I couldn’t imagine asking my friends/family to take more time off/spend more money on an extra night.

Touch base with them first. But is they can, most mostly local people miss a couple who cannot get there, but hold it anywhete from Thurss back to 2 weeks before the wedding, on a weekend. I like this so much better. local church weddings, or venues, the rehearsal time may be Sun 2 weeks before at 11 am, or Tues eve 6:30-7:15, and just a few key people, the couple, at least the music person, 1 or 2 others. And no one has a big dinner at an odd time with so few. So a completely separate time is set for the rehearsal Dinner . I had a bridesmaid only dinner a day before mine, and the guys had a lunch to say thank you the previous week. Whenever possible, avoid the rehearsal dinner being the night before, if it does not matter financially in missed work to get the extra day.

Thursday rehearsal dinners are not usually a "thing" unless the whole wedding party is local to your city. Given that you have all of your bridesmaids traveling from out of town, I'd probably have a Friday rehearsal dinner, unless everyone is on board with taking an extra day off of work, paying for an extra night of lodging, etc. Talk to them first to get their thoughts and opinions. That being said, I've never attended a rehearsal dinner before that wasn't the night before the wedding. A Thursday rehearsal dinner is asking quite a lot of your bridal party, so you'd need to make sure that they're ok with it

I think check with your BMs but go with Thursday. All my BMs are coming in days early anyway, they decided to do this without me saying a word.

Ours was on a Thursday.

Now, we had an entirely local BP, and several of them had to *work* on Friday night,so that worked best for us.

So, it really is a 'know your crowd' thing. If it can work for you, do it. If it doesn't... maybe just cut off the alcohol early.

We did this. We had a Welcome Dinner with an open bar so we wanted to make sure we avoided a bunch of hungover people at our wedding. Our married friends had warned us about how a bunch of people showed up to their wedding late and hungover from the Welcome Dinner the night before their wedding. We did have a semi-destination wedding and 90% of our guests had to travel for our wedding so most were planning on being there by Thursday anyway.


We did host a cookout/pool party at our house the night before the wedding, but had limited alcohol so no one got too crazy.

While everyone is very concerned with your BP making it, I also suggest you check with your Venue to see what day they hold rehearsals.

We're having a Friday wedding, so our rehearsal dinner will probably be Wednesday or Thursday (all but two people in our BP are local, but I imagine they will both come up a couple days before our wedding as it's my brother and sister in law.) However, if our Wedding was on a Saturday we would HAVE to do the rehearsal on Thursday since our venue holds Friday Night weddings.