Rehearsal dinner help

[Izzy03]

For our rehearsal dinner, we are debating between a small dinner for 20 at a local restaurant, or a backyard cookout at my future in-laws house. They have an amazing house/backyard for entertaining, right on the intracoastal waterway in St Augustine, FL.


When we first started planning the wedding, I decided to max the guest list at 100 people, and my FFIL was not happy about only being able to invite 50 guests. My future in-laws would like to invite friends to the rehearsal dinner cookout who will not be invited to the wedding so they still feel involved in the whole thing. However, I am a little worried that the guests that are not invited to the wedding will be offended that they were only invited to the "rehearsal dinner".


I am all about having the cookout because we can also invite all of my out of town family and everyone can mingle in a laid back atmosphere. Do you think those who are not invited to the wedding will be pissed? Should we only wedding guests to the cookout?

 

[Haven]

I think it completely depends on your FFIL''s friends--it sounds like he doesn''t think they''ll be upset by being invited to the RD only, but I would ask him again just to be sure.

If it were me, I would only want the BP and close family at the RD, and I would feel very uncomfortable with people who aren''t invited to the wedding being there. However, we were able to invite everyone we wanted to invite to the wedding, if the case were different, I may have a different opinion.

How do you feel about it?

 

[luvthemstrawberries]

Date: 1/2/2009 3:51:20 AM
Author: Haven
I think it completely depends on your FFIL''s friends--it sounds like he doesn''t think they''ll be upset by being invited to the RD only, but I would ask him again just to be sure.

If it were me, I would only want the BP and close family at the RD, and I would feel very uncomfortable with people who aren''t invited to the wedding being there. However, we were able to invite everyone we wanted to invite to the wedding, if the case were different, I may have a different opinion.

How do you feel about it?

I agree - I think I''d feel weird having people there who aren''t even going to be at the wedding the very next day. I''d rather have it laid back and relaxed with people I want there, not people the host wants there because he was limited with the number he could invite to a wedding that''s not his. Ultimately don''t let his being upset bother you. I think you should have who you want at the RD, not other people that aren''t invited to the wedding.

 

[katamari]

What about a sendoff brunch the next day? It could be a BBQ style lunch, and as many people as wanted could drop by to send you well wishes before you left for your honeymoon. But, I do think that it would be inappropriate to invite people to the rehearsal who are not invited to the wedding. Especially because the rehearsal dinners typically only involve a small segment of the guests who are invited to the wedding.

 

[Winslet]

I tend to agree that some of the cookout guests might feel badly about not also being invited to the wedding. I probably don''t have the best advice for this situation, but is there any way that you could turn the cookout into a second wedding reception after your big day? (since it seems as though there will already be a lot of people there) and maybe have a smaller rehearsal dinner for just the wedding party and close family? I guess it would depend on how far FFIL''s friends live from where you are having the wedding for this to work, but it''s just a suggestion!

 

[meresal]

Izzy: If they don''t think that their friends will be hurt, then that is what they think. IMPO, it is odd that they would think it''s ok to invite people not invited to the wedding to the RD. It''s not really a thing for friends. What I did to alleviate stress, was hand the entire RD over to the FIL''s. They are paying for the whole thing, and they can do whatever they want.

If you think you can do that, I would highly recommend it