Rehearsal dinner. Do you invite anyone else besides your bridal party?

It's basically up to you. Typically, it's the bridal party, close family, people helping in the wedding (readers, singers, etc) and their guests. We have also decided to invite our out of state guests. But, we are doing a dressed down rehersal...at my mom's house, catered by Portillo's. If your rehearsal is more pricy, you may want to keep it small.

As for the flower girl, I would assume her parents would be invited as well. =)

Anyone and everyone is invited to mine, but we are having a destination wedding and our rehearsal dinner is just a backyard BBQ at the house I am renting.. everyone's situation is different, but I would say probably invite her parents so you don't have to be in charge of her

We are invite the parents but I dont think they will make. I am not to worried because we have very young kids bout 3-5 so they dont really know and understand what its all about and we are just doing a lunch on friday so

I've seen rehearsal dinners get much, much more elaborate, but I also see more and more couples who don't even have a real rehearsal, but a get together with out of town guests.

I'm a big fan of very informal rehearsal dinners (translated; not very expensive). If it was me, I wouldn't even have the FG at the rehearsal if this is the level of respect her parents have for your plans. The day of the wedding, the coordinator or whoever, is going to point her down the aisle to throw petals. She doesn't need to rehearse.

I absolutely love portillo's!!

We are planning on a nice restaurant dinner. I'm more concerned with the father since we do have a lot of my mom's friends coming from MN and most of them are not in the bridal party but they are friends of the father of the flower girl. I imagine if he invited my mom and who knows who else to another person's rehearsal dinner, he might invite all the MN guests to mine.

In addition to the wedding party, we had our parents, the parents of the children in the wedding party and spouses/fiances of people in the wedding party.

Im the same as dragonfly726

We had our parents, my grandparents (his couldnt make it) Our bridal party and their spouses, my aunts/uncles/cousins (all the ones we are close too) and the few family members that flew in. About 30 ppl total. But we had it at a very casual Cajun style restaurant that we all liked.

Im glad you asked this question I was wondering the same thing. I was planning on inviting the normal immediate family and bridal party, but wondered whether I should invite more.

Personally i would invite the family of the fg; i'm sure you are inviting them to the wedding and i think it would be a little off putting if you told them that their child can come to the dinner but they can't.

I'll be inviting close family (grandparents, parents and siblings), bridal party and probably my photographer.. You might invite the parents if you want the flower girl to attend the rehearsal dinner, but you don't have to invite everyone and their uncle.

"We'll all drop there anyway" is really disrespectful.

We had a pretty casual RD but had our immediate family and OOT guests who were here at the time of RD. I've heard a lot of opinions about it on here, but I wasn't going to leave my friend who flew from Japan to be here for our wedding out of it. I do think RD is rather flexible in terms of who you invite though.

@Jennifer - I'm totally coming to your rehearsal dinner if it's catered by Portillo's.

Our rehearsal lunch (had to do it early b/c of the venue's availability) was pretty informal - we invited WP + spouse (no kids), readers, guestbook gal + 1, and immediate family incl. grandparents. DH's mom invited her sister, but since DH's mom paid for it, she was allowed to invite whomever she wanted. Our flower girl was our best man's daughter, so we just invited the 2 of them + his wife. If they weren't related, we'd have invited the flower girl + her parents.

If you're concerned that the FG's dad will invite a ton of extra people, have a talk with him beforehand and let him know that you're handling invitations. You've invited who you did for a reason, and it's not his place to invite others. If he wants to invite people, he needs to throw his own party.

I'd say

Bridal party, immdiate family, and possibly OOT guests and for any children, bring at least their mom or dad or both...

I have a Bridesmaid that is 16, will be 17 by the wedding, and she dosne't have a car, so I'm gonna invite her mom, my aunt but that's it. Her brothers and her mom's LONG_TERM live in bF can stay home.

@Ashley - Come on up! I'll mark you down for 2 seats! =)

@Jakita, I'm not concerned about inviting her parents and her brother. My concern is them showing up with more people than I expect. Last time we were invited to a xmas party and they invited another couple who brought 3 kids with girlfriends and an extra friend. It makes you wonder how many can they round up to show up at the RD.

Another thing is, do you send invitations for the RD or just word of mouth? I was planning on getting separate invitations for the RD like a smaller invitation and not so formal as the wedding ones.

We had left over envelopes from my bridal shower invites, so I just designed some invites on MS Word to fit in those envelopes and printed them on cardstock. We wanted to send out invites vs word of mouth, in order to be extra clear about who was invited. We couldn't afford for every aunt/uncle/cousin in town to attend, even if some of the cousins who were recently married made it a kind of free for all for the family.

If you an afford to accommodate extra guests, then it's a nice thing to do, but you shouldn't feel obligated. It's not a free for all! lol

I just started my list and I'm to 38 WOW! We are having a casual backyard event with lite fair and signature cocktail. After reading comments, it will be a lot less. Parents, Bridal Party, Close Relatives and Photog. Period lol