Optional After Wedding Brunch

Don't offer it. Whatever you invite people to attend, you host.

Can you cut the rehearsal dinner for anyone not rehearsing?

https://www.weddingwire.com/wedding-forums/optional-after-wedding-brunch/aecb31beddc057ff.html#

I wouldn't honestly worry about the Sunday morning. My experience in catering ......attendance is not great. A lot of people want to get on the road.

My mom says rehearsal dinners are for those in the wp and oot guest. But that might be different at a destination wedding as everyone is out of town.

With all due respect to mom, she's incorrect. Rehearsal dinner are to do a quick run though (which no one needs anyway) and thank your BP/parents.

You’re already offering so many extra events, I think the brunch is not necessary. People will probably want to get a head start on going home anyway. If you do decide to have it though, you have to host (aka pay).

Yes our rehearsal dinner is less rehearsal, more get everyone together who flew in for the wedding really. I wouldn’t feel right not inviting some of the guests considering everyone is making such a long trip. What about if we just did a word of mouth invite, “hey we are going to brunch if your group would like to join” type thing instead of having it on the invitation? Most people are planning to stay a few days after the wedding as a vacay since they are already there.

Our rehearsal dinner will have family, bridal party (to include spouses and kids), and Out of town guests. We are anticipating 44 people for that meal.

And this is how weddings get so expensive.....

We didn't have a rehearsal but we hosted an RD for our out of town guests - we had about 24 people attend. We also did a brunch like you discussed - we just mentioned that we planned to eat breakfast on Sunday morning at the hotel restaurant buffet @10am. Most people who stayed at the hotel joined us but people came and went, it wasn't a formal get together.

I would cut the Thursday cocktail party. There's no need for that when your rehearsal dinner is a welcome dinner. Get rid of that and host the brunch instead.

Rehearsal is definitely necessary for some people, and it's really nice to have your family/BP have dinner the night before. Don't skip it.

On the OTHER hand, there's no way we would have ever made brunch the morning after our wedding. Don't bother.

"Rehearsal is unnecessary as is the brunch. Skip it."

While certainly not required by etiquette standards, IMO, destination weddings operate under a different standard than local weddings. Or at least, they should. When you're asking all your guests to take time off work, fly to a destination, and spend money on a hotel for the whole weekend, you should try to host more than just the reception. If that means cutting the guest list or scaling back on flowers or whatever, so be it. Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but if you choose to have a DW, I just think the standards are higher, and that's coming from someone who hosted a DW.

Thanks everyone, I agree when asking people to travel you must host extra. I think I will look at cutting the cocktail party and doing the brunch or a different kind of outing instead.

You can do a more scaled down "brunch"- more of a drop off of food, bagels, lox, mixed smoked fish and some frittatas. Not as expensive but also still hosting. 1-2 staff helping out with clean up, build your own mimosa bar and lots of Gatorade.

FH and I are planning on doing that for the brunch, and are hosting it at the community room of our apartment building.

Definitely do not offer a brunch if they have to pay for it. Regardless, they would be paying for their breakfast, so they should just be on their own the next day

I'd skip the cocktails on Thursday. We did a DW with a hosted welcome dinner on Friday, wedding Saturday, and farewell brunch on Sunday and covered guest costs for all three. We had some guests come earlier in the week and some stay past Sunday. There were still group gatherings but it was casual and word of mouth so everyone picked up their own tabs.