Out of Town Guests & Rehearsal dinners

We are in the same boat! FMIL said we need to invite all OOT guests, well, that's everyone! FMIL wants us to invite all 120 guests to our RD. We wanted to do a simple sit-down dinner, but that wasn't feasible because of how many people we would have included. We are renting a picnic shelter and having a big cook out. Other ideas I've seen: get a catering tray from a BBQ company, rent out a pizzeria, set up a taco/burrito bar.

@Holly what you're suggesting is not called family style. It is called potluck and you should never ask people to do potluck for a rehearsal dinner. That has to be hosted by you 100%.

Personally, I think having all the OOT guests at a welcome party is rude to the 'in town guests', expensive, and anti climactic to the wedding itself.

Agree with @Celia. Most welcome dinners I've heard of are usually for everyone invited to the wedding (usually, they're for out-of-town weddings or DWs). Not sure how it's anti-climactic though unless you choose to make it some extravagant event similar to the wedding. In my experience, these are usually simply rehearsal dinners with a guest list that's been expanded to include all guests who made the trip for the wedding. I don't think I've ever heard of a welcome dinner for a local wedding.

As an out of town guest and family member, I've been invited to 2 rehearsal dinners. With both, I had wished they hadn't invited us and just tacked the extra OOT guest RD costs onto the wedding hosting. The weddings were some of the most lackluster hosted receptions I've ever attended. We left both a bit early, to get something to eat.

With one RD, we couldn't get a flight early enough in the day, to get there in time. We ended up flying out a day early and paid for an extra night at the hotel, rental car, more meals, and took an extra day off work; the meal was definitely not worth it.

With the other, the RD dinner food, chosen by the groom's mother, was way better than the reception food chosen by the bride. At least we got one good meal that weekend. (It wasn't the issue of the MOG trying to outshine the bride/wedding. She knew how to correctly host guests. The bride decided to skimp on guest hosting, to spend her budget elsewhere).

Almost all of our guest are OOT, but we are getting married at a B&B that hosts 24 people (parents, BP, grandparents & siblings are the only ones staying there). We will have rehearsal at the B&B and go to our favorite bar after. We are not hosting anything by means of food but we are hoping that guests will come & hang out. By catching up with a lot of guests before the wedding we are hoping it makes guests feel like they got to spend time with us because we appreciate everyone traveling to be with us.

You all have such great points and I really appreciate all the feedback! We are stationed in San Diego & FH is in the Navy so all of our guests will be traveling besides our coworkers and the few friends we've made in our neighborhood. We are trying to do something more on the casual side to invite EVERYONE as more of an optional meet and greet and a thank you than a sit down. We've thought of pizza and beer but just haven't figured out a way to accommodate +150 people We were originally going to do a taco food truck since San Diego is known for their incredible Mexican food but the ones I have seen have been equivalent to a sit down dinner for BP, SO's and immediate family. As we are a military couple on a tight budget I really appreciate all of the affordable options and ideas and will definitely be avoiding the high cost if I can help it

It's all soooo expensive! We are doing a fire pizza oven. Just doing wedding party, sig others, and wedding officiant. That alone is 50 people! Crazy how it all adds up!

We are doing our BP/immediate family rehearsal dinner hosted by the FILs on Thursday (our priest has a conflict on Friday evening), and then a welcome cocktail party with the whole wedding guest list on Friday evening. We originally were only going to invite family, WP and out of towners, but then realized that's about 60% of the guest list and splits some social groups, which was awkward (for instance, FI has a bunch of fraternity brothers that are traveling, some that are local, and some local ones that are part of the BP. Would have been strange to invite the ones traveling and the BP ones, but not the 4-5 that are local and not in the BP). That said, we're hoping for a lot of declines for Friday night...we found a great beer hall that's inexpensive for our city, but it's still going to be several thousand extra.

Oh no, I hadn't even thought of this as an issue. I assumed the RD would be us, wedding party, their SOs (and in a couple of cases young children), and the officiant. Maybe get together at a bar with the OOT guests afterwards?

You absolutely do not have to invite OOT guests to your RD. We had 40 people at our RD and that was just the bridal party! We had so many OOT guests at our wedding that if we had invited them to our RD, it would have pretty much been our wedding reception! The only people that need to be at your RD is immediate family, people involved in the ceremony (bridal party, readers, FG/RB), and their SO's, and sometimes grandparents.

How did you notify OOT of the post RD gathering for drinks? was it in their invitation or something else?