Out of Towners and Rehearsal Dinner

It's proper ettiquete to invite them...however, if I invited allll of my oot guests, that would be 70 percent of my actual guests list. We have opted not to invite anyone except the people in the wedding party along with their significant others. My oot guests will be in the same hotel and can get together to do their own thing that night.

I would invite only the bridal party and immediate family.

Our out of town guests and family would be about 95% of our guest list so we are just having immediate family and bridal party at the rehearsal dinner and meeting up to spend time with other guests later. I think its a nice chance to spend more time with the people closest to you during a very full weekend.

Most of our OOT guests are not coming until the next day, so yes any of the OOT guests who come a day early are invited.

But it is not necessary. My cousin Jimmy made me laugh because his wife called me saying he said they are supposed to come the day before for the rehearsal. In reality, they CAN come the day before and come to the dinner, but they don't have to.

I think that used to be what was proper, but I think it's no longer the case. About 85% of our guests are from OOT. It would be nuts having a rehearsal dinner almost as large as the wedding, as it is, about 1/3 are invited because they have to be which is too big IMO. Our wedding party, their significant others (or parents for little kids), anyone else involved in the ceremony (pastor, pianist and wife) and grandparents put us at 38 people! We only have about 120-125 coming to the wedding itself!

I only plan to invite the bridal party to the rehearsal dinner. It a "rehearsal" for the party, not every one else. That's just me..... I feel everyone else will get a nice enough dinner at the reception.

The proper procedure is to invite the OOT but we have too many in our bridal party to do that so we are sticking with the bridal party, their spouses, our parents and grandparents and the officiant and his wife and leaving it at that.

We had the same problem.. our rehearsal dinner would have been huge if we invited all oot guests.. so we had a smaller dinner after the rehearsal and then we arranged with a local pub to have a meeting spot around pm that night for everyone who was in from oot.. everyone bought their own drinks.. we paid for some appetizer trays. it was not expensive.. I was worried about how it would work but was great! everyone came and it was so fun! I left by 11 as wedding was next day, but most stayed later. Here is a good article about rehearsal dinner etiquette that was helpful in planning ours: http://www.celebrationideasonline.com/rehearsal-dinner-etiquette.html

I have always heard that it's the bridal party (including FG's and RB's and their parents), their spouses, parents of the bride and groom, the officiant if you know them personally and any other VIP. Of course you can invite anyone else you want to since it's your "party"