Pre and Post wedding meals

If you can, its a nice thing to do.
But its definitely not required! Those things add up really fast!!

View Quoted Comment That's what I was worried about. I thought about doing one or the other, but both might be a little bit of a stretch. I guess it depends on where we land on catering cost. What do people usually do? Like a restaurant with a fixed menu? Food truck at the park? Cook out at someone's house? (This one might be hard because we don't really have the room for our whole guest list at our house). Would taking everyone to like the casino buffet be completely tacky!? (Not that I love this idea all that much, but it's more affordable and people could stay and have fun if they wanted). What about brunch, what is usually the etiquette for that? Where do you hold that?

Definitely not required but its nice to do. Our rehearsal/welcome dinner, we invited OOT guests in addition to the bridal party and are just doing a pasta station and a few passed apps at the restaurant in the hotel we're all staying in. We are doing a brunch as well because we have a lot of OOT guests and quite a few people driving 1+ hours for our wedding and staying at the hotel, so we figured it was the right thing to do since they're traveling so far. Our breakfast is $18/pp for a decent buffet. The dinner and the breakfast each are about $1500 so this added $3000 onto our budget

View Quoted Comment Wow, okay. Now I'm freaking out a bit. Better start looking into all of that

I don't think it's required. I've never been invited to more than a next day brunch to open gifts, and I thought that was weird enough! We are having rehearsal dinner (night before), wedding day breakfast, wedding day lunch, and next day breakfast... but ONLY for the wedding party and parents, and ONLY because grandmas and aunts wanted to help somehow.

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Don't freak out!! The cost of our welcome dinner is so high because the restaurant actually required us to have an open bar for our 2 hour event, which was a sacrifice but was easiest for our guests and BP since everyone was coming a distance and staying in that hotel. The pp price for that is $50. You can do a super casual rehearsal dinner, and even do pizza or have it at a local restaurant that isn't ridiculous and requires an open bar!

Dinners before and day after wedding brunches or lunch have never been regular expectations. And often when they do occur, they are only for people traveling a distance and staying a few days where the wedding if. Most I know of, people have either a before or after day meal that functions as a family reunion for one family or the other, and often as not the bride and groom do not pay any part of it. Older family, maybe parents, maybe a few aunts and uncles and cousins, local to the wedding, will gather with some of their side of the family. Sometimes, a groom's family hosting a rehearsal dinner will choose to add some out of town guests. Relatively few people can afford to add $2,000 to 12,000 dollars for such events, and those at a hotel or restaurant venue can run that much. If your basic wedding budget from B & G and parents is 20, 000 to -30,000 or even 100,000, and you have no problem with that, maybe you can afford more easily and that is fine. But do not let anyone tell you you ought to do it, or everybody does it. Most B & G do not.

We did a day after brunch, because a lot of our guests had travelled. However we just did it at my in-laws’ place, got bacon, eggs, rolls, pancake mix and juice from Costco and DH and my FIL cooked it all on the BBQ. It wasn’t expensive and for us it was a nice way to spend more time with guests we don’t see all that often. It’s not a must-do though so don’t stress out about it!

I'm not doing these. I mean we are having a rehearsal dinner obviously but that's it. I think these are more if you have a lot of out of town guests staying, but I still would never expect a couple who just paid for a wedding to pay for two extra meals as well for everyone. Don't feel obligated to do this. No wedding I have ever gone to did a welcome dinner or a goodbye brunch lol.

We are having a welcome party but no day after brunch.

If you want to do it:

Re welcome dinner: still figuring this out but I think we will get an ice cream truck to come to the hotel around 8:30pm as a dessert instead.

Re brunch: Does your hotel have breakfast included? Not terribly fancy most places but that’s how we are doing our brunch. Or is there a local park you can get a box of bagels and coffee and have a picnic?

View Quoted Comment That's the thing. Out of 65 guests (not final yet, but still) only 17 are local, and one of them is my mom. Everyone else is from OOT and all are family. I guess on some level I assumed we would get together the night they all arrived, but I never thought that it would be our responsibility to feed everyone then and the morning after too. We are paying for this completely on our own. Our parents don't really have the money to support us, which I have no problem with. My mother often borrows money from us and so I know when she mentioned this to me, she had no intention of offering to help with any of it. She talked about it like it was a requirement (which I guess on her side of the family it is). His family is more in the spirit of "everyone bring something and we can have a potluck gathering" but since they are all coming from OOT that's not really possible.

View Quoted Comment We aren't staying at a hotel. We are going home. We have three young kids and live an hour from the city everyone will likely be staying in. Our rental is small, but maybe everyone would be willing to come to us for the brunch. Idk, I'm not sure. I guess I still have time to figure it out.

View Quoted Comment Oh wow. Well I think it is still a choice, if you are on a budget especially. Perhaps you could invite family out to dinner but make it clear it's a split check? Perhaps not ideal but I know if I were the guest, I would understand. Or go a super cheap, light route at your home if need be. Perhaps lots of snack trays and appetizers, or a casual hot dog and burger sort of cook out. Good luck with whatever you decide! I personally wouldn't do it still after spending so much on catering but maybe I'm a bad hostess 😅

It is not required and I doubt any of your guests are expecting it, but it is nice to do when you have guests traveling far to come to your wedding. We had a welcome dinner and a farewell brunch because it was a semi-DW for our guests (about 1.5-2 hours away) and it was over Christmas weekend so I wanted to splurge on them.

For our DW, my family hosted a Welcome BBQ at their rental house the night before our wedding. Ribs, chicken, burgers, wine & beer. Figured brunch the day after the wedding may be a waste as guests probably want to sleep in, enjoy room service, or need to catch a flight—basically just be on their own.

We aren’t doing either of these things. I went to a wedding where they invited those of us that stayed in the hotel (was in the wedding party) to the morning after brunch and then they didn’t pay for it. That was quite a shock. Since we can’t afford to host either the welcome dinner or the morning after brunch we will not be.

I've been to a lot of friend's weddings and never been invited to either a welcome dinner or morning after brunch. My cousins on Dad's side did invite us to their rehearsal dinners (we are their only cousins - their mom is an only child and its just our 2 Dads that have kids) but we werent getting into town early enough for either because we live so far away. And the morning after my Aunt and Uncle hosted just immediate family (so the cousin that didnt get married and us) at their house for brunch and the newlyweds had already left on their honeymoon.

Neither are required. (For my cousin on my mom's side we werent invited out at all the night before and the morning after my aunt and uncle and other cousin (her twin) came and joined us for breakfast at our hotel but we all paid for our own. )