Rehearsal Not At The Venue

We did it at our venue but didn't really rehearse so much as just show my parents where everything was. All we had planned was "walk up to the altar and get married."

As long as you don't have anything crazy planned you'd be fine not rehearsing at your venue (or at all).

If it puts your mind to ease, sure, have it at the hotel.

I experienced this last year and, although the ceremony turned out little like the rehearsal, it was a fun time before heading to a fabulous dinner.

Hope that is of some comfort, because it's gonna be GREAT!

@AMW: not rehearsing at all isn't an option. We have a large wedding party. My family would look at me like I was crazy if we didn't have a rehearsal.

@Nonna: yes that definitely helped.

We won't have access to our venue until 2 hrs prior to show time. We may plan on having a mini rehearsal the week before or just wing it the day of. But ours will only be wedding party, no kids or parents etc. Simple simple.

My venue does rehearsals on Thursday's only. Our wedding isn't until Sunday. We are just going to rehearse at my moms house Saturday. I wouldn't dare have anyone in my bridal party or my officiant come to a Thursday rehearsal for a Sunday wedding when 4 people are out of state. As long as everyone knows who they're waking with and what time to start walking, we figure it's not rocket science.

My cousin had her rehearsal after the rehearsal dinner (which was at a different place). It worked out fine, it was just telling people when to walk and where to stand. It took maybe 10 minutes.

I got married in an outdoor location, and it was POURING the day before. I mean black skies, huge raindrops kind of pouring. Luckily the reception hall was open, so we held our rehearsal in there. It worked out great, actually. We just practiced who was going to walk when, where they would stand, bouquets down (so the photographer could see the smiles!). It was fine. Luckily the next day was a perfectly sunny 70 degrees.

Edit: Since we were at the reception hall, we also rehearsed the grand entrance. Also a great thing to look into.

Our venue doesn't do rehearsals if the space is booked as well. If you're not having an overly religious ceremony, you can have the rehearsal anywhere. Our rehearsal will consist of " hey BM 1, meet GM1 you'll be walking together". Ours is a quick ceremony (no special readings)so there was really no reason for us rehearse. I wouldn't worry too much, especially with a DOC - make sure she knows the drill and I'm sure it'll go smoothly!

We aren't doing a rehearsal. Our venue is booked most days, so it would have to be on the day of the wedding and there doesn't seem to be much of a point. I trust people to handle walking up and down the aisle without a ton of preparation.

If you want to rehearse in the venue for your own peace of mind, I'd go ahead and do it with just you, FH, the officiant, and the DOC. If you're just worried about the bridal party processing and recessing, then I'd do a rehearsal with them in an empty room!

We also cannot have our rehearsal at our venue. I contacted my officiant, who officiated a lot at my venue, and she recommended that we either rehearse at the hotel that we have guests staying at or at the private room where we will have our rehearsal dinner. As all of our guests are in state, we don't have a hotel so we will be rehearsing in the private room where we scheduled our rehearsal dinner.

Following because I'm going to be in a similar situation and I'm worried about it too.

We're having a destination wedding so we're having a dinner at our resort versus the actual location that the wedding will be taking place… We're probably not going to have a rehearsal… Will just match up each bridesmaid with a groomsman and they'll walk down the aisle together and then back up... hopefully us not having one isn't a big deal :-)

I've never heard of such a thing. Not being able to rehearse in my space would be a deal breaker for me.

If you can't rehearse at the venue, I would find a room of comparable size and rehearse there. I'm assuming you want to make sure you have enough music for the entire procession? That would be my concern with a large bridal party.

We are rehearsing off site too because there's a wedding the night before and my other option was morning of... lol NO.

It is perfectly fine to rehearse off site. All people need to know is who they walk down with, the order they stand in, the order they walk out in. All the extra crap like an alter, an arch etc is just props

@Elle happens all the time when there's Friday night weddings before a Saturday night wedding etc.

Our venue does rehearsal the morning of. We're having a small wedding with a small wedding party so I don't see it being a huge deal. We're still having a "rehearsal dinner" the night before but it's more to see my FILs since they live out of state!

I don't see a problem rehearsing off site. You could do the rehearsal off site and do a quick run through that morning?

I was a bridesmaid last year and we had the rehearsal in the MOB backyard. Things ended up being switched around at the actual wedding but it wasn't that bad.