What is a rehearsal dinner?

If you have a rehearsal the night before your wedding, you have to feel your bridal party and their SO's. Typically your immediate family is also there. Sometimes people invite out of town guests if they have come into town the night before, but it's not required. You host it unless one of the sets of parents offers to.

The dinner takes place after your rehearsal with your bridal party and officiant for how the ceremony will go. The dinner is hosted for your guests (usually by the FIL's or you could host it yourself) and you do not make them pay for anything. You can invite OOT people but it's usually only those that attend the rehearsal plus any parents of participants under 18.

@LindseyO and @Mrs. Sasswood covered it! Also keep in mind that rehearsal dinners can be as formal or as casual as you want - pizza and beer is totally appropriate!

There are a lot of conflicting opinions on if out of town guests should be invited or not.. do what you can afford and what works for you. We are doing it at a local pizza place near our venue

I have two will be five year old in my wedding party and that is it so we are going to chuck e cheese after wards

Im getting married right at the venue, and there really not much to rehearse. I do want to go over things of the day of, like time for pictures etc, my mom is getting us lunch for the day of since its sooo late.

Is it ok to have a get together and review wedding day timeline in my house? Of course I will feed everyone (order food) and we will have drinks.

My wedding party under 18 are all my kids and step kids.

So its basically MOH BM, 1 GROOMS MAN AND 1 BRIDESMAID.

My FH's parents are hosting it at a greek restaurant down the road from the venue. It's going to be an early dinner though at like 4pm since the latest we can schedule the rehearsal is at 2pm. We are having 18 people invited total. It's to my understanding that it allows everyone to meet and talk about the wedding, etc. Everyone is going to be over 21 except for one so the drinks will be flowing. It's 5 o'clock somewhere.

I want a nice casual rehearsal dinner so we can just enjoy everyone's company before the big formal day but FH feels it's rude to have a casual rehearsal dinner.

@winterbride I think it depends on the wedding itself. If your wedding is more formal, I think you should have a nicer rehearsal dinner. Most of the ones I've attended are at nice restaurants or country clubs.

We had our wedding rehearsal the night before our wedding at about 7 pm. Then afterwards, because we had asked all of those people to come to the rehearsal, we took them out to dinner. It was lovely to spend the night before with them.

Rehearsal dinners are always a hosted dinner for the people you require to attend the rehearsal and their spouses/significant others. The dinner can be as informal or as informal as you want. But you pay for it, or you or FH's parents do. No one should ever pay for their own dinner.

When I have been a bridesmaid before, the dinners were hosted at a Pizza Hut, a trendy bar and grill, and a private room in a mexican restaurant. All were fine and had their own vibe.

When I got married, we rented a private room in a nice high end steak house. We invited our wedding party and officiant and their families (wives/husbands, their kids), and our parents and our VIP out of town guests. It ended up being about 25 people. I made nice invitations on Wedding Paper Divas and mailed those out so everyone had the address of the steakhouse and the time. It wasn't necessary to do a dinner that fancy or mail out invites, but I wanted to. Our wedding was a bit on the fancier side, so I wanted to continue that vibe for the RD and the brunch we hosted the morning after the wedding as well. My husband and I paid for it, just like we paid for our own wedding.