Who comes to the rehearsal dinner?

You don't need to invite out of town people. You can keep the guest list to wedding party, parents, grandparents, and officiant only.

You don’t have to have out of town guest at the rehearsal, our rehearsal would be over 60 guests if that were the case. For us it’s: My parents, FW mom & grandma, our siblings & SO, wedding party & SO

It's a nice gesture to include OOT guests at the RD, and that's what's always done in my family, but it's not a requirement. Our RD was 55 people, and included our parents, grandparents, siblings + spouses, wedding party + spouses, and all OOT guests, who were all family. We did not invite our officiants because we did not have a rehearsal prior to the dinner. Make sure you're not forgetting about wedding party SOs, they need to be included, and certainly should be counted before you're adding in any OOTs.

I had this question too. We have Myself and FH, 11 bridesmaids and SO and 11 groomsmen and their SO (some are couples in the wedding), flower girl and her brother (her parents are included in our bridal party), other flower girl with her mom dad and brother, ring bear with his mom and dad, other ring bear (whos mom is in the BP), Step grandfather and his wife and daughter, other step grandfather, grandma and papa, granny and grumpy, mom and step dad, dad and step mom, fh parents, officiant, two on FH aunts (one is a reader the others son is in the wedding party as we has downs), two ushers and there SO's. I think that is everyone but we have like 57 people

I was in the same dilemma as you. I didn't want a two day wedding either because we we're essentially inviting a great amount of people to the rehearsal dinner. So what we did was cut the rehearsal dinner list to only wedding party and there significant others, immediate family (brothers, sisters, parents) and grandparents. We also included our officiant. We cut the out of town guests and we also cut our aunts, uncles etc. I felt bad, but I kept telling myself I'll be seeing them all the next day.

We are only inviting people who rehearse. We did add on his grandma, but that was it.

Oh! And their SO.

Only the people who are rehearsing should be going to the rehersal dinner. I know that’s hard because there are people coming from out of town but you don’t want to be stuck paying for two receptions. You should stick to the group of people who are rehearsing. For your flower girls/ ring bearers- I would have their family invited. I had a hard time with this but once I see that rule it made life and money a million times easier

Ring bear lol

We kept it to our wedding party and their SOs plus our parents. 90% of my side is coming from out of town so if we invited them all we would be hosting a mini-wedding the night before and that wasn't what we wanted.

View Quoted Comment I agree. We had a similar issue. Our guest list for the wedding is 80 and with all out of towners and wedding party came out to 60 people. Like having a 2nd wedding. So we just put the wedding party and family. It put us to 40, but thats including their kids.

OOT guests do not need to be invited. All of my FH's family are coming from OOT so his grandparents and siblings and families were also invited. No aunts, uncles, cousins, or any other OOT guests.

With immediate family, bridal party, and oot our rehearsal dinner would be 95 people out of the 100 for the wedding

its definitely not necessary to invite all out of Towners

We invited our WP and ceremony participants (readers, officiant who was a family friend, etc) and their partners, immediate family, and a couple of out of towners. we were torn on inviting all out of towners but it was getting to be a super long list so as a compromise we invited the out of town folks to join us at a bar later on for a drink.

Traditionally rehearsal dinner included bride/groom, wedding party and SO’s, parents, grandparents and all OOT guests. Today you can decide who wish to be there. We are including the bridal party and SO’s, all siblings, their SO’s and kids, grandparents, some OOT guests that are family. We will have 54 at rehearsal with the total number invites to the wedding being 134.

If you have the space and budget to invite them all, you can do it but I'm personally only inviting wedding party members (their SO's) and immediate family (parents, siblings and grandparents). Most of our siblings are already in the wedding parties so that helps but even so it will be 30 people for us.

OOT guests don’t need to be at the rehearsal but if they are in town it is polite to invite them to the dinner. We will be having almost 60 I think. We included the people you mentioned. As well as family that was in from OOT. and there are 3 couples that are providing discounted services (flowers, photography-will also be there for rehearsal, and our pianist) to our wedding that we agreed with FILs (hosting the dinner) should be invited.
I thought 60 sounded like a lot but we already got some No replies for the dinner but we’re excited to spend an evening with all these people so it works out

We're not including OOT guests, but were wondering about siblings. FH has 5 sisters and 3 stepbrothers, a few of which are involved in the wedding in some way, but we're not sure about the others. We're up to 30 with just parents and wedding party (and SOs).

We're having a brunch the day after the wedding, and OOT guests are invited to that.

If people in your wedding have kids, should it just be person + SO or person + entire family?

I am in a very similar predicament. My guest list is 80 and if I invited everyone from OOT there would be like 60 people at the rehearsal. I had an idea of having an early rehearsal dinner from about 6-8 and then maybe a cocktail hour from 8-10 with OOT guests. However, I feel like that might be putting too many things on my plate the night before the wedding. Another idea is to only have the wedding party and immediate family at the rehearsal dinner and then host a brunch with OOT friends the day after the wedding.