Who gets invited to the rehearsal dinner?

Generally it's the bridal party and their significant others if they have them, immediate family, the officiant, and sometimes grandparents.

Some people like to invite the OOT people if they're in town for the night of the rehearsal, but it's definitely not necessary. FH's overbearing aunt invited herself and her husband to ours. But we aren't paying for it soooooo whatever.

Some people include OOT guests but that depends on your budget. I'm doing bridal party and their families or SO's, immediate family and their SO's, and grandparents. That brings my count to 40 so I'm not extending an invite to OOT guests. If you have a rehearsal, you must invite everyone who's supposed to be at the rehearsal and their SO's to the dinner. Family dynamics are different for everyone. For my family, rehearsal dinner should include immediate family and grandparents. I'm sure that's not true for everyone though. Inviting OOT guests is up to you.

We aren't including OOT guests - because that would be half the guests invited to the wedding.

IMO - its immediate family (siblings, parents, grandparents, children (if applicable)), the WP, and all their SOs

I've never heard of including OOT guests until I came to WW.

We're just doing immediate family and those attending the rehearsal.

See that's what I figured too. FMIL is kinda of treating our wedding more like a family reunion and while I love her to death and get that she's excited it's getting annoying TBH. I'll have FH talk to her and let her know that because we are on a budget we can only accommodate immediate family and our bridal party.

Just keep it to the wedding party and their significant others. I hate, hate, hate the trend of making the rehearsal dinner into a mini wedding.

We don't plan on doing a wedding rehearsal, but we would like to do dinner the night before. we've discussed this a little bit and I'd like it to just be our parents and grandparents, BM & HOH (and significant others) and our officiant/my aunt.

Our family lives in 3 different states and so despite being together for 5 years, our dad's have only met each other once. It will also give his parents time to get used to being close to each other again after almost 20 years of not talking.

You don't have to include OOT guests, but that used to be the tradition! It was also more common when most weddings were happening in someone's hometown where most of the guests lived there as well.

You can definitely keep the list to just immediate family, the wedding party and their dates!

Some people include all OOT guests, but I think that's usually only cases where most guests are local. A rehearsal dinner with just wedding party and their SOs is perfectly okay.

If your FMIL feels strongly about including OOT guests, could you do a rehearsal dinner with your wedding party and she can invite all OOT guests to join afterwards for a hosted cocktail hour.

Every wedding I've been to since I was little has had OOT guests invited to the RD. In my circles its only been a recent trend to not include OOT guests (and even then, its still rare to not be invited).

That being said, it is in no way a necessity, especially when FMIL isn't paying for it.

I have seen that a lot of people choose to invite OOT guests. We have a very small wedding party but with spouses, children, parents, etc. our RD guest list quickly climbed to 30 people. We decided to host a beach bonfire for all of the wedding guests after the RD so we can visit with them before the wedding.

According to my FMIL, anyone she wants. Traditionally, it's bridal party and significant others, immediate family, and the officiant if you choose to invite them.

We included only OOT guests because we had a DW. We had a total of 20 people at our rehearsal dinner.

We're planning on immediate family, grandparents, bridal party, and officiant; so basically everyone who is at the rehearsal. I was an OOT guest at a wedding last year where the couple invited us and other OOT guests for drinks at the rehearsal dinner venue, after the dinner was wrapped up. We paid for ourselves and I thought it was fun to get to know the other guests before the wedding.

Rehearsal participants, their so's and your parents. I had never heard of OOT guests being invited until I came here.

It's a rehearsal dinner; it's literally to thank your BP for rehearsing. It's not a stand alone social event. Keep it simple and short.