Missouri-St Louis

Rehearsal Dinner

I have a question and want to know how other people would deal.  My dad is paying for a lot of our wedding. (like 2/3)  His family is going to pay for the rehearsal dinner.  They live a distance away, but came down to visit and my fiance told me they wanted us to take his brothers and sisters to have some alone time.  The real reason was so they could pick the rehearsal dinner location without us.  I want some input because I don't want my friends and family who are coming to have to eat somewhere we don't necessarily like.  Do the parents usually do the rehearsal dinner without the couples input?

Re: Rehearsal Dinner

  • KJDOHERTYKJDOHERTY member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    Are you saying that your FI's parents are going to pay for the dinner?  If that's the case, then the polite thing would be to consult with you two to see what you think of the dinner location, which I imagine most parents do.  However, if they're paying it's really up to them to decide where they do the dinner since they'll be hosting.  Have you or FI tried asking them where they're looking at?  Maybe you could phrase it as, "We know you're not from St. Louis, so we thought you might find it helpful if we gave you handful of places we think would be great for a dinner"  The tricky thing about this is you kinda want an idea of their budget ahead of time, it might come off as snobby if you give them choices they can't afford.How do you know they purposefully wanted to pick the location without you?  If you know they did, do you know why?  Do they think you'll like being surprised?
  • shawna77inilshawna77inil member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    Well, this is my first marriage so I'm not sure what the "norm" is, but my fiance's Mom came to me with a couple of options that she thought would be nice and let us pick which one we wanted.  I told her that it really made no difference to us, they were both comparable and we were happy with wherever she wanted to go (she has been trying to be super helpful but not pushy, so we wanted to give her absolute choice on the final product LoL) but she made it very clear that she wanted to make sure we were happy with the choices.  She had it down to Fischer's and the Shrine, which has very good food at their little restaurant!  I was pretty surprised at how good it was and how reasonable they are.  But anyway, that was my experience with the rehearsal dinner decision.
  • edited December 2011
    I would say that's very nice of his parents to pay, but it would be nice to make the decision together. You might know what's close to your wedding location/timing, etc. My fiance's parents are laid back and out of town. They let my FI and I choose the location and said they would be happy to pay wherever we selected. Try asking them to see what type of food or space they were looking for, they you can make some suggestions. Good luck, I know it can be tricky.
  • edited December 2011
    FI's family is paying for the RD, but we (I) did research on places close to the ceremony site because they are from St. Charles and We're getting married at Tower Grove Park. FMIL is very supportive and open to whatever we wanted, so it made the process pretty easy.
  • schmdtdwnschmdtdwn member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    My parents have decided to pay for the RD since FI parents can not afford to.  My mom definitely asked us where we would like to have it and I picked our favorite family restaurant, which made both me and my parents happy.  I even made the invitations so my mom didn't have to deal with it.I would say most of the time parents will ask the couple for their input on what they would like but sometimes people feel like if they are paying than it should be their decision.
  • jlk0219jlk0219 member
    First Anniversary Combo Breaker First Comment
    edited December 2011
    Ugh.  We had similar drama with FI's parents. I would consider it polite to ask your opinion before deciding without you, but that's me.  FI's parents are also from OOT (Wichita) and they don't know anything in StL.  So... we did some research and chose a place we'd like to have it, keeping in mind location, cost, and ease of location (someplace that would be easy for OOT's to find and not get lost).  Then FI's parents told us they wanted to have it at Hometown Buffet.  Now, at the risk of sounding snobby I had hoped on something a little nicer than Hometown Buffet!  So basically FI had to put his foot down and say we really wanted it somewhere else (and we chose Ravanelli's BTW which is not even that expensive! It's not like we were asking for the Top of the Met or something). I agree with pp and would put it like "We know you don't know the area so we were thinking of these places..." Unless you were asking for some place REALLY expensive I can't see why they would not want your input.
This discussion has been closed.
Choose Another Board
Search Boards