Informal Rehearsal Dinner

SamanthaRoy

My question is quite a read so I thank anyone who takes the time to read and respond in advance.  

A little bit about our wedding. We are a military couple getting married in the city that we live in, meaning it is pretty much a destination wedding for everyone but us.  We chose to do it this way for many reasons, but we are doing our best to be as accommodating as we can be.  That being said...

The future hubby and I decided that we wanted to have an informal rehearsal dinner (buffet, casual music, not super dressy, almost like a bbq but at a beachy restaurant) for only those directly involved in the wedding.  We are not sit down, formal party type of people.  

Since it is a destination type wedding, and there are a lot of people traveling into town, we thought it was a great idea to invite everybody in town for the wedding after the "dinner" part to come down and have a cocktail with us to meet and mingle with everybody.  We will be handing out drink tickets to everyone who wants to come down, so at least their first drink or two is covered. 

My future in-laws have been generous enough to take care of the rehearsal dinner, which we have been very appreciative of.   We talked over what we hoped to have, saw a few venues with them and they agreed that what we wanted would be fine.  

Now that our website and save the dates are out, my MIL is losing her mind over the wording that I used saying that she doesnt want to confuse people and its not formal and I can't use the words that I used to describe the rehearsal.  She has recruited family members to call and casually mention that the website is "confusing" (by the way I have analytics on the site and it gets no more than one hit a day)  I think that she is more worried about what her friends and family think about the party that she is paying for rather than take into account all of the work that I've done day after day.  

SOOOO after all of that.  How can I word the description of the "Rehearsal Party" to please her so that she doesn't find the description confusing or misleading and so that I can get on with the rest of my wedding planning and stop losing sleep over this.  

Here is what I have so far: (rough draft)

"Rehearsal Party

We are having a two part Rehearsal Party!

Between the hours of 4-6 we are having an intimate Reharsal party with only those closely involved in the wedding. 

 At 6:00, we invite all guests not attending the Rehearsal Party to come down to the venue to mix and mingle with JJ, SS & their guests.

If you have any questions, please feel free to call J or S!  

Again, THANK YOU for taking the time to read this...... My bridesmaids and friends are sick of hearing about it and I know you girls will have some wonderful advice!

-S

photokitty

It is confusing and it sounds like a tiered party, which a lot of people find offensive.

You have basically told people - I'm feeding and hosting these people, but the rest of you can come afterwards bc you're not as important.

You should not reference the dinner AT ALL. The only people who need to know about it are those invited. The drink tickets are a terrible idea. Either host all the drinks or don't offer them.

Your FMIL has every right to be concerned. She is the host of this event and she is one who will look tacky and rude bc you are telling people people they aren't invited to the first part of her event, but only after the VIPs are fed. It is incredibly rude thing to point out to the guests not invited to dinner.

You should have your rehearsal and dinner, remove ALL references to it on your website and give that info only to those invited.

You can mention to people that you and FI will be at "such-and-such location" at 6pm until Xpm if you want to stop by and visit with us. You should be sure to remove ANY signs that the guests invited from 4-6 were fed and hosted. I would recommend having the after-get-together at a completely different location.

You have put your FMIL in an awkward situation and have probably insulted some of your guests. Remove all the info on your website until you and FMIL can come up with a plan and wording that will not offend more of your guests.

GL!

SamanthaRoy said:

My question is quite a read so I thank anyone who takes the time to read and respond in advance.  

A little bit about our wedding. We are a military couple getting married in the city that we live in, meaning it is pretty much a destination wedding for everyone but us.  We chose to do it this way for many reasons, but we are doing our best to be as accommodating as we can be.  That being said...

The future hubby and I decided that we wanted to have an informal rehearsal dinner (buffet, casual music, not super dressy, almost like a bbq but at a beachy restaurant) for only those directly involved in the wedding.  We are not sit down, formal party type of people.  

Since it is a destination type wedding, and there are a lot of people traveling into town, we thought it was a great idea to invite everybody in town for the wedding after the "dinner" part to come down and have a cocktail with us to meet and mingle with everybody.  We will be handing out drink tickets to everyone who wants to come down, so at least their first drink or two is covered. 

My future in-laws have been generous enough to take care of the rehearsal dinner, which we have been very appreciative of.   We talked over what we hoped to have, saw a few venues with them and they agreed that what we wanted would be fine.  

Now that our website and save the dates are out, my MIL is losing her mind over the wording that I used saying that she doesnt want to confuse people and its not formal and I can't use the words that I used to describe the rehearsal.  She has recruited family members to call and casually mention that the website is "confusing" (by the way I have analytics on the site and it gets no more than one hit a day)  I think that she is more worried about what her friends and family think about the party that she is paying for rather than take into account all of the work that I've done day after day.  

SOOOO after all of that.  How can I word the description of the "Rehearsal Party" to please her so that she doesn't find the description confusing or misleading and so that I can get on with the rest of my wedding planning and stop losing sleep over this.  

Here is what I have so far: (rough draft)

"Rehearsal Party

We are having a two part Rehearsal Party!

Between the hours of 4-6 we are having an intimate Reharsal party with only those closely involved in the wedding. 

 At 6:00, we invite all guests not attending the Rehearsal Party to come down to the venue to mix and mingle with JJ, SS & their guests.

If you have any questions, please feel free to call J or S!  

Again, THANK YOU for taking the time to read this...... My bridesmaids and friends are sick of hearing about it and I know you girls will have some wonderful advice!

-S

southernbelle0915

If I were you, I'd just have your RD as normal and then say to everyone else "we'll be at XYZ bar at 8:30pm if y'all want to meet up". Keep them separate so it doesn't seem tiered. 

Take information about your RD off your website. If all of your wedding guests have access to your website, that's kind of like saying "oh and there's also this private event that only SOME of you are invited to." I don't think it's a big deal to put the bar info on your website as long as EVERYONE is invited. The take-home message here is: if everyone's not invited, I wouldn't post it on your website. 

And NO to the drink tickets. Host what you can afford. If you just informally tell people you'll be at XYZ bar at a certain time, there's no need to host people.

MairePoppy

You're FMIL, as host of the RD, has every to be worried about the invitation to that dinner. You should remove the RD information from the website. You could send paper, email or phone invitations to only those who are invited to the RD.  As a courtesy, you should mention that the invitation is from FMIL.

It's fine to leave the meet up at the bar announcement on the website. If you're not getting hits on your website, you'll probably have to spread that news by word of mouth.

 

jenijoyk

If you can only host two drinks per person for the everyone-is-invited portion, why not put a time limit on it? This would be better than drink tickets. Specify on your website that you'll be there from 7-8pm or whatever, and then at 8 you can just close your tab. No one is going to be ordering 5 drinks in an hour anyway (I'd hope).

We are having a similar 'welcome' event at a bar near our venue the night before the wedding. On our website we say we'll be at X bar from 7-8:30.  At 8:30 we'll close our tab. If we want to keep the party going, we'll informally move to a different venue, and not cover drinks at the second place. 

I agree with the taking your RD info off the website! Only things on the website should be things that everyone is invited to. 

Jen4948

As PPs have suggested, I'd take the RD information down from your website and share it only with those people who are actually going to be invited to that.  Leaving it up implies tiered hospitality, which is very rude.  Just have the information for the event after 6pm, and leave out the words "not attending the rehearsal party."

The drink tickets are also inappropriate.  When you invite someone to a hosted event, that means that they should not be expected to pay for any of their hospitality, including alcoholic drinks.  You are never in fact required to provide alcohol; etiquette holds that dry events are perfectly okay.  But if you do provide it, whoever is hosting must shoulder all the costs.  The guests should never be expected to open their wallets.  (Not only does this apply to alcohol, BTW, but also to parking and any other fees or costs of their entertainment.)