Rehearsal Timing Issue

RosieC18

This puts me in the minority, but I don't see a problem with your original schedule. This seems different to me than a gap on the actual day of.

1) What's so different about rehearsing then doing your own thing until dinner at 7 and doing a rehearsal then lunch, then doing your own thing for the rest of the day/evening? I'm not going to feel trapped or like I'm killing time if I have two events in one day.

2) The people who will experience the "gap" will be pretty limited (only the people who actually rehearse). Now, I'm not saying it's okay to be rude to the people who are closest to you, but a lunch pretty much excludes everyone invited who isn't rehearsing and that doesn't seem polite either. My parents and bridesmaids are going to be doing the same things the day before my wedding no matter what the order of things. Maybe if you have an unusual amount of local guests, this would make a difference because they could stick to their normal routines? But even so I think lunch is more disruptive than dinner.

3) it's much more acceptable to skip the rehearsal than the ceremony, so I think if people find doing both to be too onerous it's no big deal for them to choose the dinner.

4) Having at least some time between the rehearsal and the dinner allows whoever is hosting (even if its you) to have some time to set up the dinner or supervise the setting up. On the day of your wedding most of this will be done before the ceremony, so there's no need for a gap. On the other hand, my in laws specifically asked that we have the rehearsal end about 60 minutes before the time we told guests for dinner so they could get to the dinner venue, unload the alcohol, make sure the staff knew where to put everything, and be there before any early-birds could arrive. They couldn't have done this except right before the dinner started, because we didn't have the site all day.

But if it really seems like a pain to your guests, I'd agree with finding an alternative location to rehearse.

lembaslover

RosieC18 I think you made a lot of good points. Obviously I'd never expect anyone to do something that is a massive pain to them. I'm going to leave the times as planned and make sure people understand that the rehearsal is optional. If they want to be there I'll be more than happy to have them and we can do things like get our nails done after if they want to do that. Or if they don't want to then they can meet up with us for dinner and do their own thing throughout the day. Seems like the best option because you're right I'd be excluding people if I just did a lunch or make people feel like they had to take time off or what-not. Thank you, I don't feel so crazy anymore.