Who was invited to your rehearsal dinner?

melmac26

We're having a dilemma. Most places are costing us more than the food for our wedding....so we're wondering if we keep it to JUST parents, siblings, wedding party?
Who did you invite, why & how did you keep costs down. We want a dinner but not a wedding reception 2.0

HELP

TripleAubs

We treated ours as a rehearsal/welcome "picnic" and kept it very simple.

We invited:

-Immediate family (moms, dads, siblings and significant others)

-bridal party and their significant others

-anyone "in" the wedding (grandma since she was being escorted in, and we had no readers or extra people)

I think the above is normal, but since we had OOT guests, we invited them too. Most of them came, by the way. I think the total was around 50 people.

I got simple, fun invitations from Target and sent those out two weeks before the wedding with an e-mail RSVP. We made it BYOBeverage and something to sit on. We had the picnic at a beach park so it was near the water, but on grass and we had picnic tables to set up food on. My family and MIL and SIL helped with some food preparation. We just did pupus, light foods, and some dessert. Any family members that weren't at the rehearsal did the set-up so it was all ready when we arrived! It was a fun time and very casual! No one minded that it wasn't at a restaurant. We also chose to go this route since my in-laws hadn't mentioned anything about hosting a RH.

HTH!

melmac26

Thank you! What park did you go to?

Tanq&Tonic

My parents
His parents
His brother, wife, 2 kids
My sister
Our officiant (she's my best friend) & husband

For the rest of the guests, we hosted cocktails in the lounge of the same restaurant.  Cheaper than dinner, but still a nice, hosted event to get everyone gathered.

AKWinterBride

In place of a formal rehearsal dinner, we are having a BBQ for everyone the day before our wedding, which happens to be the 4th of July!  I just don't feel like we need to have a rehearsal dinner as we would be alienating so many of our guests who flew all that way. 

TripleAubs

We had it at Kaimana Beach Park (also known as San Souci Beach). It is at the far end of Waikiki, near the Aquarium and the War Memorial Natatorium (defunct olympic ocean pool). There are some free parking spots and even more metered spots. I thought parking would be difficult since we had the party at 5pm on a Friday but it was easy!

I am still waiting on pictures from my dad (no one else took pictures, apparently we were having too much fun!) so i pulled these off the web:

there is grass area to the right and kinda to the back right from this viewpoint:

again, behind this viewpoint is more grass, palm trees, and a few picnic tables (where we had our party). I couldn't find any pictures of that part!

kaesha

We invited anyone who was involved in the rehearsal and their partner if they had one.

carrieoz_76

Ours was a destination wedding (i.e. we aren't from HI), so we did a Welcome Dinner, and we invited everyone who was invited to the wedding.  We went really casual with the dinner to make it more affordable and to distinguish it from our reception dinner the following night. 

Since our guests had travelled so far for us, we felt really owed them a fun evening to get to know each other (and that's one of the reasons we had a DW - so our friends/family could meet and mingle).  It would have been really awkward to invite only a few of those who had travelled so far to dinner.

I appreciate not wanting to spend a ton of money on a rehearsal dinner, but if yours is a DW, I definitely recommend doing what you need to in order to invite everyone - including doing something more casual than you might have had in mind.  A BBQ or happy hour get-together at a local bar (what we did) are both affordable options.

sparklegirl84

We're having about 30 people come to hawaii and we want to have some sort of welcome dinner as well, but we can't afford a second reception, i've talked with most of our guests and they are all ok just getting together for a casual happy hour or meeting up for dinner the night before the wedding and paying their own way. It is probably a big wedding etiquette no no but I figure most of our guests would probably already be paying to go out to dinner that night regardless if we had planned a dinner or not. 

maui2011

We are hosting a welcome dinner at our condo...ordering in from Da Kitchen...the day after the majority of our guests arrive...i'm assuming there will be about 30 of us. The night before the wedding we will be going to a luau which is a non hosted event.  Then two days after the ceremony...as the day after is our day just to ourselves...we are hosting a mahalo brunch at a restaurant...good food but nothing fancy. HTH! J. :-)

melmac26

This is more my fiance saying we have to limit it b/c his folks offered to pay for it (dad's unemployed, mom's a teacher=not a lot of money). So I'm the one trying to convince him we can't eliminate people. It is a DW, as it stands we have over 40 coming, closer to 55-60 we're thinking once all rsvp's are in. We are looking at pizza & beer at a local joint, but that's even approx $35/person....which is more than what we're spending for the actual dinner the next night. Anyway. We are doing things in the morning (guys are golfing, that's a big deal to Fiance). So to do an earlier rehearsal isn't an option. I'd like to do a picnic in the park deal, but we really don't have relatives that live there that can help us. Are there picnic tables at most parks? B/c we can't have grandparents on the ground...or some of the aunts/uncles as they've got joint issues, etc... We're all staying in hotels, so it's not like there is a condo to land at either. It's just one of those things, & I'm trying to tell him that it'll all work out, if we have to kick in money to help we will. He's just trying to keep it "cheaper" for his folks. Which I get. But seriously, people are spending a LOT to be here, we have to fee them.

Sorry for the rant. Just frustrated. Our first thing we've not really agreed on so far.

Tanq&Tonic

$35 for pizza and beer just does not sound right.  We hosted a brunch at Mala for $22/pp with made-to-order omlettes...

There are many parks & beaches with benches.  You can order a ton of sandwiches from Safeway, or Subway, or my new favorite restaurant (cafe @ La Plage) and have a pretty nice casual gathering.

maui2011

I agree...$35 for pizza and beer sounds a bit high.  I would check with your hotel to see if they have a party spot...not a ballroom...that you can use for a couple of hours as hotel grounds can be quite large...they may have a sitting area that they can rent out for a nominal fee or better yet free. Alternatively, not much of a $ saver but maybe you can rent a suite at your hotel for the night...that way everyone is together and alcohol won`t cost a lot and you can get take out...if your group booked a lot of rooms at the hotel i am sure they can give you a discounted rate for a suite for the night. HTH! J. :-)

AKWinterBride

Wow, Da Kitchen is getting good business from The Knot!  We have 60 people coming, and their food is very reasonably priced.  My in-laws are going fishing off Kauai and Maui and so we hope to have fresh fish to grill up too. 

carrieoz_76

Alternatively, you can host a welcome reception by just inviting everyone to join you somewhere during happy hour and cover apps and drinks for an hour or so.  Then they're on their own to do whatever they'd like afterward.  The idea is just to do something - no matter how casual - to gather everyone together and show your appreciation.  

Generally speaking it is bad ettiquette to invite people to a meal/reception and expect them to pay their way - not saying that you're doing this, but someone mentioned it above.  Yes, people would have spent money on dinner, but maybe not with a big group selected by you at the place selected by you at the time selected by you.  If you're going to invite people to an unhosted event, I think you have to be really careful to make clear when you communicate to people about it that it's not a hosted event, but just a get-together for anyone who'd like to come, and people are free to do their own thing if they'd like.  We did this for our sunset sail, and it worked fine.  I'd feel less comfortable going this route for a meal or reception, but it's ultimately your call.

melmac26

Thank you ladies

We're looking into some other options. I was looking at the hotel (Ilikai) to see if they had a more casual area where we can host something....apps & drinks related. This is really my fiance's task LOL but I'm trying to help him the best I can. I really appreciate your suggestions. I am even looking into La Mariana Restaurant & Bar....that old tiki place close to the airport. Food's OK, but the atmosphere is laid back & the prices weren't HORRIBLE from what I remember when I was there last year. So I'm thinking they might be an option too.

Thanks for the suggestions!