Post-rehearsal dinner event: etiquette faux pas?

katelin318

Instead of a traditional rehearsal dinner with primarily wedding party, we've decided to incude out of town guests since many of them will have traveled long distances to join us for the wedding.  It will be very casual, essentially a pizza party, and we are calling it a "Welcome Dinner" instead.  After dinner, we plan to have an outdoor movie screening on the lawn of my granparents home (where the dinner is happening).  My question is, we'd like to invite everyone to the movie - the out of towners who will be at the dinner as well as the friends/family who live in town - but I'm not sure how or if we should.  I know it's skating dangerously close to a teired reception kind of thing (although to be clear, it is the night before the wedding, not the actual reception).  Is there a tactful way to invite our family/friends who live in town to the movie?  Some of them know about the dinner for out of towners, some do not.  Will it be really weird when they show up and see that obviously people have had a meal?

MyUserName1

I don't think you're making any kind of faux pas.  I'd do an evite or something equally casual and just invite them to "movie night" and make sure it starts late enough that the dinner will definitely be over.  Maybe pop a ton of popcorn and have bowls of candy too- that'd be fun.

RebeccaB88

 I dunno.  If I showed up for a movie night and found out you'd fed other people at the party earlier, I'd be having a real WTF moment, especially if the dinner and movie night were at the same location.  I agree it's kind of a gray area, some people won't have a problem with it, but others (like me) will wonder.  I just think you're preventing the possibility of any bad feelings by having one guest list for the whole thing. 

aurianna

I think the movie is a great idea.

I'm not sure why you need to call it a "welcome  dinner". A lot of people include out of town guests in their rehearsal dinner.
And in that vein, I think [almost] everyone knows that it's customary that the couple has a RD and that it tends to be only WP, immediate family and sometimes OOT.

If I were invited to a movie night as a pre-wedding event, I'd be super happy and would think nothing of it if I knew there'd been a RD prior.

Random in-town friends know there is a RD and should not expect to be invited to a RD... so I don't see the problem here. But maybe I'm wrong.

aragx6

I think as long as dinner will be well over and you spread it through word of mouth and your website, you're fine. I wouldn't do a big formal invitation though. Sounds fun!

krystin612

I think its nice you are including everyone and not weird at all that you are doing a little something extra for the people who are paying extra to be there! Check out this site for some really great RD etiquette tips.
 http://www.celebrationideasonline.com/rehearsal-dinner-etiquette.html

Also I found these light up mugs and used them on our trolley ride around heh city for out of town guests for our wedding. They were a scream and a great inexpensive little favor. Might be a cute way to serve drinks the night of the movie...just a thought
http://www.celebrationideasonline.com/graduation-party-favor.html