Rehearsal etiquette/ farewell brunch etiquette

[Rundisneybride]

Hey Disney brides
We are having a 100+ person wedding (we just got our date so I'm pretty excited)!! I was wondering if anyone knew the etiquette for who to invite to the rehearsal dinner for a Disney wedding. Both of our families are traveling a pretty big distance to come to our wedding so we've been told everyone coming to the wedding should be invited to the rehearsal dinner and a morning after brunch but that seems a little extreme and almost like having 3 weddings to me. Does anyone have any experience or input on the subject I feel a little clueless

 

[elphie101]

We had 75 people at our wedding - all but about 7-8 had to fly in for it, mostly from New England. Because of this, we made our rehearsal dinner our "welcome party" and invited everyone (which was excellent as we had a chance to mingle with everyone so we weren't seeing them for the first time in the chaos of the wedding day). To us, the events were interchangable - we just called it a welcome party to make it less formal (even though we had a private catered buffet). We did not have a farewell brunch, and I never heard mum about it - we were married the Sunday of a long weekend and the vast majority of our guests chose to fly out first thing the following morning.

I have seen it popular to plan a farewell brunch but make it clear to your guests that it is not hosted/they will have to pay to attend. Regardless, you don't HAVE to do anything you don't feel like you need. It's all up to you!

 

[bamacmac]

Typically for a destination wedding, you do invite everyone to the rehearsal dinner. But as the post above says, it does become more of a welcome party. I've gone to lot of destination weddings and it's fun for everyone to get to know each other before the wedding. The couple of times that everyone wasn't invited, it made a lot of people feel left out and like they had nothing to do their first night there. Or they were just waiting for the rehearsal dinner to end to meet up with everyone. The morning after brunch isn't completely necessary, but would be a nice gesture. Basically including everyone in both of those things tells them that you appreciate and value them taking the time, money and in some cases vacation time, to come celebrate your wedding with you.

That all being said, do what is best for you! Both of those events can be very low key and casual, and therefore not overly expensive.

Congrats on getting your date! How fun! I hope to get married at WDW one day!

 

[kanadar]

We are in same situation. We have 100+ guests. So we are having a dessert party the night before and calling it a welcome party and inviting everyone. We decided to do the dessert party because we think it will be memorable and even trying to find a reservation for only the bridal party and their significant others and family was going to be difficult. We are not doing a brunch. It seems like a nice idea but I don't think it's necessary.

Do what you think would be best and what you want, that's all that matters!

 

[huskies90]

Not only are we inviting everyone to our rehearsal/welcome party but we extended the invite to extended family traveling with our guests. Paying for every single aspect of the wedding oursleves - including the reception brunch and an illuminations desert party at night, we really didn't want to foot the bill for a third event. But after going back and forth on many options, we decided to just do it. However, for our farewell brunch, we just booked a large reservation at Cape May and asked our guests to join us as an "optional event". In all the material we sent out, we clearly noted the price of the breakfast so there would be no confusion about who was paying (anyone but us!!)

 

[Rundisneybride]

Thanks everyone for the input it's definitely given me a lot to think about. I think having a dessert party might be a good idea for the amount of people were just looking to keep the cost low so I will have to shop around. I also like the idea of making the brunch an optional event. I don't know any restaurant that would be able to accommodate a reservation that size so I feel like it would have to be a banquet hall with a buffet which I don't know if I would like. But again a lot to think about and shop around. Thank you

 

[cmash95]

i went to a destination wedding and frankly i am going to be oposite the brides who posted. Traditionally your immediate family and maybe aunts and uncles as well as your bridal party are the ones included in the rehearsal dinner. you can also include close friends or any other people paraticipating in the wedding. You are at disney world and frankly if the rest of your guests can't find something to do, that's pretty bad.
you might want to include ideas of where to eat or things to do especially if they have family, but you dont need to include everyone in a rehearsal dinner. Thats what the wedding is for. and also this will help in keeping the cost down since you are paying for everything yourself and you know how things add up very quickly especially at disney.

 

[ahutton]

We did decide to do a rehearsal dinner and invited everyone, but for the other days we just included an itinerary of where we would be and what we would be doing there and welcomed people to come and go as their travel plans allowed. Some people we saw quite a bit, others dropped by here and there, or joined us as we walked around a park but when we went into an attraction said "we will catch up with you later" and they either did or didn't. I wanted to do the things I wanted to do, and not have any hurt feelings of others to deal with, fortunately our extended family felt much the same way.

 

[mb187143]

We did a rehearsal dinner and a welcome party. For our rehearsal dinner we stuck to parents/grandparents/bridal party and had a reservation at 'Ohana for its 5pm seating. There were 22 of us in total.

We then had an Epcot dessert party where the rest of our guests joined us. They either met a guide at the front gate and were escorted in or joined us after already being in Epcot. Food and Wine was happening so about 1/2 of our guests had spent the day in Epcot already. It worked out perfectly this way and it wasnt a budget buster. I think most of our guests thought the DP was a lot more expensive than it really was actually.

We didn't do a brunch the next day since most of our guests were staying at either POP or POFQ and we didnt want to monopolize their time to get to get another event when many of them wanted to go to the parks instead. So my parents gave out gift cards with the favors so people could buy breakfast at their resort.