What size was your rehearsal dinner?

[beckyx3]

Hi All! We're in the very early stages of planning and I'm so excited! We're trying to decide if our rehearsal dinner should be everyone who comes to the wedding (instead of a welcome dinner) or if we should do it separately. How big was your rehearsal dinner? Where did you have it? Thank you!

 

[Erzengel]

Hoop De Doo Review and we had 21 people.

But my sister has a DVC and had a suite at the Boardwalk. We had a welcome party 2 days before the wedding and just got a few trays of food and booze and welcomed whomever came which was probably 30 people.

 

[Sweet Melissa]

We had ours at the Cabana Bar and Beach Club at the Dolphin. It was a total of 19 people: 17 adults and two children. That venue can accommodate far more, though.

 

[Disney_Alli]

We invited everyone to a combo dinner but it was only 15 people. My in-laws hosted everyone at Garden Grove.

 

[Amanda132]

We had 16 people, including us, for our rehearsal dinner at Hoop Dee Doo. Afterwards, we had the rest of our guests meet us at the bar at the Beach Club for an informal hangout.

 

[elphie101]

We decided to do a welcome party and invite everyone, because all but 5 of our 75 (that includes us) guests flew 3+ hours to WDW. With that size the best option we found was a private catered meal organized through our planner with DFTW. We hosted it at Ariel's at Beach Club, and our menu was completely customizable so long as we met the minimum expenditure for renting the room as a non-wedding event (when we booked this in May 2014, the minimum was $1800, though the minimum for a plated meal was higher). If you decide to go the welcome party route and have that many guests I highly highly recommend it - I know we went over the minimum, but had we stuck to it, it would have been about $24 per person, best deal for us on property!

 

[rachel09985]

We had a catered meal through DFTW. It was more expensive than a restaurant on property but worth it. It was so nice to not have to worry about booking a reservation and having a private spot. We invited all of our 24 guests.

 

[DisneyMommyMichelle]

We invited everyone that came to the wedding, we figured it was only fair since they all shelled out a lot of money to be there, it was the least we could do. We had 75 people and we had it catered at the Swan resort as our party was deemed too big for Shula's. My parents had also rented a large house and after dinner and the small party, we bussed everyone to the house they rented (less than 5 minutes away) and had a big party there with everyone. It had an indoor pool in the house, so all the kids were able to run wild, while the adults could have some fun. Once the party was over, we bussed everyone back to their resorts.

 

[tinydancr06]

We had around 36 at our rehearsal dinner, just the wedding party and close family. We did it through DFTW at Sago Cay in the GF Marina. We had a separate, casual welcome event at the River Roost Lounge at Port Orleans Riverside that everyone who was in town was invited to (it was 2 days before the wedding). I definitely think some sort of welcome event for everyone is a must if it's at all in your budget, even something casual, because you really don't get to spend much time with all those people at the wedding itself. It's a nice warm-up before the big events!

 

[beckyx3]

These are all awesome! Thank you everyone! I would love to do Hoopde Doo but since we're just in the early stages we don't know how many people we would have. For those of you who had it at a restaurant, how far out did you contact them? It seems like it would definitely need to be done more than the usual 180 days.

 

[Sweet Melissa]

Depends on how the restaurant handles large parties internally. Yes, definitely contact them more than 180 days out. Cabana doesn't book through the traditional ADR system, so we were able to secure that a little earlier. We had our reception at Bluezoo, and although they can reserve the private rooms well in advance, we didn't actually sign our final contract until much closer to our wedding date because their private dining menus would be changing before our event.

We had a farewell brunch in the private room at Kouzzina (now Trattoria al Forno) the day after the wedding. Although we were penciled in with the Boardwalk's group dining contact, it wasn't "official" until the 180 day mark, at which time we were assigned two ADR numbers for ten people each.

 

[goofyfigment]

We has our welcome dinner at the cabana bar at the dolphin and invited anyone who came from out of town. We had a brunch reception at blue zoo using swan catering and had a farewell lunch at the rainforest cafe. We got married easter weekend so we weren't able to reserve cabana per se but the manager held a spot for all of us while the wedding party was at the rehearsal.