Your wedding rehearsal dinner is your opportunity to get everyone who will be involved in your wedding ceremony, from your parents to your young ring bearer, in the same place at the same time. You’ll be reviewing what every member of the wedding party has to do on your big day in order for everything to go perfectly, and you’ll then celebrate your upcoming event with a delicious dinner.
Are you wondering how you can go about planning the perfect rehearsal dinner? Then continue reading for a few tips.
Find The Ideal Venue
Even though tradition dictates that the groom’s family is in charge of hosting your rehearsal dinner, you don’t necessarily have to follow this rule if it doesn’t work for you. Even if the groom’s family is helping to host the dinner, it certainly doesn’t mean that you can’t have a say in where you’ll hold the event or what foods will be available.
Never feel as though you have to restrict yourself to booking your event at a plain old restaurant. If you’re planning on having your ceremony at a church or you can’t book the rehearsal dinner at your reception venue, you can certainly host your rehearsal dinner at a more formal venue like a fancy banquet hall in Los Angeles.
Hand Out Gifts
To show appreciation to everyone who’s going to be involved in your big day in some way, it’s a great idea to give them a small gift of thanks during your rehearsal dinner. These can even be gifts, such as jewelry, that your wedding party can wear for the ceremony and reception, though you can customize your gifts however you wish to suit every parent, grandparent, and important member of your upcoming wedding.
Consider Making the Event a Casual One
A lot of couples today are opting to make their rehearsal dinner casual, low-key, and relaxed instead of formal. Again, this is entirely up to you, but it’s an option that you should be aware of. If you want people to dress down a bit and take it easy before your super formal wedding day, this is a great way to bring everyone together to simply enjoy each other’s company and some great food and laughs.
To make your event casual, you can still book a more formal venue, but opt for a family-style or buffet style dinner rather than a sit-down dinner that has wait staff serving you. You can also opt for open seating instead of assigning people to their seats and tables. These little details might seem minor, but they can really transform a more formal rehearsal dinner into a more relaxed one.
Make Sure You Book Everything in Advance and Let Everyone Know
Book the venue for your rehearsal dinner months in advance in order to ensure that you can get the appropriate time for the event, and to ensure that you’re able to book the venue of your choice before its calendar gets filled with other requests.
You also want to develop your guest list far enough in advance. Even though you need everyone from your wedding party there, it’s entirely up to you if you want to invite extra people. And you definitely need to consider the spouses, fiancés, boyfriends, and girlfriends of anyone who’s in your wedding party, as you don’t want to leave them out. Therefore, come up with your guest list so you’ll know exactly how much room you need to reserve at the restaurant or banquet hall of your choice.
Once the guest list and venue are set into place, it’s time to let everyone know about the rehearsal dinner’s date, time, and place so they can put it into their schedules, and so they won’t forget about it. Remember, this is a really important event, so you need to be certain that everyone who needs to be there will definitely be there.
Set a Theme
Just as you can set a theme for your wedding, you can also set a theme for your rehearsal dinner. In fact, a lot of couples opt to make their wedding theme infuse their rehearsal dinner as well, so you can certainly add your wedding color scheme to the rehearsal dinner décor, as an example, or find other ways of slowly diving into all that your wedding will be about.
With these tips in mind, you can ensure that your rehearsal dinner will be planned perfectly and that it will be a memorable and fun event for everyone involved.