Rehearsal Dinner

Rehearsal Dinner

July 10th, 2006 @ 4:07 pm by Mrs. Butterfly
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I finally booked our rehearsal dinner venue this weekend. I kinda had to, since the information is going out with our invitations. When I first started planning this wedding, I thought planning the rehearsal dinner would probably be the easiest part of the entire process. Oh, how wrong I was.

Here are some of the issues that I had to deal with.

1. Who pays? I won’t get into the details here, but it ended with my future MIL graciously offering to pay for this dinner.

2. What kind of food? Well, if my FMIL is paying, then we should do a Chinese banquet because that’s what she wanted, right? But most of the people coming are Korean. So we settled on American. Until we couldn’t find a suitable restaurant - especially since we don’t know how many people will be attending. So we were back at square one. Finally, Mr. Butterfly made the executive decision and went with Korean.

3. Who is invited? I know my parents are going to want to invite everyone on their guest list who is coming to the wedding. I think that’s like half of the guest list. Great. How do I cut this list down? Maybe I should invite just the family and the bridal party? My parents would never go for that. Then the FMIL wanted to invite all of her friends who were NOT invited to the wedding because she wanted them to be a part of the wedding in some form. Well, that didn’t go over very well with me. We are still working out the details, but right now it looks like all family, bridal party and OOT guests will be invited. How sad - it will be as big as the wedding itself.

4. Which restaurant? We wanted a private room at a Korean restaurant, but apparently private rooms don’t exist in Manhattan. So we are just going with Kum Gang San on 32nd street. It’s big enough to hold the number of people we expect to have, we don’t need a strict reservation, and they have decent food and service. The only downside? They asked that we come at 5:30 and leave by 7:30. Booo. But at least this way, it will be casual.

You know, this all seems like a lot of work for one little dinner.

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9 Responses to “Rehearsal Dinner”

Guest

Miss Snail

i’m at a point if i need to do all this? *sigh* i soooooo don’t have a clue as to what i’m supposed to be doing.

7/10/06 @ 4:24 pm (reply)

Guest

joy

a wedding that i attended had a casual bbq at a local park for a “rehearsal dinner”. there were kites, cotten candy, popcorn, and lots of chicken and picnic fixings. if was a lot of fun, and practical since most of the guests were out of town (the wedding was in cleveland oh, the groom is from nc, they both went to school in boston…)

i think i’m going to copy her. all i need to do is find someone to pay for it…

7/10/06 @ 4:33 pm (reply)

Guest

blankey

thats interesting. I always thought people who have task/duties on the day of the wedding or during the wedding gets to go to the rehearsal dinner and not everyone who is invited to the wedding.

7/10/06 @ 4:33 pm (reply)

Bee

Mrs. Bee (message) 3,235 posts, Sugar bee

i LOVE the idea of a bbq rehearsal dinner. unfortunately since miss butterfly is getting married in the winter, that’s not a possibility.

it is actually quite common to invite all out of town guests to the rehearsal dinner. we didn’t (even tho more than half our guests were out of towners). if your fmil wants to pay for it, and you’re ok with it, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea. it’d prolly make her really happy too.

7/10/06 @ 4:47 pm (reply)

Guest

MissBride

i’m only inviting family and my bridal party.

my rehearsal dinner will be just that - rehearsal for the following day.

you’re probably in a different situation bc the majority of your mother’s guests are probably traveling to NY.

7/10/06 @ 4:48 pm (reply)

Guest

Esther

I had a similar problem too. FMIL told FI and I to book a nice restaurant for 30 people (family , relatives, and those helping with the wedding). We gave her a few options for nice restaurants around the area. After she calculated how expensive it would be, we ended up at a Korean restaurant too. It was a lot of back and forth with her. I agreed to everything she said since she was paying for it. I also had to book a photographer (since FMIL would not hear of a friend taking pictures) for the paebek. She insisted we have the paebek (korean traditional ceremony) on the night of the rehearsal dinner. And then she insisted on having the rehearsal dinner Thursday instead of Friday, even though our wedding was on a Saturday night…whew…lots of communication going back and forth…quite tiring. I know how you feel! Good Luck…=)

7/10/06 @ 4:50 pm (reply)

Guest

Hannah

In lieu of a rehearsal dinner, we are going to Kam Gung Sung for a birthday dinner (for the bride (me) and her twin sister’s 30th!!) but the one in Flushing is a lot better space than the one in Manhattan… Anyway, it will jsut be the immediate family and my sister’s family.

7/10/06 @ 5:38 pm (reply)

Guest

MisSze

Oooh I’m a Korean bride with a Chinese groom too =) We ended up doing American for our rehearsal lunch… mostly b/c there are NO decent Chinese banquets in Monterey where we’re getting married. But as a compromise, we’re having a very small private family dinner the night before the RL at a Chinese banquet facility. Who knew we’d have a rehearsal dinner BEFORE the official rehearsal lunch!

7/11/06 @ 3:04 am (reply)

Guest

angie b.

congrats on booking your rehearsal dinner!!!

we had difficulty figuring out how to handle the rehearsal dinner too. in the end, we decided to use the private area in my uncle’s restaurant for a chinese banquet-style rehearsal dinner. we did a modified chinese tea ceremony for my side and a full out paebek for my in-laws. since my family is chinese and didn’t know how to handle the paebek, we found a vendor who came from queens to bring all the supplies (scrim, food, table, cushions, outer garments, etc.) like esther, we also had a professional photographer since there were over 70 people there. it was really hectic figuring out all the details, but in the end, it turned out to be a really great evening.