Bride-to-be Blogger Leslie: Shopping for the Rehearsal Dinner Locale

In terms of our upcoming nuptials, my fiance and I have really been trying to be proactive and plan ahead as much as possible. According to what I have been told, May and June are the most competitive times with bridal vendors because they are the most popular months to get married — and we are getting married mid-May! We have been on the ball with most of our wedding planning process so far, and have been making a lot of the bigger decisions in terms of choosing vendors, but we still have a few things to finalize.

A few weeks ago, my future mother-in-law contacted me about getting together to go ‘shopping’ for the perfect rehearsal dinner location. When she first mentioned something to me about going, I was a little confused because I thought it was a little soon to be thinking about that — but boy was I wrong!

I didn’t realize that picking a spot for the rehearsal dinner could be just as tricky as picking a reception site! My future mother-in-law and I decided that we wanted to find a place out by the hotel where rooms are booked for the wedding weekend, instead of by the church, to minimize driving at night. We soon found out that there are slim pickings out in the West Chester/Malvern area for what we were looking for — which was a quaint restaurant (not a chain), with a separate room for our event.

I emailed my contact at our reception site asking for suggestions and what we got back was nothing worth writing home about. My future mother-in-law and I joked that we couldn’t decide between Cosi or Outback Steakhouse, because those were two of the best options from the list we were given. I wasn’t thrilled about possibly having to put “Outback Steakhouse” on my rehearsal dinner invitations, though no offense to anyone who has had an event there. It’s a lovely place, but I really don’t need to have a bloomin’ onion on the menu the eve before my wedding. It just doesn’t go with our theme.

Like making all our other planning decisions, shopping for the perfect rehearsal dinner location brings up lots of questions! How many people are going to be invited? Who is going to be invited? Do we invite our entire families or just the wedding party and immediate family?  What type of dinner do we want to have? Seated or buffet? Will this be open bar? All sorts of questions arise when planning the rehearsal dinner, and each question is equally important when deciding what type of “wedding eve” we want to have with our family and friends. I guess we just have to figure out what matters most to us as a couple and go from there. Stay tuned to where we decide to rehearse!

How did you choose a rehearsal dinner location? What was most important to you when determining how you wanted to spend your evening before the Big Day?

For more information on my wedding planning and healthy living for brides, please check out my other blog, And Her Little Dog Too.

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