Love this, @abasket. Thanks for the report!
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Envious about this. My daughter had a traditional Jewish Wedding ceremony. No vows. Nothing personal at all. They wrote letters for each other but they were too personal for me to read. She let her sister read his letter to her but younger daughter was like āOMG TMIā
Wedding can be so different - due to religion, lack of, personalities, whatever.
What should be remembered is that the ceremony itself - is not $ based. The music you pick, the words people say and share, the love and emotion from those present - largely free. But may be the most impactful of all.
Interestingly both my D and SIL were raised in homes with some Catholic and Jewish influence. Neither of them is highly religious and do not at this time attend services (as honestly is the same with us after decades of attending church) . They did choose to have readings, spiritual but not religious and SIL did break the glass at the end. Loved it all.
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This is the first time visiting this thread! The wedding sounds incredible! My son is getting married in the fall and also having a larger wedding rehearsal dinner. 65 people. She has a lot of family on her side they are inviting, plus the wedding party (17, yikes), dates, etc. DS mentioned to me that we probably should send out invites? Why? Itās just everyone at the rehearsal and her extended family. Why canāt everyone just tell everyone?
Did you send out a formal Invitation for that? This wedding is getting ridiculous. DS said itās closing in on 6 figures. Thatās without our contribution.
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I would not want to have such a big rehersal dinner by word of mouth invitations ā too big a chance of misunderstandings as to who is and isnāt invited.
D and SIL had a much smaller rehersal dinner. Did not send out separate invitations. However, their RSVPs were on their wedding website ā the kids were able to put the information about the rehersal dinner along with an option to reply yes or no to only show up for those guests who were specifically invited to the event (FWIW did the same for the day after wedding brunch).
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D1ās wedding was 75 people, night before event (ārehearsal ā) 40-45. Mostly family and a few friends.
They did their RSVPS online and could set it up so that if you were inviting to eland if the three events : night before, wedding, morning after brunch - you would be promoted to rsvp for whatever you were invited to. So if you werenāt invited to the brunch, that rsvp wouldnāt come up for you.
It is very easy for wedding costs to get out of hand. I think you just have to give them your contribution and then look the other way!
So not a formal invitation for the āextraā
Events
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I guess if you invite 65 people, youād probably want formal invites with RSVP to keep track of the yesās. My in laws hosted a brunch the day after Dās wedding & D sent out formal invitations. It helped us with the count for the hotel (plus, D wanted everyone to know who was so kindly hosting).
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We included a card in the wedding invitation for those invited to things other than just the wedding. They were asked to email their RSVPs to me for those events. I had the spread sheet! We are invited to three weddings this summer/fall. In all cases, a card inviting us to whatever (in addition to the wedding) was included, or it was included on the wedding invite if everyone was invited. RSVP on the websites was for each event one was invited to.
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This made me chuckleā¦a typo?
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RSVPās converted to tacos - whatever apple keyboard! 
Iāll change it
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If they are tech savvy they can do all this without paper invites - excel
Sheets can keep track of who rsvps what online or via whatever method you use.
Depends who is handling that part. D and SIL definitely wanted to handle all the keeping track but definitely didnāt want to do more than a simple mailed wedding invite
I loved it the way it was!
The people we know who did evites, did send actual paper invites to some of the relatives like grandparents.
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Right and if you were the one handling the guest count etc than a way that works best for you is best!
But it is something for couples to think about. If youāre having a large wedding online RSVPS and special Invites can be less cumbersome to deal with.
The online method also allowed to very quickly pull up emails of the people coming to send a ācanāt wait to see youā email along with important addresses-phone numbers to know a few days before the wedding.
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For niece and nephews, there was formal invitation for rehearsal dinner. (They had to arrange seating and payment for precise headcount number). Son had intended for an informal rehearsal dinner to be just the wedding party (no parents). But a few weeks prior there was a change of plans, and word-of-mouth invite to limited family (aunt/uncles, no cousins).
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For Sās wedding Hās buddies (all around 80ish years old) claimed they never got their invites and didnāt rsvp so H had to call each of them. They all came.
Sās website had RSVPs to all the events you were invited to. Sadly my older brother didnāt realize he was invited to welcome reception and didnāt attend. S had welcome reception, rehearsal lunch for 20, wedding and morning after informal brunch at my sisterās for out of towners and extended family.
Iām not sure exactly how much S and DIL spent but believe they tried to keep costs under control. They had slightly over 80 wedding guests.
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All of D1ās RSVPās were online. It included the welcome party after rehearsal, wedding and if you would be using the transportation from hotel to wedding and back.
We have 65 for the welcome party and 105 is the wedding count. Two weeks from today 5/04 is the wedding.
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My son is getting married in early summer. He and fiancĆ© mailed invites w/separate invites for rehearsal dinner (22 invited), welcome party and wedding. All rsvp online. 210 invited, 197 attending! Out of town wedding for most ( brideās hometown area). I would not do word of mouth, the venue will need a head count and people will want to know what to expect, where to be.
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Just received wedding invitation for Labor Day Weekend wedding (Friday wedding) - RSVP by July 15th. On āthe knotā they explained sending out the wedding invitations sooner rather than having an earlier āsave the dateā. Thankfully with RSVP it actually gave an address of the venue (which is by or part of a nature preserve). The venue web site kind of showed more on what to expect, but good shoes for short outdoor walk to the ceremony site (but can see where there is an area outside of the reception building where in climate weather can alter having it totally outdoors.) Parents of the groom are our close friends, and the mom said the wedding is āunder pine treesā. Details on the knot said semi formal. MOG sent me a photo display of the bridesmaid dresses (18 total attendants, 9 gals and 9 guys) - well one guy is in the gal group. They got engaged in Feb, but I imagine they had done a lot of talking prior to engagement for the gals to be as far along on everything. They are taking a honeymoon in Ireland.
I ordered something off of their the knot registry. We plan to give a check and also have a book and a special knife that I give to every couple (the knife is a Cutco knife that I use every day - and order it with the sheath in case they donāt put it in a knife block). The book is a Hallmark Gift Book āMarried for Lifeā¦Inspirations from those married 50 years or moreā - copyright 2004, so lots of good brief stories with a theme phrase from each couple. One of my favorites ā āStay with it, and you can always work things out!ā - a phrase from a couple married in 1932 - and you can imagine things were not easy then!
Wedding timing is working out great, as I have my 50 year High School reunion the weekend after, so we can remain in the area (WI). FOG has stage IV cancer, and hope he will be healthy enough to attend. Right now he is going on Hospice.
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Thanks!