The hardest part is the paring down of the list to a manageable number of guests. It’s very difficult for out of town parents to plan something like this and the bride is very optimistic if she thinks she can handle the whole affair on her own unless she is in the hospitality/public relations business. A suggestion is to try to book all the out-of-towners into the same hotel and have the ceremony and reception/dinner at the same place with the rehearsal dinner at a nearby location, preferably walking distance.
You haven’t mentioned it, but is there a difference in “means” between the families. I’ve seen some instances where the desire to suppress any evidence of differences in wherewithal winds up interfering and amplifying the quite natural confilcts over control. (Sometimes the bride is afraid the rehearsal dinner could overshadow the wedding reception.) If the means are ample, it diffuses some of the objections if the rehearsal dinner includes all the out of town guests, assuming that they are more numerous on the bride’s side.
These are tricky events. Keep your cool. 
Is there any CCer who may think the wedding is not only a big headache but also a drain of a big chunk of money, after reading many of these wedding threads? It seems to be a daunting task to me (100 or 150 people, and some from out of town).
It is said the wedding is the last task that parents do for their offspring. Or, we may also say this is the last task that people with children do, before they retire. (Sorry, OP, I could not offer any help due to my lack of experience here.)
Daunting, yes, the perfect word. Best to you, Snowball.
I realize most people think the wedding is about the bride and the groom. However, I think it is rude to invite guests who will incur travel expenses to a wedding and a reception that last several hours and expect them to stand the whole time. Whatever happened to hospitality?
And if one cannot afford the expense, cut the guest list.
I’ve been to two Friday nite pasta dinners at Madrionis. At another, we got in late, and ate at restaurant diner, as did many others. I like using the hospitality suite, especially for older relatives.
Time to be firm.
May I add that I am a detail person. I had gift sets in hotel rooms for out of towners. I spent hours choosing flowers. Kippahs, special ordered, then sent back to be redone when they made an error on trim. I love this stuff. I read these threads knowing I too am relegated to be a MOG.
So much to learn .
I’m curious whether for weddings where there are 150-200 attendees or more if there is often a transition in thinking for the young couple as the planning process gets underway and they become more aware of some of the considerations.
Don’t get me started on the hotel! I offered day one to help find a hotel or two for the out of town guests; remember, everyone is from out of town so will need a hotel room. If the guest list really reaches towards 300, we are talking approximately 150 rooms or more 
Again, the brides seems to think she can do this all herself; if they wait too much longer, rooms anywhere will not be available as this is peak season. Last I heard they also did not want a hospitality suite which we always have; I have relatives that have already offered to host and manage the room.
Forgot to answer someone above, there is no real difference in means that I am aware of. My original plan was a casual Friday night dinner to allow everyone to mix and mingle.
When S & DIL married in 2012, they wanted things mostly their way even though they weren’t completely self-funded. I was recently watching an episode of a very corny television show where the father of the bride-to-be told the groom that the wedding wasn’t just about them, but about the melding of the two families. I was by myself, but found myself saying “Amen!” out loud and wishing I’d had that clip to show my wedding couple back in 2012:)
We had a lovely rehearsal dinner in an art gallery in bride’s home city. Despite the location, for the majority of the 170 invited guests, the wedding was a destination wedding. We invited 104 for the rehearsal dinner and 80+ showed up for the rehearsal dinner (the subject of those who RSVP’d yes, but didn’t show is still an irritation for me). The caterer did many events in that art gallery and it was a great evening. Perhaps your friend can identify some possible locations like a gallery where you can utilize different set ups according to how the guest list unfolds. I think your instincts about a sit down dinner are ideal. However,iIf going towards the casual route with cocktails & heavy appetizers represents a compromise, you could have sufficient tables for the older guests, but I would lay the law down about accessibility issues for grandparents. Just my opinion…
Good luck to you. The MOG thing can be tricky.
Our S just got married and it was such a wonderful experience all around that I feel bad for people who have to live through all the drama I hear about on some of these wedding threads.
I do have some reservations about what’s happening in your situations though. Are you really having a rehearsal dinner with 200 people? I understand hosting the wedding party and close relatives from oif town, etc. but frankly I do think it’s awkward to invite the wedding’s entire guest list to the dinner the night before.
Our DIL structured the entire wedding for the comfort of the grandparents, which told me everything I needed to know about what a great person she is. The idea that the venue is more important than the most honored guests is backwards.
The idea behind extending the rehearsal dinner beyond the members of the wedding party is that there may be out of town guests who don’t know anyone to have dinner with and don’t know the restaurants around. The concept was not to deal with the issue of who pays to feed them. Since most guests are from out of town, there will be plenty of people they know and would probably love to catch up with, either friends or family. We limited the dinner to grandparents, godparents, wedding party and significant others, plus anyone we knew was from out of town and not traveling with their own friends or meeting other family members. It worked very well.
Yes, snowball, go ahead and do the research. Make tentative reservations. Email everything to son and future DIL.
Snowball, can you reserve a room bloc yourself so you don’t get shut out?
I think you may in the end have to consider just taking care of your side of the family. I think your thought process on how to receive friends and family who are making the effort to travel is correct. You accommodate them in the customary manner in accordance with your means. But I think you are skating on thin ice to force the issue if the couple has other ideas. You might consider having a little side chat with your son explaining what is customary in your social circle. I would definitely reserve a block of rooms in an appropriate hotel to cover at least your guest list. That is something that should not be left to chance.
But to bring 200 people to a venue on the evening they arrive where they cannot be properly accommodated, and offer drinks and snacks seems the wrong approach. As a relatively young person who can fend for themselves in a foreign city I might take it in stride, but I anticipate some of your older relatives will be annoyed at best. Whether your son wants to accept it or not, how these guests are treated will be a reflection on your whole family.
Just received an email from future DIL to give the the name of the person to contact at this venue as I had several questions when talking to her yesterday. I will give this woman a call and see what the real deal is; maybe she will tell me how it will work out. Again, without knowing how many people will be invited, it makes it very hard to search for a venue.
As far as which people to include for the rehearsal dinner, I know many have gone the way of just the bridal party and immediate family. At least in my son’s family, we are all very close and it would feel odd to not include them in a dinner I was hosting as they will have traveled a great distance to come celebrate the marriage. If I did not have them to dinner Friday, they would only be able to have a glimpse of my son the evening of the wedding. If the bride doesn’t want to include all her out of town people, so be it; I won’t twist her arm!
Now, if this were my daughter’s wedding and the grooms parents only wanted the wedding party included at the rehearsal dinner, I would live with it as I am not the host. As I am the host here, I want to host my type of event, but with the approval of the B&G; I don’t want to anger them.
There are parts of the country where it is the usual practice to not have a sit down dinner with assigned seats for everyone at the reception. My wedding was in such a place and it made my MIL very nervous as she is from NY and was accustomed to different arrangements. I can assure you that everyone had a seat when they needed one, there was plenty of food (lots of it left over) and much more mingling than when you have assigned seats. I wouldn’t worry about the reception as long as there are accommodations for those who need them.
Yes, I come from a part of the country that does not do “sit-down” receptions, but there do need to be sufficient chairs for those who need them. As far as the rehearsal dinner goes, I say if you’re hosting, you get to make the decisions - who to invite, what to serve, etc. Hope you work this out with your son and bride. You dont want to start the marriage with bad feelings.
I just lost my entire post so will try to recreate the gist of it. Sounds like you will know more after speaking with the person at the venue. As a soon-to-be MOG I totally get it. And apparently we will be hosting a Fri night event that is not what I would choose. And they plan for us to invite every wedding guest in the hopes that people will make it a “weekend event”. But, I figure this is the start of the joining of the 2 families, and I will do whatever it takes to start things off on the right foot and make both the couple and her parents happy. We will have many more years of compromising and adjusting to each others desires and schedules and how we start will set the stage for things to come. So I suggest picking your battles. if there is a deal breaker- say so. But if there are other options to propose, now is the time. My s and future DIL have chosen a venue that IMO is fraught with logistical challenges, especially for the older relatives. Its not what I would choose. But its their wedding. I smile and nod. And as they say, smile and wear beige.
I am on my ipad so cant copy a link, but there was a thread from a year go called “MOG needs advice” started by shellfell that has lots of relevant comments.
At my son’s wedding last June, the bride’s family was scrambling for hotel rooms because they underestimated the numbers of rooms that were needed. Also unbeknownst to them, there were a tri-state lacrosse tournaments going on the same weekend and all of the nearby hotel rooms were locked up. The hotel manager forgot to notify them as the rooms were filling up.
Fortunately everyone who needed a room found one. But that was one stress we didn’t need.
I was the MOG ( I had planned my D’s wedding for 150 out of town guests 2 years before)and no one asked for my advice.
Book more rooms than you need. You can always cancel them at the deadline.
My cousin got married a couple of years ago in Philadelphia. He had a great wedding and the reception was at a hotel that had a preferred rate for the wedding guests. The rehearsal dinner was small, but he had provided a welcome package for all the guests at the hotel that included a map of the bridal couple’s favorite places in the city, encouraging us all to enjoy those and other places when we could. It was quite lovely and H, D2 and I had a wonderful dinner at the restaurant that the bridal couple went to for their first date.
I guess what I’m saying is that out of town guests are adults and can make their own plans for the night before without too much trouble. They may even prefer to make plans that differ from seeing the same people that they’ll be seeing the next night. With travel complications and delays, the rehearsal dinner is even more likely to have no-shows. Keep it simple and small and you will have less headaches!