Large Rehearsal Dinner

My daughter's in-laws-to-be will be hosting the wedding rehearsal dinner for about 150 people. They're looking for someplace with casual food and dress. So far, only Gino's East on Ontario can accommodate a group this size. Anyone have any other suggestions? Downtown or anywhere North Side would be great. BTW, I searched previous posts, but the groups were all smaller.

Wow! That rehearsal dinner is bigger than most weddings.

Reza's might be a good option

432 W. Ontario
312-664-4500

Best,
Michael

We're having about 130 for my rehearsal dinner on the 17th. We wound up with Fulton's on the River as really our only other option was Petterino's (I've been to several pretty awful large functions at Petterino's so this was a pretty easy choice).

Especially if this will be during warm-weather season, Chief O'Neills is a great venue for exactly what you described. Casual but warmly decorated place with pretty good grub and an immense beer garden which they do rent out.

Chief O'Neil's
3471 N. Elson
(773) IRE-LAND

What might not be a bad idea, and what we did for our wedding, was to have two "rehearsal" parties--one a small dinner for the immediate family and wedding party, then we went on to a cocktail/heavy hors d'oeuvre party at a separate location that all the guests were invited to. We had a lot of out of town guests and didn't want to leave them stranded without food on the night before the wedding.

This way you could do the actual rehearsal "dinner" at virtually any restaurant, and then the separate "welcome party"--as we called it at another venue that can more easily acommodate large groups of people such as a hotel. The caterer doing the wedding itself would be a good first choice for the "welcome party" and might even cut you a little bit of a deal since they're already doing one event for you.

It may or may not end up slightly more expensive to do it this way but I guarantee you'll have a better experience overall.

Is the need for that big of a rehearsal dinner the reasoning the poster above me gave? They are not really part of the rehearsal, you just want to provide them food the night before the wedding? If not you must have a coordinated dance routine or something to include 150 people in the wedding. There were around 500 people that attended my wedding but we needed less than 25 seats at a place for our rehearsal dinner....

cjchaps wrote:Is the need for that big of a rehearsal dinner the reasoning the poster above me gave? They are not really part of the rehearsal, you just want to provide them food the night before the wedding? If not you must have a coordinated dance routine or something to include 150 people in the wedding. There were around 500 people that attended my wedding but we needed less than 25 seats at a place for our rehearsal dinner....

I think that, traditionally, "rehearsal" dinners were also meant to include out-of-town guests as well as those involved in the rehearsal.

We attended a pretty nice RD at Monastero's on the north side, it was a pretty large group, and pretty casual as well.