Whoa, whoa, whoa. They are asking you to travel for 9-10 hours and haven’t invited you to the rehearsal dinner? That’s a major violation. I don’t know other people’s customs, but for all the weddings I’ve been a part of, the rehearsal dinner was for close family, the wedding party and all out of town guests, as was the day after brunch.
My kidding post earlier aside - if the wedding is far away, most people will understand if you can’t/won’t make it. If it’s your best friend or a close family member, that’s different, but if it’s just a “good friend” then the invitation is mostly a courtesy to you so you won’t feel miffed to discover that they got married and you weren’t invited.
I’m sure they would be genuinely pleased if you made it, but it’s likely they would likely hardly notice if you didn’t. That’s not to say they’re not good friends and being genuine about extending the invitation - they just have a lot of other stuff going on.
When a wedding is far away, I only go if 1) it’s a *very* good friend, or 2) I want an excuse to go to that location anyway.
My wife had a friend that did exactly this. She invited one of my wife’s other friends that she had only met once.
She literally invited everybody that she knew or had ever met.
Yeah if you have not been invited to the rehearsal dinner and you are traveling a substantial distance, you must not be that close with the couple (I don’t say that in a bad way). Maybe the rehearsal dinner is limited to just family, but in my experience it is usually close family and out of town guests.
^ +1 Right there.
numi dont sweat it. if its not a close friend im pretty sure they wont care.
send a nice gift and a card then treat them to a nice halal cart dinner when they are back in town.
if it was a very close friend then might of been worth askig to borrow the company jet and get an extra day off.