@marinelife no, the bride and groom live in the town where the wedding is taking place.
@Pied Pfeffer, the bride’s family and my husband and I paid for the rehearsal dinner. The godmother introduced herself to us as the bride’s godmother as well as one half of the couple called the “host family”. I am not sure if/how she is related to the bride but I got the impression she is a family friend rather than a relative.
To me hosting the rehearsal dinner means footing the bill and being included as hosts on the invitation, My husband and I were recognized, along with the parents of the bide, as hosts on the invitation to the rehearsal dinner. (This seemed rather odd to me though because we had no hand in planning the rehearsal and in fact didn’t even know about it until we received the invitation! It was at this point that we offered financial banking for the event.)