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I know this is going to be an unpopular view but in I do not think a wedding is just about the bride and groom it is about the community. To make a marriage work you need the support of friends and family.
Weddings mean different things to different people. For some it's a great reason to throw an awesome party and celebrate their love. For me a wedding is about standing in front of my family and friends and vowing to God that I will commit to this other person for the rest of our lives. We're asking our friends and family to be a part of our marriage and to help and support us. For this reason I would never want to have a destination wedding, I would never want to put someone out financially or stress them so that they can participate in this important event. I don't know anyone that could afford to come to my wedding if it was out of the continental US. Our family and friends are scattered all over the country so there will be travel, but it is much easier to load up the kids in the car and drive 16 hours than buy passports, plane tickets, hotel rooms etc. Having my friends and family witness this wonderful event is my top priority.
I'm sorry if this sounds snarky but one of my greatest concerns has been the financial burden my wedding will cause others.
We are having a destinaton wedding in Jamaica and if none of my friends can make it, I am not going to hold anything against them. I understand the financial aspects of it and the only people that I expect to be there is my family and his family. Our friends who can make it are just icing on the cake.
i think destination weddings can be great, in certain circumstances:
-you both have a short family/friends list that can get along (& you can persuade your parents that their 30 closest co-workers & friends won't be offended if they aren't invited)
-there are sufficient finances for yourselves & all the guests (ex: dont have a destination wedding if your parents cant afford to get there and you can't pay for them either)
-immediate family can get the time off work and dont mind going to your destination as their vacation
-your family is spread out so they'd have to fly somewhere anyway
-there is no "common ground" location for you to have it, or your "common ground" location IS that far away place
-youre ok with the potential environmental issues/ consider sustainable tourism
-youre ok with not meeting every caterer/florist/etc or overseeing every detail yourself
There are a million personal reasons to decide to do a destination ("it's pretty" being one of them!) just as there are a million reasons why you decided to get married. There may always be someone who complains. But if these types of things are considered first & everything seems ok, a destination wedding is probably a great idea for you!
We have been back and forth on our decision to have a DW or not and have gone through many locations we like, but we definitely will be keeping ours in the continental US. Reason for that is b/c we know most people we plan to invite don't have passports and we dont want to make them get those and make them travel very far.
We are both from 2 different states and friends living in 4 other states so regardless of where we have it, over 50% of our guest list would need to travel anyway. We both feel our hometowns aren't the best vacation destinations, so we thought if people are going to travel, might as well have them travel to a place we think everyone may enjoy going to.
We realize not everyone will be able to come no matter what since our guest list is spread across the country, but if you are paying for your wedding yourself you choose where you want it. it's about what you and your FI want the most, it's your day so pick the place you like. I would love to be able to pay for people to come if they can't afford it, but we're not rich unfortunately and we're going to spend thousands on the wedding so we won't have th means to pay for our guests. We just hope giving everyone 9 to 12 months advance notice is enough to ask off work and save for the flight and hotel.
And a DW for us will not be any cheaper overall than if we did it in one of our hometowns. It all depends on where you do it and what you want out of it.
Beckums--Driving 16 hours sounds like way more of a pain then hopping on a 3 hr flight, but maybe that's just me! ;) (I'm not much of a road trip girl).
In that same vein, what it comes down to is knowing your guests. I have a very well traveled crew--passports are par for the course--and taking a long weekend jaunt to the caribbean is hardly seen as out of the norm for them. I could see how a different group of guests could be off-put by a wedding in a foreign locale if it wasn't something they were used to.
I also do not understand this notion that the bride and groom are saving money by having a destination wedding. My wedding for 150 guests at Round Hill Resort in Jamaica is pushing 130k! I wish I could say I was saving money! ;)
Thanks for all the thoughtful responses ladies!
For a small wedding, it is fine. But expect to alienate people who are close to you when you ignore their busy schedules and their expenses, and perhaps their position on being gluttonously wasteful with fuel.
My best friend had one in HI, I couldn't go. My cousin (the whole family lives here) is expecting everyone to follow them 2000 miles to watch them tie the knot. I don't think it is fair to raise the bar on your family attending your own wedding when you have a large and local family. The message is clear to me, "we don't want you all to come or don't care about inconveniencing everyone".
Love DW - my husband and I just had one in Miami for 50 guests. Easily accessible locale for our farflung family and friends, intimate wedding, and fun. Postwedding brunch, a rehearsal dinner, ceremony/reception easily $1000 per guest. Understood some could not come, appreciated that so many did! Did not expect any gifts, and registered at a charity for those who wished to give.
Goal of a wedding for us was an intimate, beautiful celebration with our close family and friends in a gorgeous locale.
Point is - the manner in which the wedding is celebrated is completely a personal choice. You're never going to please everyone. Good luck.
Of course my response is going to be bias since I, myself, am having a destination wedding. I think for my fiance and I it was about the intimacy, beautiful setting, and an unforgettable experience we would have. That's not to say it wouldn't be unforgettable if it was local, as I'm marrying the love of my life. But we sharing this time of our life with about 50 people, and later celebrating with everyone back home.
As far as some of the posts I've read regarding financial issues and it being a burden for guests, the way I feel about it is that if you give people enough time to plan accordingly it shouldn't be that big of an issue. Besides, the people who want to be there will find a way. And this is coming from a college student who pays her own way and been to two destination weddings spaced between 5 months.
I agree with Jen4637. I have always wanted to get married on a beautiful beach, and my FI and I planned on eloping to Australia (somewhere we've always wanted to go) and then having a big party here, but our families wouldn't have it, and insisted that they come.
I most definitely didn't expect them to come, and when they did decide that they were, I pushed the wedding date back a year and changed the location to somewhere closer and more affordable to make it easier for everyone that really wanted to come.
I also found an extremely reasonably priced all-inclusive resort for everyone and then negotiated an incredible group rate and many perks for the guests. We payed for one member of our close family to come that couldn't afford it, and everyone chipped in on the airfare for FIs brother.
All told, it is costing about $1000/person for a week all-inclusive (not everyone is staying the whole week, but most are making a vacation out of it) at a beautiful resort on Paradise Island, from the Ottawa area (Canada), and I haven't had any complaints about the cost. We are still having a formal wedding reception here for 120 people, and will be broadcasting the ceremony live on our website for those that can't make it.
This is obviously a compromise, but I think everyone involved is happy!
My short but sweet two cents:
I'm having a destination wedding in Hawaii because I couldn't see how I could ever pull it off in NYC for my budget. Also, since me and my fiance live in NYC, we would have a much larger guest list. The majority of my family lives in Northern California and his family lives in NYC. We were aware of the cost/commitment and before we officially chose Hawaii, we asked his family if they thought it was reasonable. As long as they were showing up, we were happy. A few friends have decided to come as well...and a few have not. I'm hoping to have mini-celebrations in California with some family and friends as well as in NYC (somewhere TBD)..
I think it depends on what is meant by destination wedding.
You'll get the least negative response if you choose a local day-trip type of destination near an airport or at least somewhere within the United States. For example, if you live in San Francisco, Lake Tahoe or Shasta. If you live in Northern Virginia/ Washington DC, one of the Delaware beachers (no taxes!). If you live in Minneapolis, a lake house that's within a days' drive. If you live in NYC, Vermont or the Pocanoes. Note: if you guests are coming from major cities on the West Coast, Hawaii sort of fits this criteria as well.
Unless your family and friends are fabulously rich and/or you're offering to pay for everybody's travel expenses, I wouldn't recommend choosing an expensive resort in another country. Especially if it takes more than 6 hours to fly there and/or airfare costs more than flying cross-country in the United States. Another obnoxious thing to do is to force your guests to stay at one particular high cost resort and not offer any lower-cost alternatives.
You may also want to consider inviting fewer guests than you normally would to an in-town wedding. If a friend from college that I was once close to but don't talk to more than 2xs a year invited me to an in-town wedding, I would totally go. But if someone with a similar type of relationship invited me to her wedding at an expensive resort in the Caribbean, my reaction would be along the lines of "wow, she must overestimate the closeness of our relationship to expect me to spend ~$1000 and take 2 days off of work!" Only invite your nearest and dearest, give them plenty of warning and set aside some money in your budget to subsidize must-have close friends and family members who might be living on fixed incomes, graduate stipends or paying off student loans.
If a dear friend was having the wedding of her dreams in Italy and I couldn't make it because of cost or time, I would still be happy for her because of how much it means to *her* compared to how much it means to me. *She* will treasure that experience so much more than the alternative of a more conventional wedding that would have cost her guests less. I probably wouldn't even remember I wasn't there in a few years.
I would never have considered a DW for myself until I went to one (in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic) and the time that I spent there as a guest became one of the top funnest momests of my life.
As a result, I decided to have a DW one as well. Majority of my friends were super excited because, let's face it, we all needed a vacation.
For those who post negatively, I think it's a bit selfish on their part to think that the bride and groom should plan around people's convenience and financial situation just so they can attend. The wedding is simply an event of celebration and if you cannot attend it, so be it. If you can and want to, great.
Ours is kind of a destination wedding - we grew up in Canada but have been living in the US for 8 years. The wedding is in Canada, just outside of the city where we both grew up. For the majority of our guests, there is a fair amount of travel involved (flight - although, it's only about 3 hours for most of our US guests, shorter than a flight fro LA to NYC! and they have to drive about an hour from the airport). Our lives (and thus friends and families) have been so scattered that basically anywhere we chose to get married would have resulted in a lot of travel for some portion of the guests, so we figured we might as well show off a beautiful Canadian town and make it easier for our parents (who still live up there).
I have felt bad about all the arrangements that people have to make but I don't think I have heard a single negative comment from anyone about not being able to make it. We invited people who we would like to celebrate with us (and who we know want to be there with us), and everyone who is coming is crazy excited to see us and visit Canada. Those who cannot make it have been really apologetic and saying that they wished they could come. Even if they cite expenses or hassle as the reason they can't make it, they never imply that we were selfish or unreasonable for planning it the way we did.
We understand that it's a lot of time and money, and we have tried to make things as smooth as possible (arranging for flight, hotel and rental car discounts, putting lots of info on our website and in the invitation, etc.) and I think people appreciate that. You just can't please or cater to everyone, and you shouldn't really have to - but on the flip side, you then cannot be upset with people for not being able to come!
i haven't read every comment but i've read enough to hear the word 'selfish' quite a few times....
i'm not having a DW but i find it incredible that others would think a DW is selfish. the most important people of that day is the bride and groom. its about them. whatever choice they make is the best one for them, so i would accept it and move on.
if i couldnt afford to go, i'd let them know but i wouldnt think they are being "selfish". i think it would be selfish of me to expect such a major decision to be based upon many others rather than the two of them.
i think ppl are saying its' "selfish" b/c some brides/grooms get mad when ppl choose not to come to their destination weddings. in that case... yea its selfish! as long as the bride and groom keeps an open mind about ppl not being able to come.. then i think DWs are GREAT!
I am gettnig married in Maui (where FI and I met and have lived for a long time). We're not have a traditional "destination" wedding, but we know that for a lot of people, it will be. His family is in Europe and mine on the east coast. They are all coming, but we are working hard to have those who are short on cash stay in reasonably priced accommodations and with friends who have spare rooms.
We also understand that some people can't come, and that's ok. Several of my friends had DW's when I was really broke, so I didn't go. I was bummed, but realistically I wouldn't have been able to go anyway because we all live far apart. I am sending out STD's as early as possible so that people can plan to come if they are able to.
We're also not asking for gifts - just having people here will be the best thing ever!
The reason that we decided to get married here is because this is where our life together is. It is selfish of us, but ever since we started talking about getting married, I haven't been able to imagine doing it anywhere else!
Ankile - I definately don't think its selfish of you to get married where you live. My sister was married in New Mexico; she and her husband had both lived there for years. All our family is on the west coast, and his is in the south, so to pick one family's location would have just made everybody else travel twice as far.
We would have loved to get married at the Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood, and actually talked about that a lot when we first talked about marriage. In our case though, I have to say that it would have been selfish. It would have made all of both our families travel, and the cost would have been difficult for some immediate family whom we really wanted to be there. And at the time FI's father was confined to a wheelchair, and his health deteriorating; it was hard enough to get him across town to a restaurant to dinner let alone to another state for the weekend. Since clearly we couldn't hold a wedding that our immediate families couldn't all attend, we decided we really needed to get married close to home.
I guess that if we bought into the philosophy that the wedding day is all about us, we might have gone for it. But IMO, the wedding day really is not all about the bride and groom. It's about family, and community, and the joy of celebrating with your family and friends. It's true that what is being celebrated is your wedding, but it's actually a great honor to have people care enough to take the time to come spend this day with us, and for us it is about enjoying their company, showing them a good time, and letting them know how important they are to us.
I don't really think someone else's wedding is a chance for guests to weigh in on the location.
If you are invited to a destination wedding you can either cough up the money and attend or politely decline. The bride and groom will not get offended, they understand. People having DW are having them for personal reasons whether it is sentimental value, they have family there, they want people to spend time with them etc.
I'm havng a DW in India and I have strong reasons for having it there. At the same time I'm not in the dark that many friends won't be able to come.
highlights include:
1) being able to truly have a cultural/religiously proper ceremony
2) having peole who come be able to celebrate with you and not have to run off the the office or to soccer practice etc.
3) having people who really want to be there make the effort
4) As a compromiise of cultures I'm asking any female friendswho come to be bridesmaids that way there is no pressure for a bridesmaid to attend (we don't have bridesmaids but I like the idea)
5) having countless relatives who could never afford to come to the US from the poorer country of India be able to attend.
6) It becomes a mini vacation for all
Frank;y, I do not think it is selfish at all- It is a bride and groom's decision where to hold their wedding and is not a topic of discussion for guests to weigh in on.
The idea of a destination wedding doesn't bother me at all. However, the idea of "the people who really care will come" does bother me. If I cannot afford to go to Mexico/Australia/Jamaica/Tanzania, it does not matter how much I care about you. You could be my best friend. You could be my brother. That does not change the fact that I simply may not have that kind of disposable income. And while you certainly have the right to get married any place you like, I don't think I should be judged as someone who "doesn't care enough to make the effort" if I can't attend because of finances.
i love the idea of DWs!!
several friends and cousins have been married in hawaii, maui and oahu over the years, a cousin eloped & got married in boracay then came back and had a huge bbq afterwards, another cousin of mine got married in an old castle in ireland about 7 years ago... i wasnt able to go to ireland b/c of time off from work but wasnt put off or offended - i just couldnt go, so big deal (shrugging)... i bought a gift and mailed it.
when we first got engaged, we didnt tell anyone for months b/c we wanted to languish in the joy ourselves w/o the barrage of annoying questions (oooh how did he propose? who's gonna be in the BP?? where/when are you guys going to tie the knot?? do you have a dress yet?? etc)
after a few months, we told our friends and fam, then started thinking (obviously) of the when and the where... i had always pushed for a ceremony and celebration in hawaii, whereas fh wanted a huge local wedding with all the things that come with a huge wedding...
our family and friends would have had no problem traveling, they'd have to travel to california anyway from asia, australia, dhubai, london, canada and about 7 different states, ny and nj being the farthest ones... so for alot of our guests, even california is a "destination" wedding...
but the issue that swayed the vote to stay local was b/c of his grandmother's condition - she recently had a stroke and now cannot walk on her own, and flying from los angeles to hawaii would not be easy for her...
then life happened and fh got laid off, so we pushed the church wedding out further... then we ran into another challenge with the church taking longer for the annulment than we thought.
so, after much consideration, we decided to postpone our local church wedding. however, we didnt want to delay being married (isnt this what a wedding symbolizes in the first place??), so on what wouldve been our orig honeymoon in august, fh and i are going to hawaii and getting married, just the 2 of us - nobody knows - they all think we're just going to get married in 2009. then on our one year anniv, we will have the huge church wedding and reception (350+ ppl)
not to offend ppl who dont like dws, but what's the big deal?? it's not about you as a guest or being inconvenienced (time off, money spent etc) get over that thought.. yes you would like to celebrate along with the couple, but if they want to go away and take their vows, it's not up to us as guests now is it??
in fact, it was i who was offended when my aunt said to me "Oh dont forget to invite so and so (i'm like WHO???) she went on to babble "Oh this is great - it will be like a family reunion!! oh yeah and your wedding of course!" WHAT?? dont use my wedding day as a day when i am told who to invite so the entire family (some of whom i dont know or wish i didnt know) can show up, eat food for free, and tell me "I havent seen you since you were 12 - and now you're a woman!!" ick! this is selfish on the family's part
couples who choose to have a dw shouldnt be thought of as "selfish" or "inconsiderate" of family's and guest's finances - if you, as a guest, cannot swing it, then dont go - it's that simple...i was bummed about not being able to go to ireland, but since then my cousin and i have spent many lazy afternoons hangin out and several holidays with our families - it's just the wedding day - there are many days, months and years after.
overthinking and overanalyzing "how can i swing it to go?" or "hmmm well, if i just charge everything" you're just gonna drive yourself crazy and making a simple situation harder than it is really...
for us, luckily we've turned the lemons of fh getting laid off (now working again TG) and church's timing on the annulment into lemonade, now we both get what we want, i get the gorgeous dw in hawaii for just the 2 of us, and the huge church wedding for fh and to appease our family and friends...
i have been to 2 destination weddings (as in the locale was neither the bride's nor the groom's home town/state. i had so much fun at both. however, i will say that it was not easy for either me or my fiance to coordinate traveling. we're both students, so both involved us having to miss classes because of them. we also incurred considerable costs in getting there. now i will say, to me, both were completely worth it...thye brides are 2 of my close friends and i would have never considered not going.
on the flip side, most people have to travel to attend weddings these days (over half of our guest list will be flying just to attend). so, for them. they may consider it 'destination.' it all depends on what you, your fh, and families want!
I think you just have to remember that people who have to travel a significant distance and lay out a significant amount of money to go to a wedding are likely to make the effort if they are immediate family, close friends, or you have managed to choose a convenient time of year and a place they would like to visit. My sister's wedding was a destination wedding for most of our family (although not for her), in Santa Fe the weekend after Thanksgiving. Because most of our cousins are a little older than we are, so that their kids are old enough to be left at home, and also because they mostly farm, and so don't have a lot going on that time of year, they were quite happy to fly to Santa Fe. I think that she would have gotten a much smaller crowd in Hawaii - because they've all already been to Hawaii. They hadn't been to Santa Fe.
Like Anti-Zilla, it just wasn't an option for us to have a DW and have family able to be there. We would have loved to get married at Timberline Lodge (at Mt. Hood) and actually talked a lot about it. But at the time FI's dad was also in a wheelchair, and his health was too fragile to travel that far. We had concluded our wedding would be DW for us - as we would have to go to the town where his parents live in order to have them present! Unfortunately his father passed away - which does leave us able to get married in the town where we live, as his mother can make it here just fine. (We could still get Mt. Hood, if we wanted to wait another year - but we don't want it that badly.) And actually I think that the much larger number of family and friends that we can afford to host here in town, and who can more easily afford to attend here in town, more than makes up for the loss of Mt. Hood. After all, we go there every year anyway. We are already saying that in 5 or 10 years we will go on our anniversary, invite a bunch of friends, and renew our vows.
I totally agree with Amy. If you plan to have a destination wedding you have to first accept the very real fact that many people who you love and whom love you will not be able to attend. If you are ok with that than you should be fine!
FH & I decided to have a destination wedding because he's from the UK and I'm from the US and we thought it was the only fair thing to do. More importantly neither one of us wanted the traditional wedding. We both wanted an affordable, beautiful beach wedding so that's why we choose the DR.
Oh and one thing I've noticed is that a lot of destination brides are doing having an AHR (at home reception) like us. I think this really smooth’s things over with the family that can't attend the wedding. I've seen brides go all out and have a traditional wedding reception while others have a bbq or just a nice party! It's pretty amazing how much more affordable things are when you take the wedding label off of it lol FH and I are having a beach themed part when we return to celebrate with everyone that couldn't make it!
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