Last week I shared the fact that my husband and I chose to do a destination wedding and it was literally the best decision we have ever made. But it wasn’t perfect (of course) and it is important to keep a few things in mind when selecting this unique path.
There are some downsides that you might want to be aware of:
- Not everyone will be able to make it (especially if guests pay their way), and just assume that most elderly friends or grandparents won’t be able to make it. My solution to this was to do multiple showers with different groups of people, and I even flew to where my grandma lives so I could celebrate with one party that she could attend.
- There will be things that happen that are out of your control, and a far away destination will increase the likelihood of this (i.e. a best friend’s visa is expired and can’t come last minute, or a guest gets sick from local food). This comes with the territory of travel in general, and traveling in large groups can be more complicated.
- There will be more for you to deal with (i.e. planning a few meals, instead of just one at the ceremony) but if you have a good bridal party who can help you take charge and plan an agenda beforehand then it can take off some of the stress. It is really important to get to know the resort that you are staying at. I randomly selected a few restaurants ahead of time and put them on an agenda for my guests. My wedding coordinator gave me the wrong information and said I couldn’t reserve space at the restaurants for large groups, so there were two meals where I showed up with 50 people and the staff had to scurry around to figure out where to sit us all.
- You do give up a lot of control and have to truly trust the resort and wedding coordinator who will be working with you because you can’t do typical things like scouting a location or tasting a cake until you arrive to the destination. I recommend asking for pictures beforehand, and anything in writing that you can review about the resort that might not already be on their website. This was helpful for me because I was able to print tons of packets of information to digest prior to the big day.
- This isn’t super important but it caught me by surprise, there are going to be people who just don’t get it (like come on, why wouldn’t you get married in an actual physical church, or how dare you ask your guests to pay their own way for travel??)…whatever! There will be some interesting etiquette things that come up, but like with anything, stay true to who you are and what’s most important to you as a couple.
I do hope that this helps if you’re currently on the fence! I am PRO-destination weddings (see my blog from last week!) but it is important that you’re prepared.
With love,
Girl with a diamond ring
GIRL WITH A DIAMOND RING 