If you were a guest would you be ok with this? - wedding abroad

[foreverengaged]

We are looking to get married within the next couple of years (everything permitting) in my DPs home country. We've been looking at venues and where the guests from the UK would be potentially staying and we would love some outside perspectives on the ideas and logistic issues we have as we want to make it as comfortable as possible for everyone.

DPs family live about 50mins away from the large popular city with lots of touristy things to do where we usually fly into when visiting. DPs hometown is fairly quiet with not much to do apart from a nice park.

Our initial idea:

• guests fly in and stay in large popular city - we can suggest accommodation or they can find their own, most places, hotels and restaurants speak some English and have English menus as they are used to tourists from the uk so it should be easy enough for everyone to navigate and there are plenty of things to do both for families with DCs of all ages as well as couples and/or singles.

• guests can either come for the weekend of the wedding or make it a few days/week to have a little break/holiday whilst they're at it we would leave it up to them. We know quite a few of the guests would like to use the opportunity to explore the city and do some sightseeing.

• the church we get married in is in DPs hometown (sentimental reasons) so we would organise and fully pay for a mini bus (or multiple) to collect everyone from their hotels and transport to church on the day of the wedding it's around 50mins drive on a motorway

• we have found a venue we love which is another 25mins from church so again minibus (we would absolutely make sure it's up to scratch and comfortable I.e. Air con if it's summertime and so on)

• weddings in DPs country go on for 2 days so we would organise and pay for transport from venue back to hotels and transport back the next day (the afterparty starts around 2pm) 1hr drive.

OR guests can choose to stay the night at the venue which has a lovely hotel on site with a lot of activities and lovely amenities and the day after attend the after party then stay another night/ return to original hotel / stay another night then go straight to airport to return to UK the next day depending on the length/timing of their stay.

• Alternatively you can also opt to just fly in, travel to and stay for the entirety at the hotel the wedding reception will take place, travel to church and back, do the 2/3nights of wedding and travel straight back to airport. The hotel grounds have plenty to do, there's a stable where you can pay for horse riding, they provide free bikes to explore the grounds, there's a play area for kids and a water park area in the summer, hot tub/jacuzzi, spa and lots of greenery to explore so fingers crossed should be enough to keep guest entertained from Fri to Mon when they're not at the wedding.

We would not be asking for gifts as we are aware it's an expense to attend. The wedding itself will have a free bar and lots of food/drink coming all throughout the day/night so no additional costs for drinks and the like.

Would you be happy with these options as a guest? Or is it too much?

It's all in the very early planning stages so any insight would be really appreciated.

Sounds awesome OP and you are being very considerate of your guests. My church and reception venue were around 20 mins drive from the town where people were staying and I put on a coach to transport everyone about. people were very grateful as it meant they didn't have to worry about taxis - apparently there was also a real party atmosphere on the way back!

It's inevitable some people won't want to travel, but for those that do want to share your day, it sounds like they will have a fabulous time.

I think it sounds lovely and you have thought about a lot of things, providing transport is a nice touch.

However we wouldn't come. £500 odd would just be way too much to spend and we would want to spend that on a family holiday to a place of our choice.

Could you potentially get someone to stream your wedding for people to watch at home? My korean friend did this.

We had a similar distance wedding in a home country. I know people here are saying they'd not bother to come and hate the idea but we had 130 guests travel.

Things we did to make it easier were:

• pick up and drop off at airport for anyone who would find it difficult on their own (elderly, young kids, not used to travelling etc.)
• booked a bar/restaurant in the popular city the night before for anyone in town who wanted to join. Most of our guests who had already arrived came to this.
• transport to and from venue from the popular city. Return transport ran as a shuttle service from midnight to 3am so lots of options for anyone tired.
• had 2 english speaking, dbs checked and qualified nannies on site of the wedding in a side room with cots, beds, DVDs etc.

-organised a lunch the day after and some tourist activities (river cruise trip etc.) For anyone who wanted to attend. Much less attended this as most people were travelling home this day. -organised very good deal on 4 star hotel in good location in popular city. Think it was about 60 euros a night for a family room. -website available where guests could sign up for restaurant/nanny etc.

We paid for everything except the hotel room, unless we knew someone wouldn't be able to make it otherwise. Then we paid that too. And obviously all the food/drinks etc. were included.

I found it was 50/50 whether parents brought their kids or not. We left it entirely up to them.

The invited guests who didn't come were very few and largely double booked for the date. Some came for a week, others came just for the wedding.

It's been some years now and we still hear randomly from guests how much they enjoyed it. And it was still much cheaper than hosting the same number of people at even a very average venue in the UK without any of the extras.

Oh, and we chose the popular city as there were many low cost airlines flying from the main airports our guests would use.

Mumsnet seems to have such a weird reaction to weddings that cost more than £50 and involve some sort of effort from a guest.

I've been to two weddings abroad in Europe, and the only thing I'd say is that transport to and from the wedding is the absolute critical part. Especially if it includes multiple locations as it sounds like yours will. So the mini bus idea is a great one.

The only other question I have is around the two day wedding, could you do one day as family only? Or would it be all guests to both?

I would simplify it:

Accommodation at the venue is available for a limited number of guests at our preferential rates of xx, yy. If you'd like to stay at the venue for the period of the wedding, please book directly with the hotel [provide details]. For those who prefer to stay in the City or aren't able to book sufficiently in advance to secure a room, let us know if you want advice.

To facilitate the actual wedding and reception, we'll be organising mini busses from the city to the church, then to the reception and back to the city as needed. As it would be complicated for the minibuses to travel to collect multiple people in different parts of the city we plan to get them to collect from [insert 1 or 2 appropriate central points - perhaps a hotel or something.] If your accommodation is within approximately 1 mile the bus could pick you up otherwise we'd ask you to make your own way to [hotel] for collection.

You know your guests better - if you think a whole bunch of them might like to stay in a central hotel at a certain price point, you could negotiate a group discount and suggest it too.

I take it you’ve made sure all kids and partners are invited?

No, i wouldn't attend this, no matter how close i was to the couple getting married.

Logistically, the faff involved in flying into the city, the transportation to the church then the other venue, having to check into accommodation upon getting into the country, then presumably pay for the church overnight accommodation on top (so paying two different accommodation costs for a single night?).... honestly, fuck that for a laugh.

i have tried to do this sort of thing to placate friends, family etc when younger and single, where timing, energy levels weren't a big deal.. and even then it turned into a nightmare every single time.

nowadays, after those experiences, i only attend events like this if i can personally control it all, and i'm not reliant on another (usually fickle) person.

i remember one particularly bad friend's wedding (the friend was great, the logistics of her wedding less so!) where all we had to do was fly in, share a rented car with another couple, and drive 4 of us to a 30min away village next to the airport city. fuck me. turned out the mobile number we'd been given for this other couple was wrong. then when we called mutual (getting married) friends, turned out their flight (from another city in the UK) was delayed. then they got stopped exiting the airport. what should have been a quick meet up with 2 stranges, and a simple car journey turned into a midnight drive from a horror movie, trying to bang on the hotel's doors in the dark because they'd assumed we were a no show by the time we'd dropped htis other couple off at their hotel around the corner.

NO WAY would i agree to the op plan, at all, just give me a time and a date and a place and i'll sort myself out of i can/want to go.

i can't even imagine doing it with small children etc if that's an aspect to consider for your guests.

Sounds exhausting, like some sort of coach trip. The wedding needs to be all in one place or church and reception within walking distance and accommodation near by.

Mumsnet seems to have such a weird reaction to weddings that cost more than £50 and involve some sort of effort from a guest.

£50 is a lot of money for some people.

For £500, we could rent a cottage somewhere for a week for the two of us, and have £100 odd left over for meals out. £500 is a huge amount of money to spend to attend someone else's wedding.

Even for a close family member, it wouldn't occur to me to pay hundreds of pounds to go to their wedding. I'd just be bitterly disappointed they didn't have a ceremony in the UK. Up until a recent inheritance, it wouldn't even have been an option, financially, as we struggled to pay the electricity bill.

My sister paid out thousands so her working adult kids and their partners could go to her son's wedding abroad. They all had a great time, but she was pushed into having to remortgage her house to pay it - his siblings said they weren't going because it was too expensive.

Sounds like a lot of complicated planning there. I suggest you get a special guest rate from the venue and offer that to your guests and leave it to them if, where and for how long they stay longer. You only then need to organise travel from venue to church and back.

It's just such a waste of money. If you could live stream it, I would prefer that.

We have received invitations similar to yours. I am sorry to say that we have never attended any of them because in the end it's just too much time out of annual leave for us to manage and too much moving around. I would if it were for a close family member but not otherwise, sorry (and even then I'd be privately grumbly). I especially don't like the idea of the 50 minute coach ride.

Why don't you privately sound out your friends and special people to see if they will attend before planning any more

Please can I be your friend? I'd really like to be at your wedding, it sounds wonderful!

If I were to attend a wedding abroad, I would certainly make a holiday of it. I don't think you need to specify all the stuff about the nearby city and their hotels and how many days etc, people will know whether they'd like to make a holiday of it and how long for themselves.

All you need to say is that you will be providing a minibus to take guests who are staying in the city to the wedding. When it gets nearer the time you just choose a collection point in the city and a time and tell everyone the bus will be waiting there for them, and also state the times the bus will be leaving the wedding to go back to the city (to the same collection point), and the times for the 2nd day.

You don't need to get more involved in people's travel plans than that really.

I would never travel abroad for a wedding, unless I was close family or a very close friend. However if I was going to travel abroad for a wedding I would think that you had been considerate.

I've actually been to a wedding of a close friend that was very similar to this, OP, and the bits they did that helped us the most were:

Coach from the airport to OH's hometown.

We all stayed in the same hotel (obviously we were totally free not to, but they recommended it and block booked so that anyone who wanted to stay there could, and we of course took advantage of that). Was nice to be in the same hotel as everyone else.

Coach from hotel to church, coach from church to venue, coach from venue to hotel again.

So basically, not having to worry about where things were in this totally foreign country or how to get from one place to another. That was the main thing that made things so so easy.

chat it over with guests, do you know if any are happy to travel abroad.
A couple in our family fancied it but nobody wanted to travel, so they were lonely and grabbed a couple of witnesses from the hotel.
Not everyone likes to travel.

Totally get you vanillaandhoney, but OP hasn't given any indication that she intends to kick off at or guilt trip people who aren't able to come because of the cost, and given the wedding is abroad because that is where her fiance is from (and presumably all his family live), so either way one side of the family is going to have to bear the costs and inconvenience of travel, and it sounds as though accommodation in her DP's country is a lot cheaper and it's more of a holiday destination than most places in the UK, I can see why they've chosen to do things the way they have.

Personally I wouldn't see simply not inviting one half of the family as an option for my own wedding, and having two whole separate weddings perhaps more than they can afford.

Also, I know I risk sounding unbelievably privileged here, but £500 is not that much than DH and I would spend going to a wedding on the other side of the UK. We'd probably have to fill the car with petrol (£50, or take the train which would be 2 or 3 times as much), book accommodation for 2 nights (unless we travelled up very early on the morning of the wedding, not always practicable), at least £100, would usually give at least £50 as a gift and often more, plus taxis to/from the venue, a few drinks at the bar, new outfits etc might easily come to £100, so if OP is laying on all drinks, all transport etc at her wedding, cheap accommodation is available plus she isn't expecting any gifts, then I don't think it will necessarily cost her guests that much more than a UK wedding would have, or as it's only a 2 hour flight away, necessarily mean taking more than a day off work - could catch an evening flight on the Friday night, wedding Saturday and Sunday, fly home on the Monday?

But overall of course it depends on your personal circumstances and finances as to whether £500 and a day or two off work is no big deal or a huge insurmountable object, and of course there will probably be some people who can't come. But I don't think OP is acting unreasonably, she is hugely different from the people who have their weddings in the Caribbean or other such hugely inconvenient far away place for no other reason than whim, and then kick off when people decline due to cost, as you do occasionally hear of...

We have friends who've married in Bali, in Jamaica and in the South of France. We travelled to all of them with the DC because they were people we love.

That’s lovely, but you missed out the bit that you could presumably afford to take these trips. We are reasonably comfortable but Jamaica and Bali are not destinations that fall within our budget right now, and I imagine that’s the case for most people. It isn’t simply the case that caring for the bride and groom is enough to get you there.

Some very good friends of ours were married in Malaysia about ten years ago. We went, as did a big group of friends. We were all DINK. I don’t think any of us could manage it now.

Totally get you vanillaandhoney, but OP hasn't given any indication that she intends to kick off at or guilt trip people who aren't able to come because of the cost, and given the wedding is abroad because that is where her fiance is from (and presumably all his family live), so either way one side of the family is going to have to bear the costs and inconvenience of travel, and it sounds as though accommodation in her DP's country is a lot cheaper and it's more of a holiday destination than most places in the UK, I can see why they've chosen to do things the way they have.

No, but she did ask for opinions and I gave mine.

It's expensive and a lot of hassle for someone else's wedding. If I had £500 to spare on a holiday I wouldn't spend it attending someone else's wedding in a country and venue of their choice. I think that's fairly true for a lot of people.

It sounds really lovely but in the current climate I would probably only commit to that for family and very close friends.

The issue for me would be cost.
I cannot imagine that the wedding hotel will be affordable for my family, we would do cheap B&B for staying at a wedding.
I also think that if you have families with small children, this is a nightmare, as you can't duck back to the hotel for a kids nap etc.

So I think it depends

1. how rich your family and friends are, and how much they are prepared to spend.
2. how many families v. singles/couples do you have
3. timing eg school holidays, works both ways, couldn't come in term time because of school, but holiday time is pricey, this point really depends on point 2.
4. how disappointed you will be if someone key decides not to come.

To be honest, I would ditch all plans around the big city, if they want to do that, they can add it to their itinary, don't try and organise a complete holiday for everyone, just organise the wedding, let them know how much and when and where, they can extend it to a holiday of they like.

Look at cheaper options next to the venue hotel - air B&B? motel? caravan park? Seriously, think about how much you are askign a family of say 4 people to spend.

Check your venue hotel has enough rooms for all your guests of they do want to stay

I'd be happy with that

Sounds just too horribly complicated. Choose something and let the guests decide whether or not they will come. I'd need a lie down and a headache tablet even reading about the options never mind choosing something.

Sounds good and I'd attend and look forward to it but tbh I'd probably only want to attend day 1 unless I was a v.close family member ( too much travelling esp with DC) and I'd spend the remaining time sightseeing and doing my own thing.