Weddings Abroad - Help

[Vie8126]

Calling all brides that have had/having a destination weddings - did you pay for immediate family (parents/siblings) flights and accommodation? How did you work out your guest list and numbers without asking people if they want to attend and then doing it backwards (with a chance it isn’t financially feasible anyway and have to them go back to them and say oh we’ve changed our mind) I just can’t work it out. We don’t want hoards of people and understand people will likely be unable to afford it but just how do you work it out?!

I think you need to speak to your VIP guests with a vague plan and see who is actually up for this.

Destination weddings are a huge burden on guests financially and in terms of Annual Leave and ask people to spend these things on something they may not have chosen to do so.

I’m really grumpy about destination weddings generally and if you were my sister or something I would feel obligated to go but I wouldn’t be happy about it and I would probably express this to you if asked before the plans were made. The last thing you want is a resentful bunch of guests!

We are having a destination wedding next year and our main starting point was would we be happy if none of our guest could come. As long you are ok with then go for it but you will probably have a fairly good idea who would say yes before even asking.
We have 30 guests coming as everyone said yes, this was very unexpected we were sure there would a few no’s but everyone was really keen. We did take the cost into consideration when choosing who to invite though as we were very aware how awkward it can be to say no as you can’t afford it.

We did also make it so it could be done cheaply if you wanted to. We are paying for accommodation for the night of the wedding for all guests. Our thoughts were then if you want to come but it’s expensive then you could fly out the day before stay one night in a cheap hotel, then the wedding day and night is all paid for and can then leave the day after. Nobody has chosen to do this but it made us feel like it wasn’t so much of an ask.

@weddingwaiting I get it. Thankfully, my siblings are a lot younger than me in their early 20s no kids not married pretty much no responsibility. I have discussed it with them and they are super up for it - they’d tell me if they wasn’t for sure! Our friend base is either people with grown up children or don’t have children. I’d be the only one with two school age kids and one will be leaving school the year we are looking at and the little one starting school in the September - if we had lots of friends/family with young kids etc we would never dream of considering it. We don’t expect people to be able to make it - we’re fully aware of CoL and would help with the immediate family costs.

@Liss243 great idea re making sure it’s a place you can go for a couple of days etc to keep costs low. Will defo take that into consideration!

Not quite aborad, but far away.

I found alternate accomodation per person i invited. So for the families invited i found kids friendly places with pool and activities then a caravan site for the camping fanatics in our group. So its not just wedding for us, but also a family holiday for other guests.