Wanting to keep our destination wedding date with a newborn — am I mad to think this can work?

[Bianca2025]

Hi everyone,

I’d really appreciate some honest advice or experiences.

We’ve planned a destination wedding, and I’ve just found out I’m pregnant. It’s lovely news, but the timing means our baby could be around 2 months old — maybe even younger — when the wedding happens.

The thing is, I mainly want to make it work and keep the date. I love the wedding we’ve planned, and I don’t feel ready to give that up. But I’m also wondering… am I mad to think this is actually doable with such a tiny baby?

I’m a very organised person and I like having things under control, so the idea of travelling abroad and managing a newborn while also being a bride feels like a lot to wrap my head around.

Has anyone here had a destination wedding with a very young baby? Or travelled internationally with a newborn?
How did you handle the flights, the logistics, feeding/sleeping, and actually enjoying the day?
Did you bring extra support? Would you do anything differently?

Even if you haven’t done it yourself, I’d love to hear what you’d do in my situation.

Thank you so much for any advice ❤️

Congratulations on your pregnancy.

First issue would be getting a passport in time.
For me it would have been too soon, I had a difficult delivery and recovery with my first baby.

We did 2 weeks in USA with a 5 month old and that was pretty easy really. 4 months would have been fine too. 2 months I think would have been hard - not so much the travel, but the wedding aspect as well. You’re just so tired and in the trenches at that point. I would also worry about getting a passport in time, especially if your baby is overdue.

I wouldn’t want to expose a newborn to airplane germs. I also think it just won’t be the day you have planned and imagined at all, I’m sure some people have managed similar but I’d rather have had a root canal at that stage as it would be over quicker and being apart from my baby or other people passing him around was almost physically painful for those first three or four months.

I think it depends where you go (assuming the birth goes well), and you might want to think about the risk of diseases and exposing such a young baby to germs in planes etc before they had their vaccines.

I didn’t travel abroad but I did travel in the UK a lot and eat out etc and one tiny baby is quite easy to travel with.
I didn’t have a great birth as it ended in an emcs but I’d lost all the baby weight and was fine by 6 weeks not totally healed but not in pain or restricted mobility
If everything is organised before and the birth is ok you should be fine. Tired but fine

Not enough information, how longs the flight, the travel at the destination, what type of venue. How many people are travelling etc.
Id had have been fine to travel at 8 but not sure I’d have wanted my own wedding at 8 weeks.

I traveled lots with my baby, first flights at 7 weeks etc. I think you’re mad to consider this.

The baby might be less that 2 months old. You might still be bleeding, if you’re feeding that’ll have to happen very regularly throughout the day. I had complicated after the birth, I couldn’t stand or walk for long periods without being in some pain.

If you’d have a c-section you will only just be out of recovery phase.

And then there is the passport issue. You have to wait to register the birth, get the birth certificate, and only then can you fill in the forms etc.

The wedding you have in your mind, and the wedding you would be forced to have with a 6-8 week old baby with you, are so monumentally different that I think you’d would struggle to enjoy the experience. I would wait until the baby is older, or just get married now and skip the abroad wedding and have a fab party later.

Passport.
vaccines.
a lot depends on where it is and is the water safe if formula feeding.

Will be tight getting a passport, especially as you might not be able to register quickly if either of you need to stay in hospital for a bit. I just think there are far too many variables.

The due date is pretty meaningless, it’s at 38 weeks but you could go to 42 weeks before they’ll make you have an induction. And if this is your first baby they’re more likely to be later than the due date. So your baby might only be 4 weeks old.

You may not be able to get a passport.that quickly.

They won’t have any vaccinations yet.

If you have a difficult birth you could still be healing - at 4 weeks after the birth of my first I could barely walk.

Its an insane idea.

If the baby is born late, as first ones often are, you’d be very tight with the passport. It took me several days to manage to get an acceptable picture. There’s no express service for a first child passport.

Congratulations on your upcoming wedding & baby! 🎉

Is this your first baby OP? I'm going to assume it is for the sake of my answer.

At least than 2 months, your baby won't have had any of their vaccinations yet. Some people still travel abroad at that stage anyway, but its your first consideration to see what you're comfortable with.

You'll also have had to have registered the birth, and applied for the passport straight away. Plus international health insurance if that applies.

Most first time pregnancies go over by around ten days, so factor that in. Your dates may also change slightly when you get your booking scan.

You also have no idea what kind of pregnancy, labour or delivery you'll have just yet. Hopefully it'll all be smooth sailing, but you could still be recovering. It took 11 weeks for the stitches to disintegrate after my first birth and that's not unheard of. The 6 week recovery window in movies is very unrealistic for a lot of people.

You'll also have to factor in the baby - some people get easy ones, some don't. I've had one of each - I probably could have swung attending a wedding at 6 weeks postpartum with one, definitely not the other.

Do you plan to breastfeed? If you do, you won't be able to be away from the baby for more than 2 hours at a time at 6 weeks postpartum. They can feed for up to 30min at a time, so a good chunk of your day would be in a chair nursing.

You'll also have to find a babysitter, and with a baby that age you'll probably want it to be family. Who will you ask to sit out the wedding, or take turns doing that?

You can probably tell I'd lean towards rescheduling, but best of luck with your decision!

I wouldn't have enjoyed it with my first. For a start baby was 2 weeks late. Secondly I had a section. Lastly we took some adjustment to get used to being parents. Second or third baby yes I could have and would have enjoyed it. I would have wanted some family support.
Just remember every birth is different and every baby is different.

Everyone is different, and births and recovery isn’t the same for anyone. However, when I was pregnant with my first I mentioned to my MIL that I was planning a big celebration lunch for a big birthday that was coming up. My baby would be about 6 weeks and I thought a lunch seemed manageable. She kindly advised to think less optimistically with such a small baby!

I did as I was advised and fast forward to the day, I had a casual lunch with my dh, baby and 3 good friends planned. However at 4am that morning I woke up with a blocked milk duct, and later developed mastitis. I spent most of it stressed, sobbing and struggling to bf a crying baby. Then ended up in out of hours getting antibiotics.

Babies, bodies, births, hormones and post partum bodies are impossible to predict or control. I’d seriously recommend rescheduling. Congratulations on your pregnancy - enjoy it, a wedding will wait.

I wouldn’t risk it.

A final thought which isn’t cheery, but you’d be mad not to consider is that some babies or mothers need extra care after they’re born. You have no guarantees that you’ll be raring to go by a certain date. I have some friends whose baby’s spent a few days/week in the NICU. When they did get home they all wanted rest and recuperation. So a tight deadline weeks after birth is very risky - you might not be able to make it, and would you stand to loose a lot of money if so?

I would be more cautious and delay the wedding.
Enjoy the baby's arrival and adjust to being parents.
Then enjoy the wedding properly when a) you're fully recovered physically and b) baby's routine is more predictable.
Maybe when the baby is 6 months old at the earliest.
You might not feel like planning the perfect details for your dream wedding with a newborn (priorities change usually when you are a first time mum). Don't put yourself under unnecessary pressure.

I travelled a lot before my dd, and was determined to take her away after she was born to visit somewhere I used to live abroad. I was induced at 37 weeks, lost a lot of blood, wasn't myself after the birth and developed severe ppa. She cried any time I took her anywhere from aged 2 weeks onwards. Safe to say, we did not end up going abroad. Her first holiday was when she was 5. My ds (born 8 years later due to my first experience) was a different experience and we took him abroad aged 3 months. As others have said, you never know what to expect with regards to you, the baby and your healing, so I think it would be best to reschedule.

I’d love to say go for it, but I do feel it’s a bit optimistic- and I’m saying that as a fairly relaxed FTM.

First, as others have said - passport. Whilst you may have no issues at all, you may not get an appointment to register the birth until 6 weeks, getting the passport in time may be touch and go.

You don’t know what kind of birth you’ll have. I had an emergency c section, and though I felt like a recovered pretty well, at 5 weeks pp we had to do a 4 hr (each way) drive and by the end of it was in pain again, it really set my recovery back.

Your baby won’t have had vaccines by then and I’d be worried about illness.

You’ll be knackered, your head all over the place. Even as someone who had worked as a nanny and taken care of several newborns in the past, with my own I really did have brain fog!

Actual travel wise (germs aside), the baby will likely just sleep so I wouldn’t think the journey would be too bad. But overall, I wouldn’t do it, I don’t think you’ll enjoy it.

The first round of major vaccines against all kind of horrible things are at eight weeks. If your baby gets sick before this, the doctors take it really seriously because it could be something life threatening. And because their immune system is new and not fully functional yet. I would not take a baby on a plane in these circumstances personally.

agree with PP that you really won’t be feeling good at 8 weeks PP - likely still bleeding, saggy belly, sore vagina, massive leaking boobs, hair starting to fall out, pale and exhausted looking from no sleep for two months. I didn’t like how I looked at all for months after giving birth, I would hate if my wedding pictures showed that version of me.

Don’t do it. Make the decision now and take the pressure off.

We had to wait 4 weeks to register both ours, so your first problem will be getting that paperwork be for you can apply for the passport. You might be lucky and they could turn the passport around in a week, but sometimes its longer and that would be very stressful on its own.

We flew 12 hours with a 4 month old baby to visit family, and that was fine. Breastfeeding made it easier, as food source was portable! And she was brilliant on the plane and slept really well in the humidity too. It seemed to suit her.

I’m not sure I’d want to be hosting a complex event with a newborn, tbh. If I think of all the little admin jobs that need doing in the last week, I really wouldn’t have wanted to do that with a baby.

It could be absolutely fine. It could also be not feasible.

I had a few issues during / post delivery, nothing of major note in the eyes of the health service but equally not perfectly smooth. Managed a domestic flight at 12 weeks to stay with family for a chilled visit. A couple of weeks before that trip I wasn’t convinced I’d manage it.

I’d suggest understanding the situation with cancelling / postponing.

Another option might be to try and get a planned section at 39 weeks. That takes out a big chunk of the uncertainty.

We got married in Cyprus when our youngest was four months old, it was a great holiday and we had no regrets. It was easy since she was still exclusively breastfeeding. Not the most glamorous wedding I’m sure but we enjoyed it.

You literally have no idea how you and/or the baby will be health wise that soon after your due date. You are highly unlikely to be able to get travel
insurance. That and the practicalities others have mentioned re registering the birth, passport etc makes this a mental decision. Your wedding can be set up exactly the same the following year, the place isn’t going to disappear!