Slightly different perspective - We had a destination wedding in Scotland 10+ years ago. My husband is from there and his parents still lived there - his dad was in a care home so couldn't travel. So if we wanted his dad at the wedding, which we did, it had to be where he was. We had about 70 people attend, and only 8-10 of them lived in the UK; everyone else traveled.

Anonymous wrote:I love them and it's worth it to me to find childcare and make a trip of it with my spouse. Otherwise I feel too guilty doing something without kids, this is an excuse for grown-up time.

If I'm arranging overnight childcare, I want to be traveling to a place I chose and at a time I chose

Anonymous wrote:Aren’t most wedding destination weddings? I mean I know that’s not the point, but when you have to cross state lines to attend it is a destination to me.

+1 everyone is so scattered that every wedding is a destination wedding for us. we go to the ones we can go to, miss the ones we can't. it has become a thing on my spouse's side of the family, which has largely congregated in the northeast - but this generation of kids keeps getting married in fairly random places (they all live in nj but someone got married in south carolina, another in kentucky, etc). people are grumbling about that, because they still feel obligated to attend. ("people" meaning my in laws, who do go to everything - we do not.)

i've had to miss weddings i wanted to go to because they were in really far flung places - polynesia, in one case - and i just didn't have the $ to go.

Anonymous wrote:Aren’t most wedding destination weddings? I mean I know that’s not the point, but when you have to cross state lines to attend it is a destination to me.

+1 80% of the time I have to travel either way, so I'd rather travel somewhere I want to visit than Western Pennsylvania or Southern Indiana. I also don't mind declining if it's not in my budget or convenient, timing-wise. I think it's weird when people get furious about wedding choices (location, dress code, day of the week, time of day, yes kids or no kids). Just don't go if it's not what you want to do!

I don't really mind them. Like with any wedding, if we can make the trip work, we will go. If we can't, we won't. The last wedding we went to was outside Cleveland and ended up being much more expensive than the destination wedding we went to in Puerto Rico.

I want to say that even 20 years ago destination, weddings were small events, usually just the bride and groom with only the closest family members attending. They were small. They sent out wedding announcements , not invitations. Even though those could have still been annoying, they were less annoying than now when the guest list is long. And these couples want their Instagram and social media weddings to look a certain way. It’s also tacky.

TACKY.

Wow. I feel better knowing so many people hate them. We have a destination wedding of a close family member coming up. Skipping it would have been a horrible look. While I'm looking forward to actually being there, it is costing a fortune and forcing us to cancel our family vacation plans. The destination is expensive, the resort is expensive, the food we get on our own will be expensive, and the dress code requires buying new clothes. It is a massive ask for everyone attending. In this case, the bride's parents (not necessarily the bride herself) were not satisfied with anything local or even within driving distance. I understand that they are paying for the wedding, but it feels like their dream location comes at the guests' expense.

7:36: and by destination, I mean that it is not the hometown of anyone in the wedding party. So everyone is traveling.

Utterly hate them, especially if you know that the couple got married previously in a religious service. So basically I’m going for a fake wedding?? I’ve had to go to Brazil, Florida and California for these scenarios.

I would have liked them in my 20s pre-kids but none of my friends had one. Now in my 30s with little kids, most non local weddings are honestly pretty inconvenient, but destination weddings are even tougher. I’d probably go if it was a destination that I already wanted to travel to though.

Anonymous wrote:Isn’t every wedding a destination? Most people have weddings in home towns or places with family their friends have to travel to.

I have attended numerous out of state weddings. The difference is: ability to choose the hotel of my choice for as many days as I like, using hotel points if possible, and traveling to destination by car.

At first I was thinking I haven’t been to one - a friend invited me to his week-long wedding in India and it would be amazing to see an Indian wedding, but I had just found out I was prefnant (DD would have been 5 weeks at the wedding). Another friend living in the Netherlands invited me to his wedding - our children were 6 months and 4.5 at the time and we didn’t go to that.

To another’s point though, I’ve realized plenty of weddings in the person’s home town are destination weddings sort of. In particular, both my sister and my cousin live in towns in the Rocky Mountains and my very closest elementary school friend does too (none in the same town). Getting to their weddings is far and my sister got married over 4th of July weekend and had multiple days of optional casual events. I have never left the country to attend a wedding. I didn’t make it to my close friend’s wedding because it seemed too far with my then one year old (DH was defending his thesis and couldn’t come) but I regret not going.

Unless you're paying for guest travel and lodging, tacky. Don't do it

Anonymous wrote:Isn’t every wedding a destination? Most people have weddings in home towns or places with family their friends have to travel to.

Yes. And I'd rather go to Mustique than pay 550 a night to be in a Holiday Inn off the side of a highway in rural NH.