Destination/hometown

You definitely won’t have a big celebration as you would like because a lot of people opt out of destination weddings because of costs, time and Covid.


Maybe you can have an at home wedding and have a two honeymoon locations instead. One of course where you wanted to have your destination wedding.

View Quoted Comment That's a good point! What do you mean by two honeymoon locations?

It’s very common for guests to traveling cross country for a wedding. However if the ceremony is private, then many people don’t feel comfortable coming to a reception only especially if they have to travel. Also, it’s cheaper for you to plan one party for everyone than 2 separate parties.

So we've been on quite a planning journey:

First: a wedding in the town my mom's family lives in. It's midway between us and FH's family, and my family made up a big chunk of the guest list. I realized planning something 3 hours away from me wasn't going to go very well.

Second: a local wedding where we currently live. We were going to invite about 125 people and have a full sit down reception. Then I priced it out and almost died.

Third: a local wedding with a small ceremony on Friday night followed by a dinner reception instead of a rehearsal dinner and then a larger reception on Saturday (FH has always been attached to the idea of an intimate ceremony and he doesn't like being the center of attention). Mom sort of shot this down and told us we were being rude.

Fourth: elope in California with a reception back home. Also got shut down by my mom and my desire to have a big party with good food and my favorite people

Fifth: small wedding in California with a big reception back home. Still get the good food and our favorite people, it'll still be a great party, but it isn't the price tag on the back-home reception was getting ridiculous, and so was finding a place to have it.

Sixth and final: small wedding in California with good food and our favorite people, with some financial contributions from my mom as incentive to invite a few more people.

You'll find the option that makes the most sense for the two of you as a couple in the way that it fits with the budget!

Hey Nikki! I’m a destination wedding bride. I recommend going with one event instead of two, whether that’s a large wedding in your hometown or a smaller or even larger destination wedding. From experience, trying to plan two events is very costly and gets confusing once you really get into the planning stages. For a destination wedding, guests get to experience a vacation, but even if you invite a large number of people, not everyone will easily be able to attend. For a local wedding, you will probably get a larger turn out but you might end up spending a lot more since you have a larger guest list.