Having a destination wedding and Fiance's parents spring on us we have to pay for them!!!

This is a tough one. It's possible they were trying to save their money, but things kept coming up that drained the savings. That's a scarey place to be at their age (and unfortunately, not as unusual as people may think). It is almost 2000 miles between the two cities, so there are obviously expenses involved for those attending. You do have a right to be frustrated, but the choice is pretty clear: if you want them there (and I'm sure you do), you'll have to pay their way. I would ask them if they could chip in something. They certainly aren't expecting you to pick up the tabs for all of their meals while they're in Tahoe, right? Even if you were married in their home town, they know that their son's wedding was going to cost them something (even if it's just attire, a rehearsal dinner, and a wedding gift). They have almost 19 weeks before your wedding. If they could save $50/week, that would be nearly $1,000 by the time you get married, and that would help to offset some of the costs you'd be incurring.

That's the reason we decided not to do a DW. My parents wouldn't be able to afford it and my MOH either (single mother of 2) It's really important to us to have our families there so we're keeping it local. Good luck!

Im sorry but there's no way we could afford to pay for anyone's travel expenses ... They had plenty of notice and time to save.

When my fiancé and I started planning our destination wedding in Jamaica, we knew that traveling would be a financial burden on both of our parents. Even though we were providing a full year’s notice to our guests, it would have been a lot to ask of them, knowing they are on a fixed income. So, instead of asking them to pay for something that we knew they could not afford, we budgeted their travel and lodging into the cost of our wedding from the very beginning. We did not want to put the stress on them to come up with the funds in order to make us happy. It saved everyone the stress and embarrassment of having to explain that they couldn’t come. It was our decision to plan a destination wedding, but we could not expect others to go broke in order to attend. Our parents are the only people that we felt that we HAD to have there, so we are taking care of it. If we could not have afforded to pay for them to come, we would not have planned a destination wedding.