Hometown vs New Home Wedding

My fiance and I had many discussions about where to have the wedding, since I grew up in a small town in northern SK, he lived in BC and moved to my hometown 6 years ago and we live in Saskatoon, SK now. BC would have been very far for many people to travel to (since most people live in the small SK town so it was nixed from the list. Saskatoon would be easy for us since there are actual wedding venues, etc and we live here. Small town would be easy for most guests since they live there. We ultimately decided to get married where we live now, mainly because we moved here together to start university and this is where most of our life as a couple has been. So the main questions are:

1. where do you imagine your dream wedding to take place?

2. which place do you and your fiance have more of a connection to?

3. which place has the lower cost of living, which means lower cost of wedding?

4. if you have the wedding not where you're currently living, is it easy to travel between the two places? if so, how much time and money would you spend travelling to do wedding stuff?

5. will people not be able to come if you have the wedding where you're living now? i.e. a sick family member that you really want to attend but they can't travel that long

I’d probably have the wedding where most of your guests are or it becomes a destination wedding for them, which may create a high decline rate.

Welcome to the WeddingWire community Alyssa!

I’m sorry that you have you choose between two important locations for your wedding. At the end of the day, you should choose the location that you can’t imagine not getting married. But there are obviously a lot of factors that you should consider before making a final decision. What will be the cost and time spent traveling to and from your hometown for wedding planning events, meetings and appointments? Is this something that you have factored into your wedding budget?

If you have your wedding in your new home, you will have to reign yourself to the fact that it could mean some guests not willing to travel so far for your wedding.

At the end of the day, you have to choose what makes you and your fiancé happiest!

My FH and I both relocated from our hometowns as well but we are also not from the same home town. We decided on a semi destination wedding as everyone was going to have to travel regardless of where we hosted the wedding. We live in a rather expensive part of the nation so we chose to have our wedding in North Carolina as it was overall much cheaper for our guests and for the entire wedding overall. Do your research on both areas and see what will be the most cost effective if cost is a concern. I will suggest a local wedding coordinator/planner if you choose an out of town location (be it home town or otherwise) as they can help tie up loose ends that yourself or friends/family might miss. We have a wedding coordinator and she has already been extremely valuable.

Depending on where in TN, it would be quite expensive. The cost of living is rising in Nashville and it is rapidly becomining/became an “it” destination with people moving and vacationing.
We live in Nashville and had to get married 30+ from our home to find reasonable vendors to fit our budget.
I don’t know your budget but, if you are in the Nashville area I would suggest having it back home just to keep costs down. However, you may have a lot of delinces that keep some costs down as well. It’s just something to consider.

We moved to CO last year but chose to have our wedding in NC where the majority of guests were in driving distance

We live in Maryland, but got married in Pennsylvania. I am from a small town in Pennsylvania and he is from New Jersey. The town he grew up was only about 30 minutes from the board of Pennsylvania. We decided to get married in the middle of Pennsylvania. It was about 1.5 hours for both families and about 4 hours from us. We elected not to get married in Maryland because most of our friends and family live in either Pennsylvania or New Jersey and it didn't make sense to us to have most of them drive 4 hours for our wedding. There were some challenges with planning a wedding four hours from us, but I got really good at communicating via email or phone. I also coordinated meetings with multiple vendors when I knew we would be in town. While the decision is obviously up to you, I would probably try to accommodate your guests as much as possible. Since a majority of your guests live in Ohio, then I would probably have the wedding in Ohio.

Thank you all for the insight! We haven’t found a venue back home that we’ve seen down here or else getting married back home would be a no brainer. We’re about a half hour south of Nashville so pricing hasn’t been terrible however I never thought of needing to calculate my travel back and forth into the budget. Thank you so much everyone for your help!

As the guest for a family wedding that was held 3000 miles from where 85% of the guest list lives, I'd definitely think a LOT about your guests. Are they the kind of people who travel? Do they have the time and financial resources to attend? How many people are you talking about? Our relative seemed fixated on HOW much cheaper it was to have her wedding in upstate NY compared with CA. That was awesome for them, but a really rough estimate was that those of us who had to travel to attend easily spent about $75,000 to be there, so if you take that in to account, their "cheap" wedding cost their guests a heck of a lot. It was at a very inconvenient time of year for many and coupled with the cost, several people had to decline. Both the bride and MOB were mad people weren't "prioritizing" the wedding and made that very clear to decliners. I went out of pure guilt and because I didn't want to deal with their wrath, but I spent $2500 (my family didn't go with me) and more than 24 hours traveling for a four-day weekend (no direct access flights to the rural destination...). It's been a couple years and I'm still resentful. So, my recommendation is to really think about and talk with your VIP guests. Members of this forum will often claim, "Those who love you will be there!" But, that's not always possible given finances, health, vacation time, etc. If it's critical to you and FH those people are with you, I'd make choices that make it more likely they'll be able to attend. Good luck! (Nashville is gorgeous and lots of fun!)