Is 2 hrs too far for a venue ?

We live in NYC and chose to get married in Pennsylvania, about 2 hours away as well. It’s been a challenge having to make the trip back and forth for the last couple of months, but luckily my mother lives in Pennsylvania so we have started keeping all of our wedding stuff with her. For us it was about having an intimate wedding that fit our budget, and in NYC that wasn’t going to happen for us.
The travel time also gives you and your fiancé time to talk and discuss more of the planning process with your trips back and forth.

People do that all the time with no issues. Your guests are going to be travelling anyway. If you meant it was 2 hours from the ceremony location to the reception, that would be different as it would be extremely inconvenient for your guests who would only attend one or the other if they attended at all. But the entire event in one place 2 hours away from you is perfectly ok.

View Quoted Comment Thank you Brittany ! I’m just worried about the travel for our guests. Most live in Pa/NJ. Didn’t want to scare them away with how far it is.

I think that’s fine ! But if that’s the case I would consider doing an earlier time wedding to account for people needing to leave earlier

View Quoted Comment Thank you !

I think 2 hours is fine as long as your important guests are okay with traveling that far. We got married 4 hours from where we live. My family lives in PA and his lives in NJ so we got married in between which was in Scranton, PA. Not sure where in NJ you are looking or what your price range was but I know of a couple wedding venues. We didn't pick to get married in NJ because we wanted something more in the middle plus NJ is so expensive.

Our wedding venue was about an hour and 15 minutes from where we live. We had guests travel anywhere from 1 hour to 6 hours (driving), plus some that flew in from out of state. We got a hotel room block for our guests that wanted to stay the night and we had no complaints. I will say that if you choose a venue far from your home, having a planner is very helpful.

View Quoted Comment We’re in South Jersey but the two venues I love are in North.

View Quoted Comment PA has lovely and slightly less expensive venues than NJ, if that makes it easier for family to travel? Most of my guests will be traveling from NJ, so it’s about 1 1/2 hours to my venue. Then our other guests are flying in from Texas!
Maybe get word around to family? Do you think people will take issue with traveling for your big day?

View Quoted Comment

North Jersey is where my husband is from. There are some very pretty venues in that area. One of my favorite venues is in NJ, but it would have been way too expensive.

It just depends. We've had friends pick venues that were 1.5-3 hours from where we all live and we went to their weddings (both are groomsmen in our wedding). But my husband and I both have good jobs and can afford time off and travel.

A venue that is more than 45-60 minutes away from where most of your guests live will require a lot of people to get hotels or they'll likely leave your event a bit early to head home if they have a long drive. So I would consider your guest list when making that decision. One of the weddings we went to was at a really expensive resort and we spent more in a single weekend than we usually would have for a full week's long vacation, so we didn't love that...

Additionally, as you prep for your wedding, you may want to visit your venue multiple times, and you'll need to find other vendors near your venue and visit them as well, so all of that can add up to a lot of time traveling back and forth for things like tastings, finding a hair and makeup artist, and meeting up with other vendors (florists, music, officiant, etc).

Our venue is 25 minutes from our house and most of our vendors are within an hour radius of us, so meeting up with our vendors to consult about various things has been relatively easy and not required 1/2 day just to meet a single vendor. If you are considering venues 2+ hours away, then I would more strongly consider having a wedding planner who can help take some of the burden of researching and coordinating with all of your other vendors or consider a venue that offers more complete or all inclusive wedding packages, so that you only have to deal with a few points of contact rather than venue, caterer, cake baker, florist, stylist, photographer, DJ, officiant, etc that are all two hours away.

I think its fine my wedding is on a Friday and its about 3 hours away from where we live.

We put a lot of thought into this and decided on a location 4hrs away. At 1-2hrs travel many people will drive there and back on the day of the wedding, which means they won’t drink much as if they could Uber home and are likely to leave early from the reception. We’ve been to friends weddings like this and decided it’s not for us. I would rather have fewer people come and really enjoy the night with us rather than watching their phones and asking how soon the cake will be cut!

We live in MD, but we're getting married in NY because that's where most of our family is. Planning has had some hiccups because of this, but really it hasn't been as big of an issue as I predicted it would be. The biggest issue I would anticipate is the travel the day-of, but it you love the venue, it'll be worth it. I love our venue more today than the day we booked it, so I know it's worth it.

People definitely do it. they even do destination weddings! i personally would not choose to travel 2 hours for a wedding just because I dont like traveling but some people even travel that far to work everyday! some may feel inconvenienced and choose not to come but i think most would be ok with it

I think 2 hours is fine. But given that, an earlier start and end time would be good. I’d also make sure to select a venue that is near hotels so that guests have the option to stay overnight and leave the next day.

Our venue is on the other side of the state...about 3.5 hours away. There's nothing wrong with expecting people to travel a bit, especially if the venue you find takes your breath away 😉

If it was a close friend, I’d travel 2 hours easy. I traveled from NC to NY to attend a college roommate’s wedding (this was when we were still in college) and I also traveled from NC to Ohio to be in another college friend’s wedding. I know that some of my guests wouldn’t be able to travel that far for a wedding or I would need to allow them another guest who could drive for them (like a great aunt needing her grandson to come, who yes would be my cousin but is likely someone I don’t really know and wouldn’t normally invite).

If you're going from one part of Jersey to another, I don't really see the problem.

We're in North Jersey, but we got married in the city. Most of our friends live in the city, but not all of them... and it wasn't a problem at all.

We are getting married 3 hours away, but my fiance's parents are only 14 minutes from the venue. So maybe look for a venue close to someone's house?