People attend destination wedding in us

If I was really close with the couple, I would fly somewhere. I would never drive 30 hours to do anything! The most I would drive would probably be 4 hours. But again, if I am close enough with the couple, a flight would be no big deal.

The only way to know for sure is to ask what they think!

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This describes me, too. I don't like road trips (unless the road trip itself is the vacation; but drive 10 to 30 hours just to get somewhere? Nope) but I would fly a reasonable number of hours (and not during a pandemic!) for a sibling or VERY close friend, assuming I had the budget and vacation time to accommodate.

The point is that there are a lot of variables for whether or not people will attend a destination wedding and before planning one you should check in with your VIPs individually to see if it's feasible. Only move forward with planning if you are OK getting married without the people who can't make it due to the location.

The only people who can truly answer this are your friends and family. Start with your most VIP guests and ask them if they'd be willing and able to attend your wedding if it involves this kind of travel. For some people, travel is not big deal and they do it frequently; others have never been more than a few miles from where they live and have no desire. Also, given the pandemic, even those who typically travel might not be as willing and/or their finances might be more limited.

As a guest for a domestic DW that required 85+% of the guest list to travel about 3000 miles, I found it was a LOT to ask -- and that guest list tended to be fairly affluent people. The timing and arrangements were not at all convenient for my family, so we were not going to attend; however, the bride and her mom threw a fit. Out of guilt, I attended by myself and spent more than $2500 for a four-day weekend, where I was in transit for well-over 24+ hours due to poor flight availability. That was a few years ago and, as you can probably tell, I'm still fairly resentful. It's cool that it was the couple's "dream location," but, except for the major guilt campaign, I would never have chosen to attend. This is very much a "know your crowd" issue. Good luck figuring it out.

Is there some reason why all of your guests can't just fly? It's unreasonable to expect anyone to drive that long for any reason IMO, unless they're moving across the country. People fly to attend destination weddings all the time.

I think this a know your crowd issue, and also will depend on how well off your guests are financially. I've been to the Jackson Hole area and the Tetons a few times, and completely agree that it's a wonderful place, and a wedding there sounds amazing! But for a flight to the Tetons, the cost of car rental, plus 2 nights hotel stay, you're easily looking at $1000 per person at minimum. Are your VIP guests in a position where they can easily drop $1000 to attend your wedding? I would check with them before moving forward with your plans. I'm also confused as to why people would be driving 10+ hours. Assuming your wedding will be in non-pandemic times, there are dozens of direct flights to JAC daily from all across the country via multiple airlines.

View Quoted Comment Not technically. Many of our friends have large families and it would be expensive as well as I don’t know how everyone feels about flying with COVID etc.

View Quoted Comment I know some people refuse to fly at all and some are unwilling to buy more than one plane ticket for money reasons, but want to come. I don’t know. It feels like we have to choose between my family and his family attending

Definitely agree with everyone saying it’s a “know your people” situation. We’re having a destination wedding that’s probably an average of ~10 hours of driving for most guests, we have people from ALL OVER the place so we tried to pick something that was central-ish and a fun place to visit so people could make it a vacation if they wanted. FH’s brother hates airplanes even in non-covid times, so he and his wife will be making the 20 hour drive to be there and then driving 20 hours back home. The rest of our guests have expressed zero issues with being there, whether they plan on driving or flying. Definitely check in with the folks that you know for sure you’d be devastated not to have there, and if they’re all game, then move forward! If not, time for plan B.

That is a question you have to ask your important people. Only they can answer.

I would travel anywhere for my sister on the other side of the country but no more than 2-3 hours for someone else.

We’re scheduled to have a 65 guest destination wedding in Vegas. But it’s only a 5 hour drive (or a 1 hour flight) from SoCal, where FH and 95% of our guests lice. However, our Vegas venue is only allowing 25 guests right now and we don’t want to gamble on whether that will increase by October. So, we’ve recently discussed canceling Vegas and getting married in Hawaii with 20 guests max. I’ve already informed my closest friends about this possible plan change in order to get a feel for if they’d attend. Well, all of them were happy and viewed it as a vacay too. The only thing they requested was to know about the Hawaii decision sooner than later. So we plan to decide in March. It would be much simpler plans and if it only ends up being FH and I, that’s perfectly fine too!

We're getting married at Grand Targhee Resort in Alta, WY!! The Tetons are my favorite place! My fiance and I currently live in North Dakota, so it's about a 12 hour drive for us, but we don't have any family here. My family is spread out, but most are still within driving distance of our venue (SD, Iowa, Montana, Eastern Wyoming) and my fiances family is in Florida. We never really discussed our plans there with anyone else beforehand, and all of our immediate family/those closest to use were super excited about the destination and we haven't received a negative comment about having to travel from anyone. Most of his family is flying, but some of them are planning to do a road trip. Everyone is just making a vacation out of it. We are having a smaller wedding and only inviting about 80 guests and we're expecting about 50-60 to make it. I was actually surprised to hear from some of our guests that they are planning to come because I expected more to not want to travel and I was originally expecting less than 50. You will definitely lose some guests because of travel time no matter what, but give them plenty of time to plan by sending out save the dates and invites earlier than usual. Location was really important to me for our wedding, so it was something I was okay traveling for and spending the money on, and since our families are so spread out, a majority of our guests were going to have to travel no matter what, so it kind of just worked out for us. Best wishes!

View Quoted Comment Congratulations! That’s awesome! I haven’t attended many weddings, but I guess I was just unsure which of our family to force to travel. I guess travel is inevitable in a LDR wedding. Lol
Thanks so much!!💕