The anti-destination wedding
Let’s just get this out there – I am a bride to be, a travel agent, and I am not having a destination wedding.
I’ve been getting the comments a lot. As soon as someone finds out I’m either engaged or in the travel industry, the next question is always “so, what tropical island are you getting married on?” It’s automatically assumed that I’m hauling all our friends and family to some exotik locale to be married at sunset with the romantic palm trees swaying gloriously behind us while local monkeys play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on hollowed out coconuts. When I explain that no, our ceremony is going to be local, the reaction is always a let-down “oh, well I’m sure that will be lovely too”. Now, as much as I would love that dream wedding straight out of a 2-hour ABC Bachelorette Wedding Special (particularly the musical primates), we honestly only considered a destination wedding for about 3.5 seconds before vetoeing it, and have never second-guessed or regretted the decision. Let me explain.
First and foremost is always the financial reason. With most of the all-lnclusive resorts now offering great all-inclusive wedding packages for a great low fee, the cost of a destination wedding can be substantially less than your standard find all the vendors/rent the chairs/hire a DJ wedding. I’ve booked them, and there are some smoking deals out there for as little as CAD$1500 that includes the full wedding, decorations, cake, flowers and dinner for up to 15 people. The catch with this is that, while it’s costing the couple (or their parents, or whoever’s paying for the actual wedding) less, that’s because you’re essentially dividing the cost up amongst your guests. At CAD$800 – $2000 or more per person (plus tax), that’s a lot to ask of the important people in your life. If there are families with kids, that could be CAD$8000 easily just for the family to come, which is a massive commitment. Conversely, if you have the wedding locally, it could cost as little as gift, parking and dry cleaning per person. For just that reason, destination weddings usually get a lot of people who are unable to attend. In our case there was no room in the budget to chip in and help out our guests with the cost, and I would much rather have the most important people around me on my big day, than the random handful of people who could afford to make it. I talked to one destination Bride a few months ago whose side of the family was not as well-off as her Groom’s, and almost everyone on her side RSVP’d no – except her parents, best friend, an Aunt she didn’t particularly like, and her hairdresser. His whole family showed up. She walked away gloriously happy to be married, but still somewhat heartbroken over the guest situation.
Another one of the advertised selling points for destination wedding packages is that they’re stress free, you just show up and everything’s already taken care of for you. Personally, to me that’s a huge turn off. Isn’t a wedding supposed to be a reflection of the couple? How is inserting yourself into a cookie-cutter “this is what a wedding should look like” mold saying anything about you? Maybe that’s my control freak side rearing it’ ugly head, but I cannot imagine not having my fingers firmly planted in every piece of the wedding pie. Our colours, quirky table names, non-floral centerpieces, postcard guest book, and buffet from one of our favorite restaurants paints a great picture about who we are and what we love that I can’t imagine trusting anyone else with those details. Who am I kidding, I wouldn’t trust my Groom to do certain things, let alone some random “resort co-ordinator” I’ve only ever communitcated with through broken-English emails.
And then there’s the logisitcs of it all. Getting married in another country (or state or city even) requires you to research their local rules and regulations and make sure you comply by them, or your marriage might not be stress free/legal at all. A friend of mine arrived in the Dominican Republic all ready to get married only to discover the day before her wedding that unless your marriage license is in Spanish it’s not legal (please double check all laws, this may have changed since). It’s not exactly easy to find someone who can translate legal documents Spanish at 9pm at night so you can file it the next morning the second the office opens to make sure you still make your 1pm aisle time. Then you have to take that giant dress on the plane with you. I got a frantic call from a Bride once who was checking in at the airport and Air Canada informed her that her dress was too big to be carried on the plane with her, since the other passengers had already filled the limited special closet space on the plane. This entire wedding package had been arranged with Air Canada Vacations, including the air and all the accomodation, they had been expecting her to be carrying on her dress, and they still forced her to wrap it in the provided plastic baggies and take it down into cargo. There was no other option, unless she was willing to wait 24 hours for the next flight and hope to get her dress on with her that time. It all came out fine, the dress was a little rumpled when they arrived, but she later told me she was a total wreck that whole flight, worried that something horrible was going to happen to her stupid expensive dream wedding dress.
Plus, getting a large group to travel together is like herding cats. For the most part this is where the travel agent comes in, as they have to worry about co-ordinating departure and arrival times from different destination cities, and making sure everything and everyone is arranged and paid on time. But no matter what there are always those questions that only the Bride and Groom can answer. “Why do I have to fly on this date?” “Can we all get small rooms and spend our evenings hanging out in the giant honeymoon suite with the couple?” “I will not pay a single supplement or share a room with cousin Rita. What are you going to do about it?” This is not exactly the most stress-free planning situation, as family politics always comes into play, big time. In my case, I can’t imagine unleashing my amazing family and friends on another Travel Agent (when they were going to be asking me the questions anyway), but that would add a whole level of “work” to the fun of wedding planning.
And finally, there’s the most trivial, but also one of the most important reasons why we’re not having a destination wedding: humidity. It sounds freaking ridiculous, I know, but I have naturally curly hair, that, when taken into a climate with any type of humitidy, curls up and pouffs out like a Jewish schoolboy’s. No amount of product I’ve ever been able to find can tame the beast. While I can’t imagine this being too big a deal the day of, as it would only take a minute or so for me to be so wrapped up in the sheer amazing wedding-ness of it that I no longer cared what my hair looked like, I can’t imagine looking back on my pictures years later and think that I looked horrible. I want that moment I can hang on my wall forever, not one where I look at it and ask why I stuck that fork in an electrical socket while wearing such a pretty dress. Ladies, you know what I mean. This is the one chance we all have for that truly perfect day, and it’s also the one time I feel no shame about being vain enough to not want to ruin it. So I’d have to have a destination wedding indoors, which defeats the purpose of having a destination on in the the first place.
And that, my friends, is why I am actually overjoyed to be getting married at home.