Wedding location!?

Hi Vera! I am technically having a "destination" wedding so I can weigh in a bit! I'm from California but am getting married in Vancouver. (My family is originally from Vancouver so it doesn't feel like a destination wedding to me but it will be for most of our guests!) I'm not a California girl and my fiance and I have been visiting Vancouver for some of our anniversaries so it was a good fit for us. Most of my fiance's family is from the east coast so they would have to fly out anyways so now we're just having them fly out to Vancouver instead of CA. Some things to keep in mind when planning a destination wedding:

-You may have to take some trips to the location to research vendors/venues/etc so make sure to factor it into your budget. We wanted an excuse to go back to Vancouver so it was great for us but it was more expensive and a little hectic to try and cram all our appts into a couple days.

-I would definitely recommend a local wedding coordinator if your budget has room for it. I wish that we could have afforded one! Luckily I have a background in event planning but it's definitely been a lot more work for me and I feel like it's going to be difficult to enjoy the wedding and not be running around making sure everything's in place! Because it's long distance, we've had to rely a lot on email and skype to communicate with vendors. It would have been great to have someone in the area who could have done the research for us.

-You will most likely have less guests than you're expecting. We started with about 140 guests when we sent out Save The Dates. (We sent them out a year in advance to give people time to get passports and save up.) By the time we sent out the invitations we were down to 120 and we were expecting about 100 but we only have 75 guests.

-You will need to figure out how to get your decorations to the destination. You could either purchase things once you're there or ship it. My mom is going to be driving up all of our decorations so that we don't have to fly or ship them.

-Keep the exchange rate in mind! We're lucky that we're coming from the US to Canada so that we're getting a discount on most things automatically because of the American dollar but it could potentially be more expensive depending on where you go and if the rates fluctuate.

Do you guys have a location that's special to you in mind? Or do you want to do a destination wedding that turns into your honeymoon? (We've had a lot of people asking if we're honeymooning in Vancouver but we're actually going to go to St. Lucia a few weeks after the wedding.)

Can't wait to hear more of your plans!

Hi Vera I'm so glad you're starting this discussion!! It's so amazing to be opened to so many options for your wedding! I guess that also depends on the style of wedding you want to go for!

Do you want your wedding to be more small and intimate or big and extravagant?

What ideas did you have in mind? Do you have pictures of weddings you really like? You could have a look at the Real Weddings section on the website and see what ideas or style you prefer.

I think you'll also like this quiz! You'll see it's a lot of fun!

What movie bride are you?

You can also ask Ashley in the community! She's having her wedding in Jamaica and seems to have had an amazing experience so far! Her planning seems to be going very smoothly

Do you prefer warm weather or cold weather for your wedding?

I agree with Melissa! Destination sounds lovely, but I would not want my family sticking around for my honeymoon!! NO THANK YOU, not for me! But my best friend got married in Jamaica and LOVED IT!!! She said it was so simple because the hotel takes care of so much for you.

I personally wanted to have a TON of me and FH’s personality and interests in the wedding, so I didn’t want a generic package. But my venue is about 1.5 hours away, and it can be less than ideal to book appointments (not the worst, just have to be more flexible with the schedule and coordinate multiple appointments per visit)

Do you know what type of venue you want?

Hi Vera!

Nice to "meet" you!

I am getting married in the city I live in- because i have heard that destination weddings can turn into a real hassle! I also didn't want to ask my family and freinds to use their vacation days for my wedding, and then end up having everyone around for my honeymoon too....just not my jam.

That said- I totally understand why some couples choose this route! Would you want a hot loctation, or are you open to some less common destination locations? I have seen planning services for Japan, Iceland, Ireland...and I'm sure you could find more! Would you be interested in that?