Our best friends got married in Mexico. It was at a resort and was super fun for close friends and immediate family. We had a blast and the vacation was worth it. There were a lot of close friends and family at the initial ceremony but wasn't hard for them to get a great group rate in Mexico. They also had a bigger ceremony back home after the fact so did have the opportunity to celebrate with anyone who couldn't make it. Everything was catered with alcohol but end of day they didn't spend that much compared to a proper wedding back home.
My wife and I did our wedding in Hawaii. We kept it small and booked a place for friends to stay and the wedding ceremony. Family stayed together elsewhere for really reasonable rates. It was catered with a local restaurant but since it was a destination wedding we didn't feel obligated to invite everyone in our families and kept #s below 40 people. For a couple grand we had a great professionally catered party for immediate friends and family.
I think destination weddings is almost always cheaper to put on a great party since numbers will always be smaller because everyone realizes it has to be small so aren't upset when not invited. Meanwhile you can micromanage with smaller numbers and put on a great party for those friends and family who are committed to showing up.
Selling points is destination wedding is easy to manage by yourself. Figure out how many people max you want to invite then its pretty easy to manage what resort you want to make deals with for packages or any location you want.
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