Quote:
Originally Posted by Sliver
I don't even know how you could type this with a straight face, tbh. Like, it didn't occur to you to add up all the plane tickets, hotel accommodations and other associated travel expenses of all the attendees to determine the wedding was more expensive than one night at a community centre would have been? By orders of magnitude?
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Based on your response I did a very poor job of explaining why I think it worked out financially for guests too at least for our small wedding. Sorry for the wall of text but I think your response deserves a thorough explanation.
I think the first thing I should have noted that when we sent out invitations it was made clear that we understood not everyone would be able to make it. We also sent invitation out over a year in advance so invitees had ample time to plan for it. As noted by other people even if we had the wedding in Canada there was no one location where ~50% people would be travelling from a different city. My wife wanted a small wedding and I was having a hard time cutting my guest list down to the size she wanted because if I invited one Aunt/Uncle or cousin to be honest I felt obligated to invite everyone as my Moms side is huge but all quite close. With the destination wedding we were upfront that because it was a small destination wedding we couldn't invite all family members. To be honest we could have done this with a wedding in Canada but for me it gave me some peace of mind and hopefully caused no resentment from those who weren't invited or couldn't come.
Because we kept numbers low (33 guests) and did many things frugally (best friend photographer, minimal flowers, wedding dress picked out by wife was only $150, no wedding planner ect) we saved a lot of money relative to a normal wedding. We used some of our savings and booked a huge property for ~$600/night with 7 bedrooms for a week and invited our closest friends to stay with us (6 couples plus us) so their accommodations were take care of. We also went to Costco/Walmart and bought a huge amount of food/alcohol for the week so that was provided for. Everyone staying with us had a chance to contribute to the shopping list and we cooked as a group. For the most part food and alcohol was taken care of. We also splurged on catering with a local restaurant that did an amazing job for a great price compared to local catering in Canada.
So in the end our friends only paid for their flights, vacation insurance, car rentals and any extracurricular activities they chose to do. Other guests (all family) did incur extra expenses but in a similar vein wife's parents rented a place where most of her side stayed. Also a huge help was my parents live in Hawaii so most of my family stayed with them.
In the second example in Mexico our friends had a much larger wedding and we were all given a fairly large discount on a vacation package at an all inclusive resort and Sunwing chartered flight. If I remember correctly it was around $1300/person for the vacation package and that covered everything except insurance and taxi from airport to resort. The resort had everything so no reason to leave it unless you wanted too. We did rent a car and I surfed a day but that was just something I wanted to do.
In comparison to a normal Canadian wedding where our friends got married in Calgary we paid for our flights, food and rental for 3 days in Calgary. Hotel (~$400), food ($200), flights ($600 for two tickets) and car rental (I don't remember at all but lets guess it was about $100 for 3 days) = $1300 for two people for 3 days. The Hawaii destination wedding doesn't compare too badly to this and was for a week. Mexico destination was a bit over twice as expensive but also for a week so doesn't compare too badly either given it was all inclusive. All three weddings compared were ~10 years ago for reference sake.
I think that probably the biggest thing I'm not taking into account is more time off and lost wages incurred with the two example destination weddings. That happens with any vacation though and hopefully everyone enjoyed their time off and the wedding parties. Anyways hopefully that helps provide a few real experiences where destination weddings weren't exorbitantly expensive for everyone involved.