I might be biased, but destination weddings are the absolute best. Sure, you can expect to receive fewer gifts than your friends who got married locally (plane tickets aren’t cheap), but who cares about gifts when you married the person of your dreams and get to celebrate it with Mai Tais in freaking paradise?! Here’s what you should know if you decide to wed away from home.
1. Destination weddings are for bridechillas only. Control freaks/type-As/people who had their weddings planned out before they met their fiancé, hear me when I say you don’t want a destination wedding. Disaster is inevitable. You will forget to pack something v. important and leave it at home. You will try on a dress you had tailored and realize it doesn’t fit right — and not be able to find a tailor on your remote island to fix it. Someone’s flight will be delayed or canceled. A checked bag will get lost. I can assure you, something out of your control will happen! This is the case for any wedding but especially when you’re dealing with weather you might not be used to, an area you may be unfamiliar with, and the stresses of traveling. So yeah, chill brides only.
2. You won’t be able to invite everyone you want, and a good chunk of people you invited won’t be able to come. But it’ll still be the best day of your life. You can’t have a destination wedding without embracing the fact that some of your favorite people won’t be able to swing it due to the expense or the time off or whatever the reason. But a surprising number of people will make it out, and you’ll have the best time with them. If it’s important to you that every person you’ve ever met and your dog be in your bridal party, keep your location within driving distance. But in the end, the only two people who matter for being there are you and your soon-to-be spouse.
3. Your wedding will be nothing like any of your friends’ weddings. Because destination weddings are already non-traditional, you have the luxury of making your celebration as non-traditional and tailored to you and your soon-to-be spouse as you want. My husband and I asked all our guests to wear white, because we loved the way it looked against the colorful Hawaii sunset, rainbows, and flowers. So wear a pink dress if that’s the kind of bride you are. Or skip the dress, and wear a jumpsuit. Or wear a swimsuit, I dunno — just do you.
4. You’ll want to relax in the sun before your wedding, but resist the urge. It’s tempting to want to get a tan before wearing a white dress, especially if you’re in a beach setting, but you won’t want to cover up a sunburn or weird tan lines on a day when you’ll be photographed so much. After hibernating for a seven-month-long New York winter, I arrived at my wedding destination and went straight to the beach. I did wear sunscreen, but I missed a chunk of skin on my chest and had sunburned cleavage that soon would be on full display in my V-neck dress. It took several layers of intense, waterproof theater makeup to make it look somewhat normal (emphasis on the somewhat). In short, faux glows are just as nice.
5. Your photos will be one of your favorite things about your wedding — second to actually getting married! — so go all out. You probably chose your destination because of its beauty, not the convenience. So set aside a decent portion of your budget for documentation that does your wedding justice. Whether that means having a photographer at every event you plan throughout the weekend, deciding to do trash-the-dress photos, or hiring a videographer to make your big day look like a music video, you’ll want that stuff to pass down to the grandkids.
6. Your guests will become besties. At a local wedding, everyone is seated with and talks only to the people they know, and then they go home and go to sleep. At a destination wedding, everyone will meet at the rehearsal dinner or whatever festivities you have planned, and by the time your weekend is over, your fiancé’s 60-year-old family friend will be floating down the lazy river with your college roommate’s boyfriend, because they’re now best buds. It just happens, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.
7. If you decide to honeymoon at the same spot where you had your wedding, you will most def run into everyone again and again. The resort might seem massive, but if your guests stuck around for a vacation and they’re headed to the same pool you are, the chances of you not running into your in-laws while wearing your skimpy honeymoon wardrobe is slim. But hey! If that person made the super-select cut of people invited to your wedding, you probably wouldn’t mind spending a little more time with them, anyway.
8. Nothing about your wedding will turn out how you envisioned it would, but it’ll be just as amazing. Unless you have an infinite amount of money and vacation days, you’re not taking a ton of trips to your destination beforehand just to figure out the table linen situation. If you choose to DIY elements of your wedding, you might have a better idea, but I sent my vendors inspiration photos of things I liked instead (shipping items is a whole other battle). And when I walked into the ceremony and reception sites on the actual day, nothing looked how I thought it would. It was still perfect, though, because we made it our own.
9. Destination weddings are perfect for keeping the focus on what the day is all about. Because you’ll probably have a smaller group of attendees, not only will you have time to talk to every single one of your guests for longer than “thanks for coming,” you’ll also have the opportunity to pull aside your new spouse and take in the day together — so don’t forget to do just that. Even 15 minutes alone, away from the stresses (a destination wedding is still a wedding, after all), will be enough to soak in all the greatness of your day.
Source: Cosmopolitan
