The minute you heard your daughter was getting married, you started tallying up the cost in your mind — each vendor was allotted a certain amount, and you had a final monetary figure that certainly hurt a bit, but it didn't lay you out flat and in traction.

Now that your little girl has her heart set on a destination wedding, you're feeling faint. This completely obliterates your original accounting work and takes you into an entirely new realm of finances, you fear. This wedding could bankrupt you if you're expected to cover the bills for the wedding, the reception, the travel, and the accommodations. That light-headed feeling is pretty darn persistent, and you fear you may have to send your own regrets.

Get yourself a paper lunch bag and take a few deep breaths. It's not nearly as bad as you think.

Cheaper for You?

For starters, because the bride and groom have chosen to marry one another in a distant location, they are generally held responsible for most of the wedding costs, including the wedding package itself (including any transportation, food, drink, music, etc.), the lodging and airfare for their attendants, and their own sundry expenses (the honeymoon, for example).

Does this mean that you'll only pay for your own travel expenses? Possibly. But depending on any prior wedding negotiations, your financial situation, and the cost of your travel to this distant ceremony, you may want to offer the bride and groom a monetary wedding gift to help defray the cost of their destination wedding — especially if you were going to pitch in on a local ceremony. Money is money, and they could probably use it no matter where they're taking their vows.

Speaking of Money…

Before you assume that this wedding will be a spending extravaganza the likes of which you've never seen, you should realize that, in many cases, hosting a destination wedding is actually less expensive than hosting a grand, over-the-top affair back home.

For one thing, the bride and groom often choose to invite only a small number of people — it may well be that part of the reason they've chosen a distant wedding spot is to escape the crowds. The smaller the guest list, the smaller the reception, obviously. If the couple chooses to invite only immediate family and their closest friends, the reception might just be a nice dinner in an upscale restaurant — the cost of which is miniscule in comparison to feeding the entire family, your office, and various strangers at the country club.

Following that train of thought (the one that suggests that the bride and groom are scaling the wedding down to a manageable size because they want it to be an intimate gathering), the couple may also choose to cut back on other expenses that they deem frivolous — lots of flowers, for example, or the $3,000 wedding gown. In other words, they may have chosen a destination wedding because they have their heads on straight.

The Guest List

While the guest list for a destination wedding is often much smaller than the guest list for a typical wedding, that's not always the case. Some couples genuinely want everyone to join them in the fun and invite everyone they can think of — family, close friends, and acquaintances alike. There's just no way to tell for sure who will be up for the journey and who won't. A ceremony that's being held hours from home might yield only immediate family who are willing to make a road trip, while a wedding in the South Pacific could attract a long list of well-wishers.

Keep in mind that most folks only have so much vacation time from their jobs, and they may not want to spend it at your daughter's wedding. Some families may have already booked their vacations elsewhere, and some may not want to shell out big bucks on a trip that they never intended to take. On the other hand, a wedding is a perfect nudge for some workaholics to take vacation time, and if the location is really interesting, you may end up with the entire guest roster ready for action.

While guests are expected to bite the bullet and cover their own expenses, you may want to assist any immediate family members (Grandma, who's on a fixed income, for example) with the cost of travel to a destination wedding.