Where, When, and How
Any weeklong vacation involves a lot of planning, shopping around for the best rates, and, for many folks, stressing. Throw a wedding into the mix and things could break down before anyone has a chance to say “I do.” Is your daughter nuts, taking one potentially stressful event and trying to plan another one around it?
Planning an Out-of-Town Event
Planning a local wedding is hard enough, you're thinking. How on earth does your daughter think she's going to successfully pull off planning the wedding of her dreams when the wedding site is hundreds of miles away —
FACT
The cost of hiring the on-site coordinator is often included in the price of a wedding package. The package may also include some typical wedding expenses, such as food, drinks, flowers, pictures, the wedding cake, and music.
The truth is, she may have made the planning of her wedding substantially
If, on the other hand, your daughter has chosen to take her vows in a fairly unusual spot (and there isn't a coordinator on site), it may be in her best interest to hire a wedding planner based in the area. It's unwise to choose a florist or a caterer out of the phone book, sight unseen, and if there's any situation where a wedding planner is worth every penny she charges, this is it.
Back to Nature
Many couples will choose a tropical resort as the site for their wedding ceremony. The beauty of leaving their wedding in the hands of a resort that handles many, many weddings is that the ceremonies tend to go off without a hitch. They're very different from the weddings back home — you're standing near an altar on a beach, or in a chapel near the resort, surrounded by the sheer magnificence of a sunny, exotic location; of course, the officiant will most likely take care to make the ceremony as personal and as moving as the bride and groom want it to be.
The bride and groom may swing to the opposite end of the thermometer and choose a destination in the mountains. Again, Mother Nature lends a hand with the scenery, and most of the details are left to the resort.
A Wedding Cruise
Cruise ships are becoming popular sites for out-of-town weddings. Many cruise lines offer wedding planning service, or your daughter may want to call her own travel agent and let him or her do the honors. Like every other destination wedding, the price of a cruise ship wedding can vary from around $1,000 (a low, low price for a three-day cruise which includes all the basic must-haves: the officiant, pictures, accommodations for the newlyweds, plus a reception and cut-rate lodging for five or six guests) to much, much more — depending on what type of wedding the couple is looking for. A small, simple, weekend wedding celebration on board a luxury liner will obviously cost much less than a grand affair for three hundred guests. No matter the size of the wedding, guests are expected to pay their own airfare and lodging.
The couple will not take their vows at sea; the marriage is most often held in port for legal reasons.
ESSENTIAL
Cruise ships employ huge staffs trained to carefully choreograph and execute events of all sizes, which ensures that
Timing Is Everything
Since travel is obviously involved in the destination wedding, the entire event will most likely be stretched out over a matter of days, or even a week or more. If you're traveling to the other side of the globe, you're going to want to give yourself a few days before the ceremony to recover from the travel; if the wedding is within driving distance, you may only need a day to get your bearings and take care of last-minute business before the wedding.
ALERT!
There's sometimes a tradeoff, of course, for snagging cheaper rates in a tourist area: Mother Nature. Planning a wedding in an exotic location during hurricane or typhoon season might suddenly seem like a bad idea if a hurricane blows in,
If you're in on helping to plan the destination wedding, you should know that timing is sometimes everything — especially if you're all headed to a touristy spot. If the wedding is planned for the peak season of the chosen destination, everything will be more expensive, and the place may also be densely packed with other vacationers (and other couples vying for space at the resort's altar). In the off-season, prices will be lower and you may find that you have the entire resort to yourselves.
