Newbie-Need any help/advice for kid-friendly destination wedding

bella1823

Hi all! I'm recently engaged and we are trying to figure out where to get married. If I do it back home, we are looking at 250 people which is insane. I would love to do a destination wedding but am completely clueless as where to start. I have no idea how to figure out how many people would actually attend, it could be anywhere from 30-80 people. I would like to stay in the $15,000 range. I need the resort to be all inclusive and I also need it to be kid-friendly, yet still romantic. Is this at all possible or am I expecting too much?! Any help or advise would be greatly appreciated! 

saric83

It could definitely be do-able depending on where you want to go.  In general, I would plan on a location where you could fit a larger group if needed.  Are you guys planning on inviting all 250 that you would with a local wedding?  But besides the group size, in order to narrow it down, you and your FI need to figure out what you want on some things.....

1. Do you want to go somewhere where you can fly directly into the location or are you okay having people travel for a few hours by car from airport to location?

2. What kind of location do you want for the ceremony?  For example, it was really important to us that we had a private location that wasn't out in the open on the beach, so we found a resort with a rooftop location that was completely private yet had views of the beach.  

3. What is the price-range you want for your guests?  This can help narrow down some more expensive locations depending on flight availability, room costs, etc. 

4.  What are you comfortable doing to make it legal?  Every country has different requirements (some require blood test, being in the country for so many days prior, going to courthouse a day prior to the ceremony, etc.) 

I'm sure there are some other big questions, but that's all that is coming to mind right now.  Once you both can get on the same page with those things, you can start to narrow it down even more.  We worked with a travel agent (Marcie from Beach Bum Vacations) who specializes in DWs, so with our criteria, she was able to help us narrow it down a ton.  Good luck!

bella1823

Thank you so much for your response! I did contact Beach Bum Vacations after doing some more research on The Knot, so I'm hoping they can help narrow it down. I would absolutely want to make it as easy as possible for guests to get there since they'd be willing to make that trek for us, so that is something that would have to be taken into account. I too, do not want a public beach ceremony, so the rooftop/beach views sounds absolutely perfect. As for the cost, I'd like to keep it as affordable as possible. While some would have no problem affording it, I wouldn't want to exclude others who it may be tough for. I would be okay with the courthouse, blood test, etc. but not sure about the number of days prior. I wasn't even aware of that, so thank you so much for bringing that to my attention!

Thank you again, I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to respond!