I just got married 2 weeks back (still basking in the newly married glow) and since I did so much off my research on theknot when I was engaged, I wanted to pay it forward and hopefully help some of you brides out there with your decisions.
After spending weeks reviewing Dallas venues (both my then-fiance and I live in uptown) we decided to expand our search to see if we could find some better deals in the DFW area and boy, am I glad that we did. We kept ending up with most of our searches in McKinney and it turned out to be the PERFECT place to have a wedding. Especially if you have a lot of out of town guests. Since we are both from out of town (I'm from out of state) almost 75% of our guests were from out of town and so the actual location in DFW ended up not being a point of contention for us.
I would have to say that McKinney is the perfect place (many amazing venues up there) if you are looking for a quaint place to host a wedding. I can't even tell you how many compliments we got throughout the whole weekend. Total guest count was about 125 guests, which worked out great with our venues.
After visiting many venues, we settled on Bella Donna Chapel for wedding and the Grand Hotel for the reception. It was the perfect, classy compliment and very easy for our guests to navigate. Our rehearsal dinner was at Gather - also amazing place. I cannot say enough wonderful things about each venue - we had the wedding of our dreams! (And almost as importantly: stayed in our budget!) The hotel was the perfect setting and our guests were able to easily stumble to their rooms after our reception 
There are so many things to do in the square so our guests were never bored outside of the wedding activities. Having everything focused around the square for the event (minus the chapel) really accommodated our guests.
We used almost all local vendors (Sweet Art Bakery - Cake, Bridal Blooms - Flowers) who were all very familiar with our venues and they were all great to work with. I was so happy with everyone we selected!
So if you are thinking about a McKinney wedding, I would really encourage it. Please feel free to message me if you have any questions. I also plan on writing reviews for each of the vendors as well.
Hope this helps someone out!