The first big decision you’ll face is how large of an event you want. Will your destination wedding be just you and your fiancée or will it include your friends and family? The big caveat to this discussion is that if you have unlimited monetary resources, it doesn’t matter because you can go anywhere. But if you take a group, you’ll want to have the infrastructure to support the group at a price your guests can afford.
As we began our planning process, we started by looking at various islands in the Caribbean—U.S. Virgin Islands, Turks & Caicos, Jamaica, St. Lucia, etc. We knew we wanted to take a small group (less than 30 people), but the resorts had varying degrees of receptivity to us and they level to which they would accommodate us (private dining vs. the buffet line). Early on, we wanted an all-inclusive resort, but then quickly realized that most of the guests would not be staying a full week, so that option was abandoned.
Fairly quickly, airfare became a factor in our decision making process. It was very expensive to reach many of the islands and this would become prohibitive for most of our guests. With a smaller group, we would have more options.
In the end, we settled on a fairly small group:
- Mother of the bride
- Father and stepmother of the bride
- Grandmother of the bride
- Aunt and Uncle of the bride
- Sister of the bride (bridesmaid)
- Friends of the bride (2)
- Parents of the groom
- Brother and sister-in-law of the groom
- Groom’s best friend (best man)
- Friends of the groom (2)
- Co-workers of the groom (2)
- Photographer
This was a total of 21 (including us) and we found it to be the perfect size. We were able to spend ample time with each of our guests and made for a nice intimate affair.
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