The Rise of the Random Destination Wedding
Early this past summer, Matt and his partner Zack met with their friends near their home in Canada for dinner, where they learned some wonderful news: Their friends were engaged! And they were thinking of having their wedding next summer in Spain! Would Matt and Zack want to come along?
“When they sold it to us, they said, ‘We found this beautiful villa in Barcelona. We’re gonna go. We’re gonna have a great time. It’s just gonna be a small group of people,’” Matt said. “Their justification for it was that it was cheaper than having a wedding here [in Canada].” It was only after Matt and Zack agreed to the trip that their friends told them about a few catches. To start, the wedding would fall on a holiday weekend, meaning flights would be extra expensive — at least $850 each. Sorry! And that “villa in Barcelona”? It was actually an hour outside the city in a small town where there’s not much to do. And the pair would be expected to pay for their share of the villa — at least $1,000 for three days. They also wondered if Matt and Zack might be interested in attending the civil ceremony with the bride’s family in Asia. And let them know that instead of gifts, they were hoping they’d contribute to the honeymoon fund.
“Like, what the fuck are you doing?” said Matt, who, like all the wedding guests interviewed for this story, was granted a pseudonym. “It does feel pretty selfish.”
Matt’s sentiments aren’t unique. As more and more couples decide to host their weddings in far-off and random locations to which they have no real ties, many of their guests have been quietly resenting them for it, frustrated at the expense, inconvenience, and hassle in attending. Some have been guilted into coming on trips they couldn’t afford. Some have spent thousands on what was billed as a few days of fun only to discover the only planned event is the wedding itself. And some, like Elijah, have been left wondering just why their friend from Connecticut chose to have a wedding in Sicily in the middle of summer in 100-degree heat. “The wedding ceremony was delayed by 30 minutes because there were wildfires and people couldn’t get from their Airbnbs to the wedding venue,” Elijah said. “After the wedding, there was an ‘optional’ trip to a resort on the other side of Sicily. They paid for the wedding itself and a bus from the venue to the resort. That’s it.”
Post-COVID, the destination wedding industry is booming. According to Research and Markets, people spent more than $28 billion on destination weddings in 2023, up $7 billion from the year before. It’s expected that the industry will top $100 billion by 2028. Almost one in five couples who married last year had a destination wedding, according to a survey of 10,000 couples by wedding planning website The Knot, with 12% of those weddings taking place in a foreign country. The most popular destinations? Mexico, Europe, and the Caribbean. The most popular reason for making all your guests travel all that way? The location was “interesting.”
Pamela Goldman — co-owner of Wedaways, a travel agency that partners with wedding planners to assist with venue searching, hotel booking, and transport for destination weddings — says she’s noticed several big changes in the almost 10 years she’s been in business. For one, more couples are focused on offering their guests “an experience,” rather than simply a party. “I actually hear a couple say sometimes that they want ‘great content.’ Not even wedding photos, but ‘content,’ which is so interesting because it truly is a full production, rather than just a wedding,” Goldman said. And the majority of these weddings are not held in places the couple has any real connection to. “I think they feel that they’re giving their guests this amazing opportunity to go to this fantastic place and have a reason to go,” Goldman said. “So they don’t have to give a reason. They don’t need to back it up.”
Inherent in this decision to ask your loved ones to travel somewhere remote, though, is the understanding that many simply won’t be able to. But several people I talked to said they weren’t finding that understanding. When Georgia attended a lavish beach wedding thrown by a family member in Turks and Caicos, she opted not to bring her children in order to save money on accommodation (she still spent almost $4,000 attending, and also tried to save money by staying at a cheaper hotel further down the beach). But throughout the wedding and in the months after, Georgia said she was subjected to comments from the bride and others bemoaning that not all the family had been there. “It’s more annoying than anything,” Georgia said. “Especially because I don’t feel like I can just say, ‘Well, if you wanted them at your wedding you should have made it accessible for all of us or paid their way!’”
Then there are those who just can’t afford it, and thus are forced to decline the invitation. Max recently said no to attending his friend’s wedding in Bali — a decision made even more difficult by the fact she’d asked him to be in the wedding party. When Max explained that the $5,000 expense was just too high for someone on his teaching salary, she told him that his choice of career was to blame: “You did this to yourself,” Max said she told him. (He is now, perhaps unsurprisingly, rethinking the entire friendship.) Goldman, the wedding travel agent, said the main rule she advises couples planning destination weddings is that they should be paying for at least some part of their guests’ voyage, whether it’s subsidizing the hotel or airfare. You should also be planning several days of events and activities to really make the trip worth it. “If that’s not in budget, my suggestion would be to have a wedding somewhere where it is in budget,” Goldman said.
Last year, Naomi’s sister began planning her wedding in Northern Ireland. She had no connection to Ireland, Naomi says — she just liked the idea of getting married in a castle, and had been to several friends’ destination weddings. Deposits had been paid for flowers and meals, and roughly 30 guests had committed to coming, booking airfares and Airbnbs in the remote countryside. But suddenly, with less than three weeks to go, the bride pulled the plug, citing the ballooning cost. “I think that they knew they couldn’t afford it for months, but they just wouldn’t tell anyone,” Naomi said. “And then finally we started talking about a month before the wedding, and she started giving hints. And I was finally just like, ‘Are you fucking with me?’” (By the time they officially cancelled, many guests could only negotiate airline credit.)
Not all these destination weddings turn into disasters. Many couples do everything right — plan weddings in places with special meaning, pay for part or all of the accommodations, ensure their guests have plenty to do while they’re traveling, and are accepting of those who can’t make it. A few years back, Robert was invited to spend three days at an Irish castle where the couple had planned archery, falconry, Irish dancing classes, and even drag queen performances for their 60 guests. Robert spent thousands to make the black-tie affair, but he still thinks of it fondly and is grateful for the money his friends spent making their wedding celebration so special. “It was as over the top as you can imagine,” he said. “We got to explore a corner of the world we would have never had the opportunity to travel to, we got to bond with some cool people, and we made some great memories.” Still, the marriage only lasted a year.