Destination Weddings

PrettyGirl · July 25th, 2006, 12:42 AM

I hear this is the new 'in' thing to do...run off and get married like the stars. If you're married now or not, if you could have a destination wedding, where would you go?

Mira Sorvino went to Capri to get married.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner got married in the Turks and Caicos islands.
Lisa Marie Presley and Nicolas Cage married in The Big Island of Hawaii.
Seal/Heidi Klum and Freddie Prinze Jr and Sarah Michell Gellar both married in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

DirtyPool · July 25th, 2006, 01:54 AM

I am a Hawaiian resident and wanted to give my observation:
if you want to get married where the motto is "go home mainland scum but leave yo money" then hawaii is the place. its a shame to see people from the mainland come here and get ripped off when they are hoping to have their dream wedding only to find themselves saying I do on the beach while the homeless pitch tents in the background. the homeless on the beach has tripled in two years due to no affordable housing. hawaii is in big trouble - homeless everywhere you turn, crystal meth (ice) epidemic, racism, housing- but no one in the media is paying attention to it. the wedding people here overcharge for less than sincere services and they are shady at best. some are ok but you have to do the research and be willing to plan far ahead to get the good location and service.

UndercoverGator · July 25th, 2006, 07:25 AM

I cannot imagine having a destination wedding because I cannot imagine putting travel on top of an already stressful beyond belief happening like a wedding. The mountain of details that take months to arrange. I'm too anal to be able to sit back and allow someone else to arrange those things.

equallydivided · July 25th, 2006, 07:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PrettyGirl

I hear this is the new 'in' thing to do...run off and get married like the stars. If you're married now or not, if you could have a destination wedding, where would you go?

Mira Sorvino went to Capri to get married.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner got married in the Turks and Caicos islands.
Lisa Marie Presley and Nicolas Cage married in The Big Island of Hawaii.
Seal/Heidi Klum and Freddie Prinze Jr and Sarah Michell Gellar both married in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Uh....I didn't know they got married

missbazilb · July 25th, 2006, 01:42 PM

My bf wants to get married on Crete. I'm not a fan of big weddings, so it would just be us, hopefully. Just seems like a lot of effort for a 20 minute ceremony

Oh well, gotta wait for the ring first, so no sense planning now.

PaintTheTownRed · July 25th, 2006, 03:36 PM

I hate destination weddings, they are so tacky. At least celebrities can pay for everything like airfare and hotel costs. I have friends who have done this and it turned into an expensive inconvenience for family and friends. The wedding I was invited to costs $5k per couple! and it was only 5days. Almost no one showed up to their wedding and when they got back they had a reception. But it wasn't like a "real" reception because there wasn't a ceremony. So everyone got drunk and didn't notice the couple cutting the cake or when they had their first dance. This couple spent so much money and it was such a waste.

Anyway my favorite destination would be a place that would be easy for all my family and friends to travel to. A perfect wedding for me means being surrounded by my loved ones.

A*O · July 25th, 2006, 04:59 PM

Unless you have a limitless budget to jet in your friends and family to an exclusive resort you can book out and keep the gawping paps and public out of the way then don't bother.
We stayed in a hotel once that made a big deal of 'dream weddings at sunset on the beach' and it was the tackiest thing I've ever seen. Sunburnt Brits in cheap, nasty, borrowed wedding clothes that didn't fit forming an orderly line along with several other 'happy couples' to stand under a crappy palmtree on a beach with a glass of cheap, warm champagne and terrible 'muzac' from an old boombox crackling away in the background. Snotty kids would gather around from the swimming pool and any passing beach vendors, gardeners, beach bums and junkies would shuffle over to 'witness' the happy event.

If you want to get married, do it locally where all your friends and family can gather without taking out a second mortgage and have a good time. I always thought the 'dream Caribbean destination' was saved for the honeymoon anyway??

PrettyGirl · July 25th, 2006, 06:59 PM

My cousin had a destination wedding in Hawaii...she invited everyone but only a handful of people went. Sometimes I think when you have a large family, it sort of gets you off the hook not having to provide for everyone. You invite people but how many actually go? I personally wouldn't do that, but I know a lot of people do. Anyway, they had a beautiful wedding with mostly her dad's side of the family there and her husband's side and when they returned we had a party for them where they showed the video and what not. I guess it works for some people.

UndercoverGator · July 25th, 2006, 08:53 PM

My cousin had one of these tacky weddings about five years ago. She married a very rich man and they held the wedding in Venice, Italy, inviting the entire family. I refused to go because a) it was a buttload of money I would rather use to finish remodeling my kitchen that year and b) being that it was mid fall I would have had to have pulled the kids out of school. My mother didn't speak to me for a month because I refused to drain my finances or uproot my family to attend a cousin I hadn't seen in years wedding in Italy.

A*O · July 25th, 2006, 10:09 PM

I guess it's one thing for a couple to decide to elope, just the two of them, to get married in an exotic or romantic location in order to get AWAY from the pressure and hysteria of a Big Family Wedding in their home town. But it's entirely different if they expect the whole travelling circus of family and friends to pay a lot of money to go along too. To me, it's a bit like organising a lavish wedding reception and then asking your guests to pay to get through the door. Tacky to the max.

suede · July 25th, 2006, 10:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by A*O

I guess it's one thing for a couple to decide to elope, just the two of them, to get married in an exotic or romantic location in order to get AWAY from the pressure and hysteria of a Big Family Wedding in their home town.

That is what we plan to do.

WhoAmI · July 25th, 2006, 11:01 PM

Going to a wedding is usually just a big ordeal. Why make it even worse by demandng money from people so they can witness your "special day"? People just want an audience these days.

pacific breeze · July 25th, 2006, 11:35 PM

I agree with everybody who says it's a pretty selfish thing to expect friends and family to fork over huge money to come to your wedding at some far-flung locale. My mother's husband's youngest daughter was furious that people refused to come to her wedding in England at Christmas -- yes, you read it right -- and actually phoned people and yelled at them. She had the nerve to tell my mother that since she and her father weren't coming, she expected a gift in the neighbourhood of what the trip etc. would have cost! Needless to say she didn't get. She had her big church wedding (her second, and she married her rich first cousin after dumping her husband and two young sons pronto when said cousin left his wife) and later threw a reception at home. I refused to attend either event.

A*O · July 25th, 2006, 11:58 PM

Weddings are becoming so over-engineered, commercialised and vulgar that their whole meaning is being lost. It IS all about the gifts and the superficial trappings now. I would not mind so much if the happy couple were likely to stay married for more than a couple of years but since most marriages these days end in acrimonious divorces (where they fight like cat and dog for said wedding gifts) it all seems a cynical exercise in getting other people to spend lotsa money in order to make the couple, ie Bridezilla, a bratty princess for a day.

pacific breeze · July 26th, 2006, 12:01 AM

You nailed it. That IS what it's all about. My third anniversary is coming up and I'm happy to say that we had an elegant but budget wedding, and we're still tight as a couple.