I have recently noticed a hilarious, if not somewhat perplexing trend in wedding planning: everyone, no matter where they’re getting married, announces that they are having a “destination wedding.” A friend of mine said he was invited to a destination wedding that was happening in the town where the bride, groom, and all their friends and family lived. When asked what made it a destination wedding, the groom said, “Well, it’s in a different part of the town from where we live.” Interesting.
I grew up in New England, and one of the running jokes in my family was how every restaurant in the Boston-area claimed they served “award winning” clam chowder. I don’t know how many different clam chowder award committees there are, but the answer must surely be in the billions. It got the point that if we found a place that didn’t have award winning clam chowder, we’d eagerly go in and order it, just to see what such an accolade-free bowl of soup would taste like.
Now I feel like I’m getting to that point with destination weddings. If someone told me that they were having a non-destination wedding in a barn around the corner from their house, I would beg them for an invite.
The source of the problem is actually quite understandable. Many people now live and work in a different city from where they grew up. But there’s often a desire (and/or parental pressure) to return to the city of their youth for the wedding. As such, many friends and coworkers of the bride and groom are asked to travel – in some cases clear across the country – in order to attend the ceremony. The travel is often expensive, time consuming, and, more often than not, leads to a city that isn’t a top tourist destination. So, to sweeten the pot, the bride and groom convince all of their friends that they’re having a “destination wedding,” even if the destination is Calgary in the dead of winter.
The truth is that such propaganda is not necessary. Wedding guests understand that choosing a location is a complicated process, and that not everyone has the luxury of picking Maui. For a close friend or family member, we’re willing to spend the time and the money to travel somewhere totally random. But trying to convince me that Houston in August is a vacation destination does more harm than good.
So, for the sake of simplicity (and accuracy), I propose the following criteria that must be met before you can label your wedding as a destination wedding:
1. Is it in a place where the average person would pay to go on vacation?
Keep in mind that “visiting Uncle Stu at the asylum” and “getting some face time with the client” are not things you do on vacation.
2. Did the bride and groom pick the destination solely because it’s in a great part of the world, or is there an ulterior motive?
As I mentioned earlier, I’m originally from Boston. And you can easily make a case that people vacation in New England – skiing in the winter, Cape Cod in the summer, foliage in the fall. But if you picked Boston because your parents house in Somerville (a) has a large back yard and (b) is free, then it’s not a destination wedding.
3. Are there other things to see and do besides the wedding?
This isn’t necessarily something you want to have – give people an option between attending your wedding ceremony and seeing the statue of David and you may be disappointed in their choice. Nonetheless, I feel like this rule needs to be in place to exclude those Stephen King-esque wedding locations, where everyone is brought to a supposedly charming island, only to realize when they arrive that there’s nothing to do and no way to escape. And one by one the guests are disappearing!
I’m sure there are other rules that I haven’t though of, so feel free to e-mail in with other criteria.
And for those of you in the planning process who just realized that you are not, in fact, throwing a destination wedding, don’t worry. Remember that if you put trail mix and a bottle of water everyone’s hotel room, they’ll follow you into an active volcano if need be.
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