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Everything You Need to Know About Destination Weddings
Whether you’re a guest or a participant, a major destination wedding can be a big deal. Getting all of the pieces to fit together in a domestic wedding is hard enough; moving all of that abroad can make things a lot more complicated and a lot more dramatic. Here’s what you need to know about preparing for an amazing destination wedding, no matter your role in the festivities.
Pick a Great Location
There is no destination wedding without a great destination in mind. You can’t go wrong with something like Valbonne, a small village in beautiful Provence, but don’t be afraid to break the mold with something a little more bold if conventional hotspots don’t quite fit your personality. Less common destinations can sometimes match the beauty of their more famous counterparts while helping you to avoid the tourist traffic, which is never any help when it comes to pulling off a smooth wedding.
Your wedding destination should be something with a personal significance to you or your partner. That can be a dream destination, an ancestral home, or a great place for a shared hobby, like surfing, for example.
Finally, when it comes to picking a location, please don’t forget about your guests. They want to come to your wedding, but, as Elite Daily humorously notes, destination weddings can become incredibly expensive. You may be prepared to handle the costs, but your guests won’t always be. To help them out, you can try picking a destination closer to home, keeping the festivities centered around cheap or free activities, or schedule your wedding during the destination’s usual off season. Another great thing that you can do is plan to have the reception once you get home. That way friends and family can still wish you well even if they couldn’t make it to the main event.
Stay Healthy
Nothing will ruin a wedding more quickly than a nasty cold or an even worse illness like the Zika virus. General health tips, like washing your hands and cooking your food thoroughly, apply twice over when traveling, but there are other steps to take that are unique to international travel, like updating your vaccines and carrying copies of your medical information.
Plan Everything in Advance
When it’s go time, the last thing you want to think about is getting all of the pieces into place. Ideally, you want to have everything locked in before you leave for the wedding. This is especially important if your destination is a country from which it could be difficult to coordinate with suppliers, your bank, or anyone involved in the planning of your wedding. For a wedding, this sort of pre-planning includes reserving all of the space that you’re going to need well in advance, communicating with your bank or credit card company so that they know why your card has just been charged $1000 from Cuba, and bringing everything that you’ll need with you.
Destination weddings can be stressful, but they can also be a dream come true for many couples. As long as you go in prepared, your destination wedding is sure to be a great start to a great marriage.
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