Oh mathmom-great idea! I’m from NH and I’ve met so many people out here in the PNW who have a trip for New England leaf peeeping season on their bucket list. There are so many lovely inns and B & B’s that host weddings there, beautiful drives to get to them, and several airports to choose from. Again, I only support this if the family can actually GET there, but it’s a great option. Ex and I were married in northern NH in the fall, in the yard of a B & B, with granite cliffs in the background and the trees turning color…our out-of-town guests (H’s family) were stunned by the natural beauty.
Thanks for all the wonderful replies. As Mom to the Groom, I’m not sure how much say we will have. The brides Mom wants the wedding at a venue in their town though brides brother was married there so kids don’t want a repeat. Small town so not many venues though if they travel just a bit I’m sure they can find something suitable. Can’t imagine they’d want to plan an even on Long Island by us though there would be so many more venues available. I did tell son that all grandparents should be included. He was not adverse to local weddings/receptions in each area and then the real destination wedding. (Son doesn’t want a repeat of his Bar Mitzvah, LOL!) The concept of the destination wedding is romantic and wonderful but not easy to pull off and other than the immediate family I think it’s kind of rude to everyone else, especially those that are bound to attend.
As long as half the guest will have to travel anyway, the idea of a Getaway wedding at some of the destinations you all suggested are worth looking at.
We’ll meet with the kids and the brides parents later in the month and try to come up with something everyone is agreeable to. (Note to self… as Grooms parents, we’ll try to suggest and go along with anything decided and be the peace keepers at this point as long as they do something to include the grandparents. )
Keep suggestions coming and I’ll pass them on to the kids. I’ll also update after we visit the kids and see if we come home with something doable… Getaway vs destination plus some local wedding/reception if need be.
We went to two family weddings this year that were not in the hometowns of any of the brides or grooms. So, I guess they were both destination weddings. In one case, we had to fly, and in the other we drove. To be honest, or family is so spread out that every wedding is a destination wedding for us…no one lives near here.
We loved having the chance to travel to places to celebrate that weren’t “hometown America”.
Some of this may depend on who’s paying. If the bride’s parents are willing to pay (or the kids themselves), I might be inclined to defer to them. As the mother of two sons, I have no thoughts that either would get married in our area. Older son has a long term girlfriend and has hinted about an eventual marriage but has mentioned either the girlfriend’s hometown (in the Midwest ) or the town they both are living in currently, in the east (which we could drive to within 4 hours). No talk of a "destination wedding " and I do hope neither son goes in that direction. But it seems to be a growing trend. I figure the bride and groom will figure it out and tell us where to be! If you are in Long Island and the other parents are 8 hours away, is there a midway point that keeps both families within driving distance? Do the bride and groom live in the same city? The weddings I’ve heard of recently have mostly been in the bride’s area (traditional) or in the city where the couple currently resides (also fairly traditional) or at a college area if the couple met there. A random destination would not be my cup of tea but it’s not my wedding (or my money), 
I was not a guest but I was at two hotels recently that were hosting destination weddings, one hotel is the Sagamore Hotel on Bolton Landing on Lake George, spectacular setting and lovely hotel. This was in mid-June and both days were spectacularly beautiful. The other was at one of the hotels overlooking the Marginal Way in Ogunquit at the beginning of August. In both cases ceremony was set for outdoors… Downside was of course if weather was bad and in the case of the hotel in Ogunquit, all the people walking back and forth on the Marginal Way scenic walk.
I once sat on a plane next to a woman en route to her daughter’s destination wedding in Maui. Because it was Maui it was a very small wedding, primarily immediate family and condos were being rented for week for vacation/wedding. Obviously everyone had to fly there, some from the West Coast but the groom’s family from the East Coast and the bride and groom themselves lived in Texas.
bookmama, That almost sounds like a family reunion/ Hawaii vacation with a wedding thrown in for good measure.
I figure we’ll pay for the rehearsal dinner and will no doubt have to figure out all of that long distance. Just tell us the location of the wedding and I’ll start researching the rehearsal dinner options. I can’t believe though how much weddings cost these days. Maybe the destination wedding idea is a way to cut down on the wedding costs . Lots of people just won’t travel to a wedding if there is a major financial outlay to do so.
I would pick the coast of Maine, though I like the Vermont idea too. Though flying to Maine can be a pain, flights get cancelled all the time.
One of my coworker’s son had a destination wedding in Las Vegas of all places, (wasn’t her choice but there were no desired venues available where her daughter in law is from for the dates they wanted), they had an unexpectedly excellent experience, and the photos did look amazing. I don’t recall which hotel she said it was in, but wow.
My nephew is getting married in Bermuda next spring. It is not a destination wedding technically because that’s where the bride lives. My sister is having a hard time keeping the number of guests down. They can only have up to 150 people.
My older kid is hinting a wedding at her alma mater.
National parks are nice places for destination weddings. A couple of years ago I went to a beautiful wedding at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite. The travel burden was about the same as it would have been for a wedding in the bride’s hometown. Where most guests are going to have to travel anyway, having a wedding in a particularly beautiful domestic location doesn’t present much of an imposition. Weddings requiring international travel are in another category to me.
Traveling to Bermuda, or any of Caribbean islands is just as easy as getting to most places in the US.
Oldfort…I would LOVE for my kid to,get married at her undergrad alma mater…which is 3000 miles from our home. The chapel there is drop dead gorgeous, and the grounds are too…and the climate. And we also know,the BEST B and B where we also stayed for her graduation!
“Weddings requiring international travel are in another category to me.” Agree. A Bermuda wedding , when the bride is from there ( in oldfort’s nephews case) would be different and would not be unusual. A wedding at a college town is pretty common too, if the bride and groom have that connection. The whole idea of travel to a wedding definitely impacts people of modest means more than people who have lots of discretionary income. But it is becoming more common all the time for people to marry someone that is not from their area .
I’m going to my nephew’s wedding in NYC in a couple of weeks. It’s at 1 pm on a Thursday! Makes it difficult for us - we can’t catch a bus from Maine early enough to get there, and there’s no bus that leaves from NYC after the wedding in time for us to make the last connection in Boston. So I guess we’ll drive. Sigh.
Not exactly coast but how about Asheville NC. Lots of possibilities including biltmore. What two areas are bride and groom from? Any thing equi-distance?
@scmom12 I was thinking Grove Park in Asheville too.
Yes grove park has beautiful porch/dining area that would be gorgeous. Also Asheville has lots of nice venues and would be cooler in the summer than charleston
Not that many people marry someone from their hometown any more, so it is very likely for people to travel to weddings, and more often than not, it means flying some where.
Agree, more likely all the time that people are having to travel to a wedding. And probably more likely that it is the bride’s family , or the couple themselves, that are having more input into the location. Lots of weddings still do seem to take place at a location that the bride’s family has chosen, or the couple themselves. Probably more unlikely that the groom’s family has major input into the location but maybe that is changing.
Sevmom I will be in your shoes in the not so distant future. Mom of 2 sons, no daughters . This is good practice for the lifetime of compromises that are required when you inherit a whole new family by marriage. Just wait until there’s grandchildren involved.
My niece got married last year in a town outside Portland Oregon. It wasn’t really a destination wedding as her mother lived there but niece was only there temporarily. Her husband is Canadian, so for his family it was a 5+ hour trip. For almost everyone else - her father, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends - we all had to travel.
It was really fine. It’s nice to have a local person (bride, groom, parents) to coordinate everything. Most of my high school friends got married in our home town even though they didn’t live there, and depended on their mothers to follow up on a lot of the details.