Hi all! We are trying to figure out where in the world to have our 2023 wedding. We are paying for it ourselves, and I am definitely feeling the pressure to make it as nice of an event as we can for our budget of $10k.
The guest demographics:40% of our friends and family live in Florida, 40% live in the Philippines, and the remainder are scattered throughout the US, Canada, Australia, Singapore, China, and Korea. We live in Georgia, USA. No matter where we pick it’ll be a destination wedding for 90+% of the guests.
Guests are mostly rich except for my immediate family, us, and our best friends. We have attended many family weddings that were nice and it is expected we return the favor. We can only afford to do that if we did it in Mexico/the Caribbean. I’d say 70% of the guests would say “woo vacation” and the other 30% would feel offended by the financial burden. The 30% include most of the bridal party and we would be distressed to put them in this position.
We are trying to find a place in GA/FL that is affordable, but it looks like everything will be so expensive between renting a space and all of the food. We don’t want to throw a public park party for people potentially spending thousands to come from abroad.
We would like to accommodate everyone but it feels like our options are to have a budget nature party (we don’t have access to a backyard) that would feel uncomfortable to most of the guests, or to have a more luxurious wedding that would push financial burden to many of the guests, especially those with kids. We’re not even sure the international ones will even come. What would you do?