Destination Wedding Planning

Trying to negotiate the involvement of guests. In truth I would love to call what we're planning a destination wedding, but without guests I suppose it's an elopement. His parents live in two faraway countries, one requiring a travel visa to come to the states which would take longer than his fiance visa to process. There's just a lot of drama surrounding who can come, and who should come. We've been shutting everyone out of coming due to the unfairness listed above, but it's driving my family apart even to refuse their physical attendance.

Suppose that's the biggest challenge. What would make it easier? Attitudes that seem to be completely out of my control to assuage.

If you can, extend invitations early and earnestly.

Hmm there’s a lot😅 just for background I’m a half-Jamaican, half-Nigerian, American living in Italy with my Italian husband. We had our wedding in Jamaica last November. What made it easier but not necessarily easy was foresight, we started planning almost two years before and from the very beginning picked Jamaica because out of all the countries involved it had the most lenient visa policy and wasn’t cheap but was accessible. Due to my obsession for aesthetics, we had to have a small wedding to stay in some sort of feasible budget so that already eliminated having to wrangle too many people/emotions. We gave everyone two years notice and the ones that came made the day so special. The ones that couldn’t were missed but it wasn’t the end of the world, there will be anniversaries and parties in the future. In hindsight it was hard to organize, the organizing and managing of 50 guests from touch down to take off was the hardest part, but it was SO worth it. Priceless memories together.