Your guests reactions to your destination wedding invitation
When inviting guests to your wedding abroad, you’ll most likely be faced with a mixed set of reactions. Some people will be thrilled that you’ve invited them and they’ll really throw themselves into the spirit of celebrating your special day with you, whilst being pleased that they’re able to turn a wedding invitation into an excuse for a holiday!
Others will be more negative about the hassle that your wedding abroad is going to cause them. (See our top tips on how to make it as easy for possible for your guests to say yes to your wedding invitation below).
Some of their reactions may be justified, if the trip will cost them a huge amount of money or it’ll be difficult for them to get time off work. Others may simply not want to use up their allocated holiday allowance to spend it holidaying with other people that they don’t know that well. So, when you make the decision to hold your wedding overseas, you need to be prepared for a number of people to send back their regrets that they won’t be able to make it.
The best position that you can possibly be in, is to be respectful of peoples wishes to accept or decline your invitation, but be adamant that you both want to get married abroad even if your guest numbers are slightly depleted. Don’t be disheartened though, you’ll find that the average attendance rate of guests to an overseas wedding is between 55-70% depending on how far away from the UK it is.
People who are unlikely to be able to attend your wedding if it’s held overseas:
- Those with financial concerns
- Elderly grandparents
- Guests who have children of a school age, when your wedding is to be held during term-time, regardless of your children policy
- Guests with children who are put off by a ‘no children’ policy
- Pregnant guests who will be too far into their pregnancy to fly
- Guests who don’t wish to commit to your wedding as they’re planning to be pregnant in the near future
- Teachers who are unable to get time off work during term-time
- Your work colleagues who you’re unable to take holiday at the same time as
- People with a fear, dislike of flying or those concerned about their carbon footprint (yes, this does happen!)
Positive reasons as to why you’re deciding to get married overseas
When you first mention to your closest friends and family that you’re planning to get hitched overseas, they might be rather surprised and need to hear some reasons as to why and how the two of you came to this decision, rather than choosing to marry in your hometowns or elsewhere in the UK.
Alongside personal reasons that each couple will have, some common attitudes to marrying overseas rather than back home are:
- Depending on the location of your wedding, there’s a good chance of better weather
- Generally speaking, the cost of marrying abroad can be substantially more affordable than marrying in the UK
- You just fell in love with the overseas destination of your choice and nowhere else seems as good
- You want a small, intimate wedding without the pressure of inviting all your work colleagues, friends of your parents and friends-of-friends (don’t be mistaken into thinking that all overseas weddings have to be small though, it’s perfectly possible to throw a huge wedding overseas as well).
- Your wedding celebrations don’t need to end on the wedding day, you can see all of your guests for a few days either side of the wedding, which takes pressure off you chatting to everyone on your wedding day.
- Weddings in the UK can be equally as expensive for your guests, once they’ve booked hotels and train tickets.
- You get to show off the country that you’ve fallen in love with to your closest friends and family
How to persuade your guests to come to your wedding
First of all, it would be wise to mention a.s.a.p to your closest friends and family that you’re planning to get hitched overseas. That way, you’ll be able to prepare yourselves for the general consensus of opinion towards your decision and get a rough idea of who to invite. Once you’ve set the date, it’s a good idea to send a ‘Save the Date’ email or invitation through the post as soon as possible.
Sending save the dates as much as a year in advance is a good idea as it gives people plenty of chance to book time off work and save up for your wedding.
One way to help persuade your guests to attend your wedding is by making the planning of their trip as simple as possible for them.
- Flights – make sure you know exactly which airlines fly to your destination and the average cost of each airline based on the dates around your wedding. Expedia is a really excellent website to use for this purpose – you’ll seldom find cheaper flights than with Expedia and booking through them also means that you’ll receive Nectar points if you’re a loyalty card holder.
- Accommodation – make sure you thoroughly research a list of accommodation options in your chosen location. Try and remember that not all guests have the same bank balances, so it’s good to offer a range of options from B&B’s to 5 star hotels so that everyone who wants to be at your wedding, can afford to be at your wedding. Again, Expedia could really help you out here, or you could simply provide the websites of each individual hotel or B&B that you’ve recommended.
- Entertainment – as a couple, the two of you might love your wedding destination, but your guests may never have heard of it, so tempt them into joining you by giving them lists of sights to see, restaurants to visit, bars to get trollied in and activities that might be up their street.
- Logistics – make sure you provide information on how far away the airport is from the venue and how far the hotels are from the wedding venue etc. Give details on car rental firms, taxi firms or even offer to organize/pay for airport transfers.
What is the best way to provide your guests with all this information that you’ve researched?
The best way to publish everything that you’ve researched for your guests is by building a wedding website.
Wedding websites have become a very common and popular way to share your plans and preparations with your guests. There are loads of wedding websites out there, but our favourite by a mile is Webwedding.org which comes with a 7-day free trial and GBP5.00 off if you use our Wonderful Weddings Abroad code.
For a 6 months package, you get to create the following pages: Home, Wedding Details, Wedding Party, Wedding Gift List, R.S.V.P page, News page, Travel, Accommodation, Guest Book Messages and the ability to add photos.
You absolutely DO NOT have to be technically minded to create this site; it’s extremely idiot-proof and is based entirely on templates (you can choose from 8 designs) and you just type the text that you require directly into the site. It’s possible to password protect your site, so that only your guests can have access to your site, rather than anyone who is crawling through the World Wide Web!
The best part though, is that after your wedding you get to keep your website forever by having it transferred to a CD to have as a keepsake forever.
Information booklets are another way to share all of this information with your guests. This can be helpful for elderly guests who may not have access to the Internet (although there’s usually a family member that can print off information from your wedding website where necessary). The downside of information packs however, are the cost associated with posting them to everyone and also the fact that you’re unable to provide updates quite so easily as you can with a website.
