Travel times and venue distances

I'm sure it would be appreciated, but it's not necessary for you to pay for accommodations for out of town guests. I could see this causing drama when you're paying for some out of town guests and not others.

I think this is overthinking. Your guests can decide if they can or want to take the time and money to attend your wedding. Distance and date may mean some people decline, but as long as it’s not an issue for those most important to you, you just need to do what’s best for you.


My brother got married a flight away on a Friday. Was it expensive and inconvenient for me? Sure. Would I absolutely not miss it for the world? Of course I wouldn’t! Did I go and have an absolutely blast and not care about the day off work and the dollars spent because being there was more important to me than any of that? — oh yeah. You got the idea. It’s up to guests to make it work. Would I have maybe skipped if it was a random friend from high school ? ...yeah.
My own wedding was on a Saturday, but it was ...where my parents live. Which is...4 hours from where I live, where all my friends live, and where my husband’s family live. My uncle lives in town but aside from him, my extended family was 1-8 hours’ drive away, and others far off flights. People still showed up! We had a pretty high acceptance rate. All we did was make sure to do a few things to make it easy on guests. We blocked hotel rooms, shared links of local rental homes; we hired a shuttle to get to and from the wedding. But, we let everyone book everything on their own. Some came early, some stayed days, but everyone was left to their own devices. I think it’s easier for everyone that way — and way less stress on you. Trying to coordinate everyone’s’ travel and housing is probably more trouble than it’s worth. I think the best move is simply to provide guests with all of the information available to make travel planning easy, and then let them sort themselves out.

View Quoted Comment

Thanks for this super thoughtful comment maybe I should let go a little.

Out of our 125 guests, around 10 lived close enough to drive. The rest stayed in our blocked hotel. It worked out fine!