Wedding help - flying family over?

[rusalka]

I'm at the point where I have to start planning the wedding and making a budget. I'm in the US and my SO is in England. I'm set on getting married here because there is a place that is very important to me that I want to get married at. He seems fine with this, however, I have NO idea what to do about his family. We don't have a huge amount of money to spend, and round trips here are 900 USD at the cheapest. At the bare minimum, it would be 4 people. Would it be overkill to just have a separate ceremony there? I don't know if it would be tacky, but I feel like it would end up costing a whole lot less. What have you done in this situation?

[Tooki]

I don't think that it would be overkill to have two ceremonies. My GF and I will probably have to do this, unless we can find a place in between our two countries that is financially viable for both parties to attend

[snow_girl]

When people have destination weddings to mexico or wherever, it is usually expected that guests pay their own way. It wouldn't be so horrible to invite them to the US wedding, exchange rates would also work in their favor.

[lucybelle]

Everyone who came to my wedding paid for a $500 plane ticket. If they didn't want to pay, they didn't have to come. More cake for me

Also, we do plan on having another party to include more people at a later date. Lots of international LDRs plan on 2 ceremonies or receptions. Me, I just like the excuse to have more parties!!!

[digitalfever]

You coul contac a travel agent and see if they can give you a group rate per 5 people or 10 people estimate. That way you can offer this information to people when you send our your invitations in England. It's NOT the responsibility of the bride or groom to pay for travel. I would say that it's nice for you to present them with option and the cost of each option.

[Zephii]

I was dead set against two weddings, but I was lucky. I wanted to marry in my country, and his family has the finances that it wasn't a big deal. We had a 14 month engagement period which gave his friends time to save up. So in the end we only paid for two and a half people. If we'd have married in Canada, I wouldn't have considered letting my family pay, so it'd have cost quite a bit more. Wedding receptions are expensive though, I can't imagine doing two weddings to be the cheaper option unless they were both pretty dodgy, or you have a lot of help.

I think it is, on some level, the couple's responsibility to pay for flights if people they really want at their wedding can't do so. Because it's not a destination wedding and I hated people treating mine like it was. It wasn't a destination for me - It was my bloody home! And going to other people's weddings is expensive - especially if you're on the wedding party. I dunno, I'm just uncomfortable with people paying lots of money for me I guess. This whole international thing is hard enough on our families.

Digital fever's suggestion is a good one. The other thing I'd suggest is to plan the wedding at an off-peak time of year when the flights will be cheaper.

One thing we did, was we didn't admit to having paid for any of the flights. We didn't want anyone getting jealous or just plain being cheap and expecting a free ride when they didn't need one.

Another thing to think of is often it's not the flight that's the most expensive part - it's the accommodation. If you can organize your friends and family to take his in so they don't have to get hotels, it might make the cost of tickets easier to bear.

[Xanahtas]

I've heard of a lot of people having two weddings. We dont have enough money to fly his family over from Canada so we are going to try and make a live video link somewhere so they can still see the ceremony so they dont feel completely left out.

I dont see an issue with doing two weddings if you can afford it

[lucybelle]

We dont have enough money to fly his family over from Canada so we are going to try and make a live video link somewhere so they can still see the ceremony so they dont feel completely left out.

None of my SO's family made it to the actual wedding, but they ALL watched on Skype. They were there before the ceremony, during (could even hear cheers and "awws" coming from them! We assigned my aunt as "iPad carrier" and she did a great job), and after. I also made them wedding programs and gave the programs to them before we left. We had it in English and Spanish so they could follow along. It was perfect.

[kiara_silver]

Im from the US and my SO is from the UK, but he also has family in New Zealand and Spain, so there is a bit of travelling :P We talked early on about how we would do this, and 2 ceremony's came up once or twice but in the end were set on getting married here. I have a lot more family here, and he loves me enough to have it here, plus if we had it there part of his family would still have to travel, so it made more sense to have it here. We've given his family a 2 year notice haha, so time to save up, there all paying for there own tickets. In a perfect world we would have enough to pay for everyones tickets, but in this economy, things are hard and everyone understands.

[13000km]

We had two weddings. None of his family made the $2000 trip to Singapore for the first religious ceremony and reception. The cost was just too high and they knew we were going to have a second celebration in the states. We also streamed the entire wedding live on ustream and gave the link to our family and friends here in the states (we also had an iPad person). We had the legal (also religious) ceremony here in Oregon about 1.5 months after the first and to our surprise it didn't feel forced at all. This time it was a lot more casual and all we did was go out to a restaurant for dinner after. Both our celebrations were small, 75 people in Singapore and 30 people here. And we had a lot of help both financially and planning wise for the Singapore celebration.

I doubt people are really going to expect you to pay their way to your wedding. Having both families at one party didn't work out for us, but I think it's definitely possible if your guests were given lots of time to consider it.

[leonsfangirl]

Im getting married in Canada and none of my family will be coming as they cant afford the flights right now and i cant afford to pay for them either. Lots of photos will be taken for them as a skype wedding wouldnt work given the time difference and my parents working.
I'm planning on having a party when my SO moves to the England to celebrate closing the distance and the wedding. Might surprise my parents and have a blessing or something at the party as i know they feel bad that they cant make the wedding and i dont want them to feel like they missed out.

[princessmeg1328]

We're in the same exact situation as you. My husband is from the UK, and I'm from the States. We had a private JP ceremony in November with just the two of us. In May, we're having the big celebration for everybody to come to in the States. Later, we're planning on having a small party in England for all of those that couldn't come to the ceremony in May. It's what we've decided works best for us. We also gave everybody over a year to start saving their money to come. Some of his family is coming and some of them aren't. We've never felt responsible for helping to pay for anybody to be there. Most of the people we want there are coming on their own terms anyway.

[Sukkerklumpen]

My SO and I have talked about this -since we do want to marry eventually- and decided that the best way would be two separate ceremonies due to the distance and possible money that will have to be invested. So we'd marry in Norway with his family and then come to Puerto Rico and have a reception here with my family and friends. It's a good compromise.