Biggest Destination Wedding Stress factor - what's yours?

Well I have to repeat some of the comments made by HereFishie, autjo and future_mrs2010.

My biggest stress was choosing the resort. I have traveled very little and it was hard for me to sift through all the choices. Along with this was trying to coordinate our trip dates with guests leaving from three different provinces. We started out going through a TA which ended up being an even bigger headache so we just took care of our own booking and left it up to our guests to do theirs, based on our recommendations if needed.

Next biggest - my FMIL. After we booked and sent out a Save the Date, my FMIL did not speak to us for 6 weeks she was so angry about a huge number of things to do with us, our wedding and our planning. Then it took another six weeks nearly for FI's parents to book. Thankfully attitudes have been readjusted and things are ok, but the sad part is that FI wants little to do with his parents now and in the future because of their behaviour.

Finally - the money. And not so much that we're spending a lot but FI is really, umm, particular (haha) about how money is spent so he gets really annoyed anytime I mention bigger spends. We're paying for everything and also trying to do it in cash as much as possible. Basically any costs we've incurred so far are fully paid for. Now it will just be a matter of putting some dollars aside to cover our reception costs and then of course any spending money we want.

I agree that this website has been HUGE in keeping my stress level down!!! My other girlfriends that are planning local weddings have been jealous of all the amazing ideas from here.

I would have to say our guest list is my biggest frustration. We wanted a small wedding with about 70 people. So why is our invite list now well over 225? Seriously I am praying that some people...many people...don't come. Even though we only just sent out the STD and few people have booked, I am a bit frustrated. I mean our resort only have 100 rooms. We wanted a small resort so we could have a more intimate setting. My side of the invite list stopped at 90 my FI on the other hand is over excited. He's in charge of the budget and is yet to put pen to paper. I'm going to do this myself and send it to him so he can see what will be spend if all 225 will show up becuase right now I doubt he has a clue. Besides, it's much less about cost and more about the fact that we wanted this to be only our closest family and friends. As I said, I'm praying these people see its a destination wedding and just don't come.

I'm in the same can't-get-people-to-book boat (well, can't even get people to rsvp! I have like 6 back out of 40). Only FI's parents have actually booked. No one from the wedding party, no one on my side, & none of our friends have booked and that's sorta stressing me out, though I'm trying not to think about it until Dec.

We have a TA & some people seem reluctant to use her b/c they think they can get a better deal so I spent a bunch of time searching on travel sites to compare the cost of booking air/hotel together with booking air & hotel w/ the TA separately & emailed the breakdown to friends & my family (coming from the same city). It's actually like $100 cheaper to do it separately b/c the room rate she got us is really good, but still no one books. whatever. I guess there's still a lot of time, but we have a lot of serious procrastinators in our bunch and our deadline to book w/ the TA is Jan 5.

We also have the people who don't want to stay at the hotel b/c they want to find a cheaper deal that's not all-inclusive. We'll have to worry about that & the day passes later. I like the idea of having everyone stay at the hotel the night of the wedding, but I'm sure some of my friends won't go for it.

So glad to have this site to vent on cuz no one else wants to hear it! thanks girls

My hugest stresses were getting people to RSVP and book (again, we had a number of people saying "we'll be there" but I never really believed it until they booked). Even so, a number of people booked on their own and were doing different travel dates so it was tough for me to organize the one group activity I wanted to do (sunset cruise) because I didn't know who was there on what day. It ended up working out but we paid for like 10 extra people on the sunset cruise than we needed to (no-shows). Oh well.

The RSVP situation also made it really hard to budget since we had no idea what our final number would come in at, and everything is pretty much based on a per-person cost. I just picked my best guest and used that and hoped it wouldn't be more.

My last stress was my irrational fear of people not having a good time. I just really wanted to make sure that everyone would feel that the trip was worth it and that they didn't spend all that money to go to Cabo for nothing! It was a dumb fear though. Our guests are all amazing and super fun and that made the week one of the best weeks for everyone who went I think. People are still talking about it now and everyone wants to go back to Dreams again next year!

I agree, biggest fear was the guests, not knowing if they were going to get passports, book flight, hotel etc. FINALLY I realized I had no control of that, I supplied them with all the information & my fiance said "even if it's just me & you, that's all that matter." The best resource has been this website.

It's great to hear that i'm not the only one with one of the biggest stresses as the wedding party. I agonized for months, about 3 months over who i would choose. there were 5 girls i wanted to ask or felt i had to ask, and i ended up picking 3, with one "honourary bridesmaid" who will spend the day with us and do all the fun girl stuff the day of, just won't be up there in the yellow dress with the other 3. and the 5th girl isn't coming. Now i really wish i just went with the one MOH and one best man and had 3 honourary bridesmaids.

Another huge stress was finding a TA!! i went through 8 before i actually got a quote from someone! well i did get one quote which was ridiculous so i said, heck no! and then once we got the quote we were told we had 30 days before the pirce would go up...so it was a huge panic to get the invitations done and ready and out so people could book. and then sure enough, after the 30 days the prices dropped!!!

Hopefully that is all of the stresses i will have and it's all smooth sailing from here!

Good luck girls!!!!

my biggest stress right now is securing vendors. I already got bridesmaid dresses and will be picking out save the dates soon - this day next year is the big day - one year isn't a whole lot of time in the grand scheme of things but i figure if i do a couple things every week/month I should be okay

good luck ladies

For me I think it's been the reaction to us having a destination wedding. I've had people tell me i'm selfish for doing it, people tell me they can't go and then expect me to change our plans for THEM, people laying guilt trips on me. It's really been the absolute worst part. I'm not stressing about everything else because most of it just doesn't matter that much to me. And the things that do matter are mostly in my control. I have my moments where I stress about the dress or if the salon at the property is going to be capable enough to not make me look like crap. But the worst of it is definitely the reactions...

I think my biggest stress so far has been the cups for our OOT bags. I know, it sounds crazy, but I just couldn't figure out what I wanted. FINALLY we chose a place and put our request in. I'm so excited to get our product!