Thanks for the advice, everyone!! Good tip on making sure there is only one wedding a day!
After thinking about it some more, I really think we will have 20-30 guests absolutely max. Could be as small as 10. I know they say you'd be surprised people you never expected to will come, but I really don't think that'll be true in our case.
I think this is what we’re going to do-please let me know if this is what you did or you have any suggestions. First we go to a travel agent who maybe can help us find a location that is easy to get to, has what we’re looking for-somewhere beautiful with good places to get married and activities for everyone. Any suggestions? Hopefully the agent also knows more details about the marriage requirements (I got the basics online). Then we contact some locations on the island to get our wedding site and confirm the marriage requirements, get local info if we need. Then we look for vendors here if we are bringing them and there. Once all that’s set, we go back to the travel agent to arrange group discounts, book people, etc. People will be coming from different areas so I don’t really know how the discounts and such work, or whether everyone would be better to book on their own. But does the overall plan make sense? Is this how you started?
Also, is anyone having a smaller group paying for their guests? The whole point of our doing a destination wedding is to save money and get our family and close friends together for a few days. Obviously if we had 300 people we could not afford to pay for them, but if we end up with 20 (some are families and would share rooms) I’m debating whether we should. I’m also wondering how that would work-do you pay for as long as they want to stay, what if they want to just be there a couple days, etc.? I guess you would have to negotiate with the hotel for the rates. If you don’t pay for them and are paying for some (like grandparents or siblings), how do you let those people for who you are paying know without them assuming everyone’s covered?
Thanks again!!! Hopefully when this is all done I'll be able to give some advice to everyone else!