My wife's mother was very keen on a large wedding, my wife wasn't - we were watching a holiday program on TV and they had weddings in Mauritius and she announced "we're doing that!".
Anyway, we ended up getting married in the Seychelles and it was blissful and zero stress... and cost a lot less than a normal marriage. That was 34 years ago so something must have worked.
There's also the "get married on top of Half-Dome trick" (13km hike one way, 1.6km elevation gain for non-Californians) - keeps the wedding party small and fit!
Destination weddings can save a lot of money by having far fewer guests, while still retaining the most-important-day-of-your-life glamour that a small scale registry office wedding might lack.
Obviously, you can have a small scale wedding in your home country. But a lot of people feel they ought to invite their second-cousin-twice-removed and their family of five, while spending £200 a head on venue and food costs.
If attending the wedding needs a £1000 flight and a week off work, your guest list will drop from 100 people to 10.
We did an almost-free registry office thing (the free ones were booked out a year in advance). One witness from each side and a surprise attendee who was literally in town at the time (we didn’t invite friends and family because of family drama and logistics issues).
It was a very sweet event where the registrant and their assistant were clearly hopeless romantics - they told us, true or not, that they had won the in-office ballot for who could marry us after we charmed the intake panel when we went in to book - the historic room was intimate and charming and the party we organised that evening for unsuspecting local friends was a huge success.
All up it must have cost us less than two hundred euros, and was an unutterably perfect day. And our unexpected guest took a great video (which seems to have been lost somehow :-)
For some people, simple and small is impossible to beat!
> If attending the wedding needs a £1000 flight and a week off work, your guest list will drop from 100 people to 10.
That didn't work (in fact wasn't intended) for my niece when she got married.
The hotel deal (all inclusive in Cyprus) made it much cheaper for them than an equivalent do in the UK - e.g. cheaper extras such as videographers than in the UK, bigger meal, etc. The resort-style hotel was also cheaper than staying in the UK and the long lead times made flights / bookings quite affordable. Some of the guests treated it as an annual beach holiday with added party.
The hotel we were at arranged a free room swap with another couple on another island for a few days so we even got a "honeymoon". We went to this hotel for a few nights:
> Destination weddings can save a lot of money by having far fewer guests […]
I do not know which cultural background you are from, but with my background, guests generally show up with Hallmark® envelopes containing cash. If you budget assiduously it may even be possible to turn a profit on the reception.
In my country the tradition is to gift things for the couple to start their own home together (e.g. useful household goods) with value roughly in line with the cost of inviting you.
And this no doubt made great sense when people got married young, and someone gifting them a set of pots and pans was just what they needed.
In the present age, where people frequently live together before marriage and get married later in life, they generally already have all the pots and pans they need.
So often the couple will either say they don't need any gifts, or they'll end up with luxury replacements for what they already had (e.g. copper bottomed pans to replace stainless steel)
You might not consider it a loss but if inviting your second-cousin-twice-removed and their family converts £1000 of cash into £1000 of luxury saucepans you end up with a lot less cash on hand.
> In my country the tradition is to gift things for the couple to start their own home together (e.g. useful household goods) with value roughly in line with the cost of inviting you.
If couples need things they set up a registry for any items they want. If there is no registry, bring cash. :)
The general expectation is either you'll buy a gift or give cash (to at least cover the rough cost of you attending).
So we had to fly from Edinburgh -> LHR -> Seychelles
Looking at the current price from the same travel company and hotel it would be ~£8K - still cheaper than most weddings. The actual cost of the "wedding" part was pretty small.
Edit: One thing I do remember is that flight out was full of stressed out newly weds!
Anyway, we ended up getting married in the Seychelles and it was blissful and zero stress... and cost a lot less than a normal marriage. That was 34 years ago so something must have worked.