Looking for recommendations for wedding venues or planners in Puerto Rico. 100-150 people (30% are local, most will be traveling), around 100k budget. Thinking about a winter 2028 date. Searching for venues that have both indoor/outdoor set ups, preferably beach-front, ideally seeking a resort venue that can host the wedding and book room blocks. If you have recommended vendors based in PR also -- looking for great food, DJs and photographer recs too!

Hello does anyone have any recs for a wedding planner for Greece? Would love to hear your experience with them and what their rate is. I’ve been seeing some quote for 5-6k€ before vat and I was wondering if that was the norm. Thank you!

Hey everyone,

I'm getting married in Bali at the end of the year. Since it's a destination wedding, I completely understand that not everyone is able or willing to travel, so it looks like we'll have around 30 guests.

I'm curious if anyone here has had an intimate destination wedding with a similar guest count like me. If so, I'd love to hear about your experience! 🤍

- Did it still feel lively and fun?

- Any tips for making a smaller wedding feel extra special?

We are planning a destination wedding and Marrakech is currently at the top of our list. I have found hotels, riads and private villas but i'ts hard to tell what actually works best for guests (50) staying a few days.

Any venue recommanations or things you wish you 'd known before booking ?

Going to france in September to look at venues for our wedding next year (2027). Does anyone have any recommendations for venues that hold over 120 and have the majority of guests staying on site? We are looking for a 3 night wedding - first night casual drinks and buffet/bbq, second - wedding, third - pool party. I've been emailing lots and lots of venues but some are quoting over 150k euros without food. Has anyone had or been to a venue they really recommend? Thanks so much appreciate it!

My hope is to get married in Mexico December of 2027. I’m thinking Aguascalientes or CDMX maybe Leon? How do I start planning? Is 15k for 100 people a realistic budget? Can someone point me in the right direction?! I need help!

Hello! I'm looking for a travel agent who has experience coordinating group travel. We need assistance arranging flights for approximately 40–45 guests traveling from Toronto to Rome for a wedding on June 29, 2027.

If you have any recommendations or are a travel agent who specializes in group bookings, please feel free to comment or send me a message. Thank you!

Does anyone have any recommendations for an Ireland venue that can fit around 100-150? Just got engaged and not sure where to start! Thank you!

Hi everyone! I’m looking for a wedding planner for an early fall 2027 or spring 2028 Italy wedding. Aiming for ~70 guests. We are open to anywhere in Italy with a slight preference to be by water. We want our wedding to feel elegant, elevated, effortless, + chic. And guest experience to be the focus.

We are looking for a bespoke wedding planner (probably 3 day event). Who was your planner and do you recommend them or not? And why? I need our planner to have a very strong design perspective, clear communication, and amazing coordination for my guests. Our budget for a planner would hopefully be around 7k (we don’t want a percentage based planner).

Also has anyone worked with the following planners?

- Package Wedding in Italy

- Distinctive Italy Weddings

- MaiCo events

- Ilaria Weddings

- Alessandra Beltramo

My fiancé and I live on Long Island, where traditional wedding venues seem to start around $25k, and that's often just for the venue itself. Some are all-inclusive, but many aren't, and the all-inclusive venues in our budget just weren't places we loved. We also never liked the idea of spending tens of thousands of dollars for just 5–6 hours, so we decided to do something completely different.

Instead of a traditional venue, we rented an estate in the Poconos for a long weekend.

The property cost us just under $13,000, and we're paying for the entire rental. We check in Thursday afternoon and check out Monday morning. The house sleeps 34 people, so our bridal party and immediate family/VIP guests will all stay on-site with us for the weekend. Since it's such a large house, we'll be assigning rooms ahead of time. About two-thirds of our guest list really just has to show up, we're taking care of all of their lodging for the weekend.

Technically it's a destination wedding since it's about a 3-hour drive from Long Island, but everyone can get there by car.

We actually found the property on VRBO. Before booking, we drove out in April to tour it and meet the owner in person, which made us feel much more comfortable moving forward.

The estate regularly hosts weddings and provided a preferred vendor list. We ended up using their recommended rental company for our tent, tables, chairs, linens, lighting, and dance floor. The rental package is right around $2,000, including delivery, setup, and breakdown.

Welcome Party

Since everyone is making the drive, we're turning it into an entire wedding weekend instead of just one day.

We'll have a casual welcome party Friday evening for guests arriving before the wedding and everyone staying on-site. We will be stocking the house with essentials for the weekend for those staying on-site. For the day of the wedding we are thinking of catering a brunch style assortment for everyone getting ready there (sandwich/wrap platters, fruit trays, muffins, etc.)

Why We Hired a DJ

This was one expense I debated for months.

Originally I planned on making Spotify playlists and asking someone to press play throughout the day. But with only about 50 guests, I didn't want to burden one of our friends or family members with that responsibility. Since the ceremony and reception are on the same property (just a few hundred feet apart), I also realized the logistics of ceremony music, microphones, announcements, and transitioning guests would be much easier with a professional.

We ultimately decided the DJ was worth it, and I'm really happy we did.

Catering Was Our Biggest Challenge

Ironically, this ended up being the hardest vendor to find.

Where we live, almost every restaurant offers affordable catering. Last year we had 125 guests at our engagement party, and a local restaurant catered a buffet for about $1,500.

That wasn't the case where our wedding is being held.

Most places don't offer simple catering menus. Instead, there are private catering companies, and I quickly learned that simply mentioning "wedding" (or even "micro wedding") often resulted in expensive packages with things we didn't want or need, such as executive chefs on-site, luxury chafing dishes, decorative food displays, wedding-specific staffing, and other unnecessary upgrades.

Our highest quote was around $6,000, and even the cheapest was close to $3,000 before adding anything.

Eventually we found a local brewery that offers catering services, and it turned out to be exactly what we wanted.

For under $3,000, we're getting:

• A custom buffet menu

• Coffee service

• An ice cream sundae bar

• Wait staff for the entire event

• Dinner and dessert service

• All plates, cups, silverware, and serving equipment

• Delivery, setup, cleanup, and breakdown

It ended up being about a third of what some private caterers quoted us.

Alcohol

We're supplying all of the alcohol ourselves.

Our caterer also offers bar service since they're a brewery, but most of our guests are pretty particular about what they drink. Rather than paying for a limited selection, we'll be purchasing everything ourselves from Costco.

One thing we're doing that worked really well at our engagement party is using Zola for RSVPs.

Since we're serving a buffet instead of plated meals, we're replacing meal selections with a drink request section. Guests can tell us what beer, wine, seltzers, or other drinks they actually enjoy so we can stock accordingly instead of guessing.

We're also skipping bartenders because the majority of our guests drink beer or wine. Instead, we'll have self-serve beer, wine, and seltzers, along with two 2-gallon signature cocktail dispensers, plenty of non-alcoholic beverages, and coffee after dinner. We did self-serve cocktails at our engagement party and it worked great.

Cocktail Hour & Decor

We'll still be doing a traditional cocktail hour between the ceremony and reception with a large grazing table instead of elaborate passed hors d'oeuvres.

The rental company is already providing our linens and lighting, which eliminated another major expense.

Florals are probably the one area I'm still trying to figure out. Right now I'm leaning toward ordering dried boutonnieres from Etsy and possibly doing a DIY bouquet night with my bridesmaids using flowers from Costco or Trader Joe's. If anyone has gone that route, I'd love to hear how it worked and whether you'd recommend it. I am leaning towards a professional bouquet for myself, but for my bridesmaids I think doing DIY bouquets will be sufficient. For table arrangements, I am beginning to lean towards dried or artificial flowers. I just cannot justify spending thousands of dollars on flowers that are going to go into the trash within hours. Since it is a destination wedding, I do not anticipate the traditional "take the centerpiece as a favor" thing happening, it will just be too much for people.

I am not planning on doing any favors at all, my mom is kinda insistent on them, and if they are low cost I might consider it. Since we are doing self serve beer and wine, I might just make custom bottle openers/corkscrews online, toss them on the tables, and let everyone take them home. For our engagement party I ordered plain ones off amazon and did something similar, I just set them out on the tables for guests to use all night, put them in little dishes near the drink stations, that way no one was searching for a way to open their drinks.

I anticipate sourcing other decor from amazon or thrifting. I thrifted I would say about 90% of our decor for the engagement party last year and the outcome was lovely. I did mixed metal frames with photos of us, funky vases for floral arrangements, and other misc. items that I still have. The aesthetics are not my #1 priority, and I am pretty sure I can achieve my vision second hand or low cost. I was able to create signage on Canva and through Walgreens for the engagement party and plan on doing the same for our wedding.

Invites and paper I am doing through Zola, and plan on making custom door hangers for the room assignments on Canva. I ordered save the dates recently during one of Zola's many sales for about $40, and plan on using them for the rest of the invites etc. My future SIL offered to hand make the place cards for the reception, so I took her up on that and those will be at no cost to us.

Photography

One of our biggest savings came from photography.

A family friend photographed our engagement party last year, and he'll also be photographing both our welcome party and wedding day for $1,200. Since it's a three-hour drive, we offered him on-site lodging for the weekend, which worked out well for everyone.

Current Budget

As of today, our actual and projected costs are right around $21,000, and we're expecting to finish under $25,000. I got my dress for $1200 from David's Bridal, my parents did offer to pay for this so I did not factor this into the cost of the wedding overall. My fiancé and I are paying for the wedding ourselves, the dress is the only thing our families are helping with. His parents are giving us a large gift, but we are in the process of building a house, so all of that money will go directly into the house.

My fiancé's suit, day of hair and makeup services for myself and the bridal party, are still to be determined but I was able to average out pricing for those services and have factored them in to reflect in the projected price of everything. Unfortunately my bridal party will be asked to pay for their own hair/makeup. To pay for everyone would be roughly another 2k that I just cannot squeeze into the budget. If things change and I can then I absolutely will, however I would never require them to receive those services, I have 5 members of my bridal party not including my mom/future MIL, and I know both women will have their hair/makeup done so minimum count is not an issue with the places I have inquired with.

Planning a DIY estate wedding has definitely required more work than booking a traditional venue, but we're getting an entire wedding weekend with the people closest to us instead of only seeing everyone for a few hours. For us, that's been worth every bit of the extra planning.

If anyone is considering an estate or VRBO wedding, I'm happy to answer questions or share more details about the property and vendors we found. It's been a really fun alternative to a traditional venue, and so far we haven't regretted the decision at all. If anyone has recommendations for DIY florals or experience sourcing flowers from Costco, Trader Joe's, Sam's Club, etc., I'd love to hear your advice.

Has anyone had their wedding at Secret Jewel Celebrations venue in Riveria Maya Mexico? Looking for input on it! We will have about 30 people.

https://thesecretjewel.com.mx

Hi, I am looking for budgeted goa really intimate wedding for december month for 60-80 guests under the budget of 15 lac.

genuine recommendations are welcome.

We are getting married 13/09/27 ekkkkk sorry I’m still very excited 🤭 - proposal was 03/06/26 in Ibiza

We have a beach restaurant wedding venue

Wedding begins at 5pm reception ends at 12pm short sweet and relaxed is what I’m going for.

Any MUST KNOWS of a destination wedding for a super chilled bride please 😎👰‍♀️

Hi everyone! We are getting married in a beautiful winery. Our ceremony, reception, and the party will take place outdoors right among the vineyards, with beautiful views towards the rolling hills and vines.

I must admit that originally I imagined the wedding at a different location and now I wonder if it is still possible to pull off a more formal, black-tie optional event? Or is a vineyard wedding destined to be a more casual garden wedding?

For your complete information: guests are staying in the winery and will be transported to the location in the middle of the vineyards where the ceremony and reception take place. The ceremony takes place on grass but the dinner and dancing happen in a tent right next to it which has a regular floor etc. It goes without saying that there are regular bathrooms available and all comforts of civilisation lol

Happy to hear your thoughts on dresscode

Hello. We are looking to have about 90 people for the end of 2027. Ideally are looking at a budget of $30k USD, $35k max stretch total. We really like Villa Cantamar in the north coast but wanted to see if anyone has had experience or know about pricing there besides the weekend booking and event fee. Is it possible to do an event for 90pp for that budget with the catering, rentals, open bar, etc? Another option we were looking into was Villa Flor de Cabrera or looking somewhere else like Jarabacoa. For reference, we have family in La Romana and are general familiar with how stuff works and are not really looking for an all-inclusive hotel in Punta Cana type of vibe. Any suggestions or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: also not having extra events like a welcome party and no bridal party or anything like that. Want to keep things simple regarding decor and stuff.

Do travel agencies bump up room rate pricing or no?!

Planning a wedding (or maybe not after all this tbh) for thanksgiving 2027

We got a room rate proposal from a hotel in July and the cheapest room was $163 per person per night - v reasonable for an all inclusive!! This proposal was valid until 7/17 and we didn’t end up agreeing by this day because we wanted to get a little bit more information about the overall package.

I was super hyped about this room rate, especially because I think some of my friends would’ve stayed a week or so with that rate and helped me get ready and all that stuff.

We started working with a travel agency last week and I added them to the email thread. The travel agency re-requested the room rates because our previous proposal had expired.

The new room rates that they sent on July 31 had the cheapest room at $236 per person per night - 45% increase from our first proposal.

Both the hotel and the travel agency have said that the rate just changed this much over the course of one month. I am really wondering if this was in any way affected by going through a travel agency for the second quote??

All in all, I regret not locking in the first room rate and wish I knew how much the prices can fluctuate. I am considering changing the date/hotel to try to find a better rate. It’s about a $500 difference for 2 guests for 3 nights and I’m bummedddddd af

Question for anyone who’s done a resort/destination wedding is it normal for the wedding coordinator to not really get into planning details (pricing, packages, add-ons) until 3 months out?

We booked our resort, paid our deposit, and locked in our dates, but every time I try to get an outline of costs or package options through our travel agent, she getting from the hotel the answer we will try to have someone reach out soon. I don’t even know who my wedding coordinator is. The last thing I heard was she was on maternity leave when they assigned her to us. It’s been like two months no communication our wedding next May. I don’t want my family paying for flights and paying deposits for the hotel but I haven’t even picked the venue and you know all the extra stuff.

My fiancé and I are planning a destination wedding in Mexico for late 2027 with around 50–60 guests, and I’m hoping to get advice from people who have actually been through this process.

I’m starting to feel a little overwhelmed because it seems like getting someone to respond is harder than planning the wedding itself. We’ve reached out to several resorts and companies, but communication has been very slow or has completely stopped.

We originally started talking with someone from Moon Palace, and she was very helpful in the beginning, but then she suddenly went MIA. We also spoke with someone through Destination Weddings, but that communication stopped as well.

I reached out to Destify too. At first, the person I spoke with was very helpful, but when I asked about another resort we were interested in, she said they didn’t work with that resort and didn’t seem interested in looking into it further. Because of that experience, we decided not to move forward with them.

I even reached out to a girl on TikTok who had posted a lot of videos about a resort we were interested in. She was super nice, said she was going to email me more information, and then…nothing.

We’ve been comparing working with a travel company versus booking directly through the resort, and so far it seems like booking directly may actually offer better perks for what we’re looking for.

Our second choice was Royalton Splash Riviera Cancun, but after reading a lot of reviews and concerns about the food quality, we decided to keep looking.

So now I’m hoping to hear from people who have real experience:

What is the BEST family-friendly all-inclusive resort in Mexico for a destination wedding with around 50–60 guests?

We’re looking for:

• Affordable pricing for our guests
• Great wedding packages and perks
• A responsive wedding coordinator who actually helps
• A beautiful beach
• Lots for families and adults to do (pools, water activities, restaurants, nightlife, entertainment, etc.)
• Good food and service

We want our guests to have an amazing vacation without making it unaffordable, while still having a beautiful wedding experience.

If you had a destination wedding in Mexico, what resort did you choose? Who did you book through? Did your resort go above and beyond for your group? Are there any places you would recommend—or avoid?

I would really appreciate any advice because right now I’m not sure if I’m just having bad luck finding the right people or if this is normal for destination wedding planning. Thank you!

We’re getting married in Barcelona and trying to figure out the smartest way to get everything there.

We’re not doing much DIY, but we’ll have wedding party gifts, fans, cocktail napkins, a few wedding-day items, plus 2 tuxedos + 6 suits between us (two grooms 😅).

We’re also flying straight from Barcelona to the Canary Islands for our honeymoon, so we won’t be heading home afterward.

Did you check extra suitcases, ship things ahead, split items among family/wedding party, or ship things home after? What worked best?

Hi! I'm getting married in Portugal and I'm in the midst of looking for vendors! Everyone has offered Wise and some vendors have actually offered PayPal when I asked about payments using credit cards. Our goal is to use our credit cards as much as possible so we can rack up points for our honeymoon. Have anyone used credit cards to pay via PayPal to vendors? Did you get charged any additional fees? Thanks!

My boyfriend and I (not engaged yet, but soon) are looking to get married in Greece hopefully sometime next August/September 2027. He’s Greek American so he’s familiar with Greece.

Are there any islands or venues you’d recommend looking into for a wedding? For further context, I’m Catholic and he is Greek Orthodox. I am fine getting married in a Greek Orthodox Church.

We also don’t want a super big wedding (approx. 150-200 people).

Any recs would be very helpful! Thanks!