u/Remote_Bunch_9185

Hi everyone! My fiancé and I are looking for wedding venue recommendations within about 1.5–2 hours of Wilmington, DE for Fall 2028.

We’re expecting 130–140 guests, with 150 max, and our total budget is $35K max. Ideally, we’d love somewhere that allows guests to stay on-site, but we realize that may not be realistic at our budget.

We’re looking for something elegant/beautiful or unique and preferably not a barn, with some flexibility around
catering and vendors. (This may be unrealistic) We’ve gotten some crazy quotes so far and are getting pretty discouraged. We’re definitely willing to consider places we may not have originally thought of, though!

Open to DE, PA, NJ, MD, or anywhere within ~2 hours of Wilmington.

If you had a wedding with a similar guest count/budget, I’d love to hear where you got married, what you spent, and any places you’d recommend!

Hi everyone! My fiancé and I are starting to seriously look into destination wedding options for fall 2029, and I’d love to hear from anyone who has planned or attended a destination wedding.

We’re expecting around 70 guests total. Ideally, we’d love for everyone to be able to stay on-site, but we’re also fine with having our core group of 36 stay at the venue and having everyone else stay at a hotel or other accommodations within about a 15-minute drive.

We’re hoping to keep the wedding around $35,000 or less. We know that can be a little ambitious for a destination wedding, especially with 70 people, but we’re trying to find a location where we can get the most for our money. We’re also planning pretty far in advance, so we’re hoping that gives us some time to save and spread out the costs.

Here’s basically what we’re looking for:

• Preferably Europe, but we’re definitely open to other locations.
• Fall 2029, but we’re flexible on the exact date.
• Around 70 guests.
• Ideally, accommodations for everyone on-site, but 36 on-site + the rest within about 15 minutes would work too.
• Ideally $35K or less (this may not exist lol).
• We love historic estates, châteaux, villas, castles, manors, etc. Basically anything that feels a little more unique and romantic than a typical hotel ballroom.
• Not a beach wedding. My fiancé is not a beach guy (I know, what is wrong with him).
• Somewhere that isn’t too difficult for our guests to get to from the U.S. would obviously be a plus.

We’re still in the research phase, so I’d love to hear about specific venues, countries, or areas that you think we should look into. Especially interested in places where you actually had your wedding or have been to one.

TLDR: If you had a destination wedding with around 70 guests and a budget of $35K or less, where did you get married and what did you end up spending? I’d also love to hear about anywhere you’d recommend avoiding.

My fiancé (28M) and I (26F) are newly engaged and have started planning our wedding. We’ve realized very quickly how expensive weddings can be. We both come from somewhat large, close families, so if we have a wedding at home we would realistically have around 130–140 guests. We could cut the guest list if we absolutely had to, but we would still have a guest list of around 110–115 between our families and some friends.

We’ve been getting quotes in the $50–60k range, and we just cannot justify spending that much on a wedding right now. We still want to have a wedding that feels beautiful, fun, and memorable, but seeing these quotes has been really discouraging. So we’ve also started considering a smaller destination wedding as an alternative.

We have a core group of about 35 people who we would absolutely want there, and we’ve thought about doing a destination wedding where we cover their food and accommodations (but not transportation), and then allow other family and friends to come if they want to and arrange their own accommodations. We understand that asking people to travel for our wedding could be a big ask, and we are completely okay with people declining the invitation for whatever reason. We would genuinely be okay with just celebrating with those 35 people if we went the destination route, although of course we would miss everyone else.

So our struggle is basically: do we stay home and pay more to have the wedding with all of our family and friends, or do we consider a destination wedding and accept that fewer people may be able to attend?
We really do want to have our wedding with all of our family and friends. The problem is that where we live, it seems like the options are either extremely expensive venues that we cannot comfortably spend that much money on, or the typical barn/farm-style venues, which really aren’t our style. (I know, maybe we can’t be that picky lol.)

So I’m just wondering, how are you all making weddings work financially? We aren’t looking to spend $50k+, but we also don’t want to give up on having a wedding altogether. I would really appreciate hearing how other couples are approaching this, because right now we feel completely lost.

Edit: I’m mainly adding this because I’ve noticed a lot of people suggesting that we push the wedding out or save for a few more years. Our preferred wedding date isn’t until September 2029 because I’m currently in law school and won’t graduate until May 2029. So we are already planning several years out!

We both have decent jobs and make good money, but we are also paying for my law school tuition completely out of pocket/cash. We are still saving in general and have a decent bit saved, but with that expense, we aren’t able to save as much as we otherwise could.