This following article ran in the New York Times Op-Ed Section some time in March 2011.
It’s My Party, and You Have to Answer
By RAND RICHARDS COOPER
HERE’S an etiquette experiment for you: E-mail an invitation for a party, one month out, to 45 friends. Request an R.S.V.P. Provide a follow-up e-mail message, two weeks later, politely reminding them to get back to you.
How many will?
My experiment arose from plans for an evening of food, drink and literature, with readings by myself and two other writers, at a restaurant. Not exactly a drop-in-if-you’re-around kind of thing, so I asked friends to R.S.V.P. My initial message brought in a dozen responses, and the follow-up a few more, but days before the event I had a paltry 23. Not 23 who planned to come, but 23 who had bothered to respond. Half my invitees had blown me off. Why? I wasn’t peddling life insurance, after all.
Asking around, I discovered that the phenomenon is widespread. One friend of mine e-mailed invitations to a baby shower, and a third of the recipients failed to respond. Another announced a happy hour at her house and received a dozen yeses — only to find her party besieged by 35 people.
What’s preventing us from executing this basic social task? Is it the medium? Do Evites somehow not feel like “real” invitations? Is it our busy lives, so overbooked and overwhelmed we’ve drawn up the castle gates? Don’t invite me out this month, I’m ensconced! Or is it simple rudeness? Try as I might to understand, I kept feeling dissed.
What’s clear is how hard the R.S.V.P. rubs against the grain of contemporary life. In requesting people to anchor a plan in the distant future of a month hence, you are demanding a kind of navigation that Americans increasingly do not practice. We prefer to remain flexy, solidifying our plans incrementally as the date approaches. Let’s talk tomorrow. I’ll call you when I’m on the road. Cellphones in hand, we micro adjust our schedules as they unfold around us. We’re like the air traffic controllers of our own lives.
The author has a good point regarding to RSVP – it does not work.
In my opinion, he was taking his party invitation a bit too personally and I can almost guarantee he will be even more upset when he send out his Destination Wedding Invitations, if he ever plan a destination wedding.
1. You can say I do anywhere! A destination wedding is defined as marrying at least 100 miles from where the bride currently lives. So imagine the options that definition opens up for you — the world really is your playground.
2. You’ll stand out from the pack. More than 2 million American couples wed every year — and fewer than 20 percent of them have destination dos. Bonus: Wed away, and you won’t have to choose from the same old hometown spots all your friends have booked.
3. It’s easier. Many wedding worthy resorts offer free planning help to couples, whether the event is for two or 200, and an abundance of packages keeps things simple while still giving options to customize. Want something more involved? Turn to an independent planner who specializes in more elaborate events.
4. You can save on decor. With a destination wedding in a stunning setting, your location of choice supplies the theme, from castle fairy tale to sea-inspired soiree. And when you choose an amazing backdrops, it doesn’t take much to dress it up. Opt for a pristine beach, a tidy vineyard, a blooming garden or a historic plantation house furnished with graceful antiques, and you’ll be more than covered with a few simple florals and other modest accents.
5. Enjoy quality time with loved ones. The standard wedding lasts for five hours, and the bride and groom spend most of that time running from table to table, trying to say hello to everyone. A destination do spans a minimum of three days — which means, now that you’ve finally gotten your nearest and dearest together, you can actually spend quality time with them! Hooray!
6. It’s a great excuse to limit the guest list. The very nature of destination weddings — they require travel, a longer time commitment and hotel stays — gives you the perfect excuse to cut down on an often unmanageable number of invitees. Think the second cousins and office mates will be miffed? You can always throw a post wedding party — complete with plenty of photos — when you get back home.
7. Guests can save on a vacation. Ask your host hotel about discounted room rates for your guests; most resorts are more than willing to bargain in exchange for group business. Some airlines, such as United and American, offer discounted airfares for groups of 10 of more — on the latter, this is true even if your guests are departing from different gateways. And ultimately, your friends will have a blast! Destination weddings give friends and family that most valuable commodity: downtime — to kick back, connect and celebrate. And what’s more fun than that?
8. You’ll share a locale you love. Part of the joy of a destination wedding is showing off a place that has special meaning to you, be it bringing friends and family back to a beloved college campus, sharing where you took your first vacation as a couple or finally going to a locale you’ve always dreamed of visiting.
9. Flexible timing helps with budgeting. You’ll be at your destination for a few days, so work with your vendors to see how timing can trim costs. After all, if everyone is already there, you can wed on a Friday, a Sunday or even a Tuesday — what does the day of the week matter in paradise? Look at seasonality too. Many Caribbean hotels drop their prices dramatically in mid-April; by planning your wedding for May, you can get the same great digs for a fraction of the price paid by visitors a few weeks earlier. Likewise, mountain resort towns offer big savings in spring and fall.
10. You can start the honeymoon early. Just arriving at your destination is sure to put you in a relaxed mood as the pre-wedding festivities begin. Many hotels offer automatic upgrades to the bride and groom on their wedding night, and you may be able to negotiate an extended mini moon at a reduced rate after the guests have gone home.
Article source: destinationweddingmag.com
All these 10 reasons are great, but the below three reasons stood out from the rest:
1. You can say I do anywhere!
With thousands of resorts and thousands of locations, there gots to be a beautiful and perfect venue that would love to do business with you. Which give you a lot more leverage compare to a most home town if wedding venue is limited.
2. You’ll stand out from the pack.
How can your wedding be one of a kind and unique if it is book at the same old home town spots? Since you gotta spend the money anyways, why not make it outstanding and truly one of a kind?
5. Enjoy quality time with loved ones.
This is the most beautiful part for me at our wedding since only close friends and family attended our wedding. Who are you going to spent the most important day of your life with? Strangers and long lost relatives or close friends and family? By inviting the closest and dearest, this will also lower the destination wedding cost dramatically compare to doing a wedding locally.
Start your destination wedding planning by getting a free destination wedding timeline and checklist here!
The reason why I am using them as an example is because they are the easiest to find since they are number 1 on google search if you type in “Destination Weddings”, they are the most developed service that I had seen online and their website look very professional and creditable.
But that was before I found numerous complains about them by many other brides who used DestinationWeddings.com before.
You can see the complaints from other brides here.
On the surface, destinationweddings.com look very professional and creditable, anyone who did not see the complaints would think they are trustworthy.
You see something else as you dig a little deeper.
This is part of the risk when planning a destination wedding presents as wedding services are almost essential.
However, there are ways to avoid these risk.
You can learn more about destination wedding planning while not risking the quality of your destination wedding.
My fiancé, Apple Sauce, does not like to have his picture taken. For as long as I’ve known him, and as far back as his childhood memories reach. He says it’s because he’s a “private person” — so he probably doesn’t appreciate me blogging about it, whoops! — and he doesn’t like to be the center of attention.
As you’d expect, this poses a problem pertaining to our wedding, i.e. the most photographed day of our lives. So before we ended up with a photo album full of shots of a bride without a groom, we needed to tackle the issue head on, to throw him into the belly of the beast and work through his fears with a little immersion therapy. We did an engagement shoot … in public.
© Matt McDonough, 2011
One of my luckiest breaks, when it comes to our wedding, is that I work at MTV, a veritable treasure trove of creative talent. Every day, I’m surrounded by writers, graphic designers, web developers, photographers, music editors and videographers. And you bet your bottom dollar that when it came to time to cast the talent for our wedding, I called in some favors. Enter my friends Matt and Sahara, photographers extraordinaire, and the coolest people you will ever meet.
For our engagement shoot, we decided to head to the world-famous Coney Island, a location that not only has special meaning to Apple Sauce and me (we’ve spent many a summer laid out on the beach and riding the Cyclone), but also boasts a range of colorful, interesting backdrops.
We decided we’d meet the photographers in Union Square, do some test shots, hop on the subway, take some additional “love train” shots, and then descend on the boardwalk. This would give Apple Sauce a chance to get to know Matt and Sahara and warm up a little bit before we hit our prime location.
It worked. Our subway car got emptier and emptier as we got closer to the beach, so the worst of it — in terms of how many people were looking at us — was over by the time we arrived. And then Apple Sauce realized, it wasn’t so bad after all. We were in this together.
© Matt McDonough, 2011
Categories: Wedding Photography, Wedding Stress
Tags: Apple Bud, coney island, engagement photos3 Comments You can follow comments to this entry through our RSS feed. –>
This bride took one of the biggest problem out during her wedding planning face on: Fiancé who is camera shy or fiancé who refuse to smile in photos.
By being awesome and working together with your fiancé goes a long way in your relationship. Lets learn from them!
"The best way to overcome the experience of overwhelm and stress during your wedding planning, is to identify the source of your stress and overwhelm.
If you don’t look into where the stress comes from, you will have little or No chance to eliminate it."
This article continue on and list out some, if not most, of the possible source of stress that a bride could be facing during the destination wedding planning period.
Most bride are really in a tricky situation as most brides are responsible for the wedding planning while the fiancé passively participate.
At the same time, they gotta look great and shine on their wedding day.
The nature of planning a destination wedding is stressful, but remember, you are not alone.
There are many who successfully planned a destination wedding before you.
So it is up to you to seek support and empowerment.
Destination Wedding Planning Now 