How to make your guests feel welcome at your destination wedding

A wedding is a perfect opportunity to explore new places and enjoy new adventures. Weddings used to mean choosing a venue close to home, but many couples are choosing alternative options to traditional locations. Couples often have long distance relationships, or maybe your close friends have settled in cities all over the country, or maybe you and your S.O. really want to get married in the city where you first met. Couples are no longer limited to their hometown’s local chapel. There are so many unique and special venues all across the country for you to choose from! Below are a few easy ways to make your out of town guests feel welcome at your destination wedding! 

Get them an itinerary 

One of the best places to start is putting together a brief itinerary for your guests. This is something that would be great to include in your save the dates, or even on your wedding website! In this itinerary you can add information about a welcome brunch, hotel room blocks, transportation information from the airport, and more! This will help your guests know when they should book their flights so they can attend all of the fun things you’ve planned for you wedding. Other things you may want to include in your itinerary are fun facts about the city you’ve chosen, great tourist spots to visit, the top local bars to try, and more fun activities your guests may want to check out if they have any free time. Eight Twenty One Studio makes really great custom wedding itineraries if you’re looking for a little help! Check out some of her custom work below! 

Provide transportation

A great thing to consider providing for your guests is transportation. Now we aren’t saying order everyone UberX rides during their entire stay, but it may be a nice gesture to offer a shuttle service for your destination wedding guests. When booking your room blocks, as the hotel if they may work with any shuttle services providers. Coordinating transportation may seem daunting, but don’t worry. Your planner can easily coordinate this for you if need be! Some of our favorite local transportation vendors are Signature Transportation Services and Matchless Transportation, they are some of the best around! 

Give out a welcome bag 

Once your guests begin to arrive, it may be a nice idea to provide welcome goodie bags. This is a great way to make your guests feel like the party has started as soon as they get off the plane. You can also include a more fine tuned itinerary on how your wedding weekend will go. You may even want to include some fun little treats for the hotel room, like mini liquor/wine bottles or snacks to munch on after the wedding festivities are over! If you aren’t the goodie bag making type, check out  A Signature Welcome’s line of Welcome Gifts. They make unique goodie bags that are perfect for almost any budget range. Our personal favorite (obviously) is their “Welcome to Tennessee”  gift box. Inside you’ll find a variety of tasty treats, all local favorites right here in Nashville! 

For more wedding tips and tricks, subscribe to our email list and be the first to know when we release a new blogpost! 

Written By: Kelly Uldrich