A Weekend Destination Wedding: How to Create a Cohesive Guest Experience
Creating a guest experience at an event or a weekend of events takes communication, creativity, and consideration. Whether your guests are traveling from near or far, chances are that you’re reading this article because you’re the kind of couple who is interested in creating an experience for your guests to remember and cherish after the event ends.
a bride with her bridesmaids at a venue in Seattle. The bride is in white while the bridesmaids are in cranberry.
WHAT IS THE GUEST EXPERIENCE?
Let’s talk a little bit about what that means. Cultivating a guest experience for any event means that you consider the perspectives of your guests when building the event. This can include elements like how you communicate with your guests, the kind of entertainment they are provided, and the expectations you have of their participation.
If you want your wedding to be fun for you and your guests, then you will want to consider their perspective as you plan your celebration day or weekend.
Is incorporating the guest experience in your wedding event mandatory? No. Do the best events consider at least some elements of the guest experience? Definitely, yes. Some couples are thorough and get curious about the experience from the moment their guests arrive to the moment they depart. Other couples take responsibility for the guest experience on a single day or at a select venues or events, and leave the rest of the time for self-directed exploration. Other couples still don’t take any responsibility for the guest experience; instead, they focus on architecting a day that is about what they want and, if guests want to join them in their style of celebration, they are most welcome, but the event will not be changing for any guest preferences.
Most couples fall somewhere in between these camps, especially if they are hosting their friends and family in a remote location, from out of state, or for a weekend-long experience. If you’re a couple who wants to get away with your favorite humans and host a truly standout experience, we celebrate your style. :D That said, it can be hard to sift out what parts of the guest experience you want to take responsibility for and what parts of the guest experience you want to leave up to interpretation.
Becca + Patrick’s Wedding Weekend in Leavenworth. Photos Courtesy of The Big Day Photography.
HOW TO CRAFT GUEST EXPERIENCE FOR YOUR CELEBRATION.
The good news? We have OH SO MUCH EXPERIENCE sorting through the guest experience grey area with our couples. Every couple and every celebration is so unique. Rather than creating a one-size-fits-all template (that’s so not our style, you beautiful unicorn!), we created a series of questions to consider with your partner to figure out how you want to craft your celebration’s unique guest experience. Let’s get started!
HOW + WHEN ARE WE DISPLACING OUR GUESTS?
When your guests are displaced — or removed from routines outside of their norm — they look for more direction for what to do. It’s a good idea to consider whether you want to add more support or direction to their experience in those moments. For example, if guests are traveling in from out of town, they’ll benefit from directions on where to stay, what to do, and where to find services. If guests are traveling from a city to a forested location, they will benefit from direction on what to pack, how to prepare for the weather, and what kind of outdoor activities are available to them. Consider the moments when you are asking guests to participate in experiences outside of the scope of their day-to-day lives, write them down, and then brainstorm what you can provide them so that they feel supported and confident in showing up for the event.
WHEN ARE WE ASKING FOR OUR GUESTS’ TIME + WHEN ARE WE GIVING THEM FREE TIME?
There is no one right way to schedule a wedding weekend. And each couple does it a little differently:
Some couples bring their loved ones to a remote or all-inclusive location and ask for a monopoly on their time to create as many bonding moments as possible.
Other couples gather their people for a weekend full of activities and opportunities to meet their community, while also holding space for guests to do their own thing in the city or area of their choosing.
Other couples still have a marquee event each day that people are welcome to join, but that is by no means expected, giving their guests options to participate or not as it works for their schedules.
And other couples simply communicate the expectation of attending the wedding itself, letting their guests choose their own adventure for the rest of their trip.
Whatever your mix might be, be clear about when and how you are asking for your guests’ time. No guest likes the feeling of unknowingly showing up late or leaving too early and missing something special. Whether by website or invitation (or both!), do your guests a favor by clearly asking for the kind of participation you want from them and being clear about the time boundaries in which that can happen. If you are intentionally providing free time in the schedule throughout the weekend, give your guests ideas and inspiration for how they can spend that time and what/whether they need to prepare for it. That could come in the form of lists of top attractions, local favorites, or the couple’s favorite activities to spark inspiration.
Keep in mind that free time means that you have time to take breaks from the group, ground yourself, and recover your energy. Guests might also appreciate scheduled breaks or optional events for the same reason. (Introverts, unite!).
Destination Wedding Timeline Samples
If you are hosting a destination weekend experience in any form, we wanted to provide a couple of sample schedules to show you how you could ask for your guests’ time.
A Laid Back Approach:
Friday Welcome Dinner 5:00-7:00pm
Saturday Wedding Event 3:00-11:00pm
Sunday Brunch Farewell 8:00-10:00am
An Interactive Approach:
Thursday Welcome Dinner 5:00-7:00pm
Friday Breakfast 8:00-10:00am
Friday Outdoor Activity/Excursion 11:00am-4:00pm
Friday Dinner 5:30-7:00pm
Friday Fire Pit 7:30-9:00pm
Saturday Breakfast 8:00-10:00am
Saturday Wedding Event 3:00-11:00pm
Sunday Brunch Farewell 8:00-10:00am
WHAT + HOW MUCH ARE WE ASKING OF OUR GUESTS?
Your Awesome Guests: Understanding Your MVPs.
There are a few buckets of awesome humans that help make any wedding weekend come together, namely, your MVPs, your bridal party, and your family.
Your MVPs are the humans who you know you can ask for just about anything and they’ll handle it NO PROBLEM. Their love language is likely Acts of Service and they are your go-to people for requests big or small. Sometimes your MVPs are members of your bridal party, and sometimes they are people just outside that special community who are present and steady characters in your life.
Your bridal party, whether established and formal or spiritual and informal, is often your greatest source of emotional support on the journey to getting married. They’re the humans you can privately pull aside to have deep talks about things you are feeling and to confide in when you need some good listening or 1:1 advice. One or two members of your bridal party are also your best personal assistants on the day you get married, checking in to make sure you eat, hydrate, repack your clothing, and have a hand to hold before you say your “I do’s.”
Your family is… your family. Every familial relationship is different. Chances are, the family you are excited to invite to your wedding are the people who have known you the longest, witnessed your journey to adulthood, and are at the very least are characters of symbolic importance. If you have a close bond with any family members, then they are your biggest cheerleaders on the day you get married.
Giving Your MVPs Rest + Breathing Room.
Why do we highlight who this wonderful group is? Consider that your MVPs, bridal party, and cherished family members are going to be the most enthusiastic participants in your weekend festivities. If they have a role to play in architecting an event, they likely aren’t going to let that get in the way of showing up and fully enjoying each moment in your honor. Knowing that these people are the most enthusiastic participants, draft a schedule and use them as a temperature gauge. Present your schedule as how you’re considering structuring the weekend and ask them:
Which activities would they like to take time off for?
Which activities would they love to meet most people at?
Which activities would they be interested in as being optional?
Does the timing of the activities feels realistic for the energy they are setting aside for the weekend?
By dipping into each of these buckets, you’ll get an idea of what your most enthusiastic people are willing to set aside time for and can build your schedule around your close community. If you encounter the ever present, “Whatever you want to do is what I want to do,” then great! Make the schedule the way you want it to be and invite them along for the experience.
We also recommend that you start a list of the asks you would like to make or have made of these special people so that you can see how it will affect their participation as guests. Actively track who is in charge of what over the planning months so that you can see how their participation may be affected by their role or contribution. (If you’re a Tapestry client or have purchased a copy of our planning portal, then you can record this information on the MVP List linked on your Dashboard).
If what you assign begins to stack too high and will significantly diminish their ability to enjoy the weekend, you may consider cutting tasks, reassigning responsibilities, or rethinking some of your tertiary events to give these big figures in your life the gift of the experience. If rethinking your reschedule is off the table, consider hiring out some of the roles and responsibilities you’re assigning to your community to help lighten the load.
Heather + Peter’s Wedding Weekend in Mazama. Photos Courtesy of Bradley Hanson Photography.
HOW ARE WE COMMUNICATING WITH OUR GUESTS?
There is a WHOLE WORLD of options to consider when it comes to communicating these items to your guests. No longer are we stuck in a world where an invitation is your only option. We are creative, resourceful, and technologically savvy in this modern age of wedding planning! Below is a list of ways we’ve worked with couples to communicate with guests about the experience of their wedding weekend. Take what works for you to get started, remember that you can always create a working first draft and build upon it as you establish plans, and know that this list is by no means exhaustive of the many wonderful options available:
Wedding Website (The Knot or Zola).
Websites are a constant and consistent reference point for a weekend schedule and resources. The sooner you can provide the location and rough draft of the schedule, the sooner your guests can set aside time and money resources to attend. We have a whole blog post breaking down how to build a wedding website through the phases of wedding planning. We recommend the approach in that blog post for a weekend wedding as well as a single day wedding. What we would emphasize for a destination event is uploading a schedule and accommodations options first (especially before sending Save the Dates), then filling in the more fluffy information in the months following your first announcement.
Paperless Post.
Without getting too nerdy on the tech, right now wedding websites don’t have a great way of segmenting guests by activity or event. If you are a couple who values optimizing your guest experience by providing curated e-vites and instructions to the smaller events that make up your wedding weekend, we like Paperless Post for that purpose. Paperless Post allows you to create email lists and send virtual invites that you can craft for each specific group, event, or purpose. If, on the other hand, everyone on your invite list is invited to participate in all weekend festivities, chances are that your wedding website provider has a feature that allows you to message your guests so long as you have gathered their email address.
Paper Invitation/Fold-Out Guide.
We love an outside/off the beaten path/no service/put your pocket computer away for the weekend kind of shindig. Providing a paper invitation with the schedule, or a mini-pamphlet or fold-out guide for the weekend, lets people log out of the virtual world and stay present at your event. A physical guide ensures that, when there is a schedule of activities, guests can confidently show up on time and with the resources to travel from place to place. Whether you use an Etsy template or work with a stationer to create a custom work of art, we cannot recommend a weekend guide enough for couples who are crafting a weekend experience for their people.
Raise a Voast.
While you might not think of toasts as a guest experience element, it totally is. Managing guests’ contributions to your wedding day can be a tricky thing to navigate for some. How many do we allow? Do we pre-plan/ask for contributions, or open up the floor? How do we make sure everyone is heard while curtailing the wildcards? How do we ensure toasts don’t become a runaway, hour-long train? If you find yourself sharing these concerns, then you might consider gathering toasts and good words from family and friends with an online video service like Raise a Voast. The Virtual Voast is where the couple records a brief introduction video to invite guests to participate before the event and select prompts that they can answer. The service builds a recorder webpage you approve and gives you a link to send out via email or share on your wedding website to invite guests to participate. All your guest recordings are sent to your private cloud folder, with editing services available as an add on. We love this tool because it allows your guests to consider their words in the comfort of their own home and create a truly special toast without the public speaking pressure of a wedding. You can also rent a Voast booth for use at your event that asks questions to capture authentic words, wisdom, and well wishes. Whether you want to share these edited toasts as part of your celebration or simply save and watch them throughout the first year of marriage, it’s a special opportunity to give everyone a voice AND give you the freedom to dictate your own terms for toasts on the day of your wedding.
The Guest.
The pandemic has taught us a lot of new and interesting ways of defining guest experience, including encouraging the participation of those with limited mobility or those who are unable to attend an event or weekend experience in person. We love The Guest, a tool created by The Knot, as an elegant solution to attendance barriers. Rather than asking guests to use hashtags, download different apps, or batch upload folders to a shared folder, The Guest is a photo-sharing app solution that automatically shares photos and videos in real time. Guests simply use their phone cameras to snap photos and those pictures are posted as soon as they’re taken to a free album everyone can view. You set the parameters for who gets invited to use the app and when photos can be taken and the app reminds guests to snap pictures, as well as cuts off photo sharing at the close of your event.
Gather.town.
The future is here, y’all! Gather a platform where you can create virtual rooms and humans can use their avatars to travel from place to place to video chat. For example: You could mirror your venue(s) in Gather and people could select their seat to watch a live video feed of your ceremony. They could then travel to various cocktail tables or lounges and, whoever is in the same area will pop up on a segmented video chat. Then, guests could travel to reception tables for yet another segmented group video chat. This is a great virtual guest participation solution for those who cannot attend an event in person, and for whom a larger group video chat feels inaccessible.
Heather + Peter’s weekend celebration foldout guide. Image courtesy of Oh hey face.
When you are creating a weekend-long experience where you will have guests, it’s important to decide at the beginning of the planning process if your decisions will be informed by prioritizing guest experience or if you will just be focusing in on your preferences as a couple. Either way is totally okay — it just depends where your celebration values land and how you want to build your weekend. When prioritizing your guests’ experience, it’s important to think about their time commitments, their event obligations, and how you want to communicate the schedule and allow guests to interact with your event. At the end of the day, it’s your marriage celebration. We just want to give you the tools to make it as smooth as possible for everyone involved.
— Kate, Tapestry Creative Director + Founder