Covering Travel Costs for Your Wedding

If you’ve been to a few weddings yourself, you probably know that transportation is not a requirement of the bride and groom. Even if your best friend in California is getting married on a beautiful Greek Island, and you’re a bridesmaid, the airfare and other traveling costs are your responsibility. Now that it’s your wedding, it’s time to think about transportation costs, and how, if at all, you should pitch in to help others get to your church on time.

Long-distance weddings, or weddings that require your friends to travel a great distance, are going to cost your loved ones a considerable sum of money. If everyone on your list has the last name of “Rockefeller,” the stress factor should be non-existent. For the rest of you, carefully go over the list of people invited and think about their budgets and how much should be expected of them. One option is to not invite certain people, and to make the wedding much smaller. (You can send out a wedding announcement, instead.) This way you don’t add extra stress to their finances, and, by keeping the wedding smaller, you don’t make them feel excluded. Remember, too, that if you do invite people to travel a long distance, many might have to turn down the invitation. Don’t take this personally; people need to consider their budgets.

If you want a big wedding, and it’s in your budget, it’s perfectly acceptable to help people out with traveling expenses. Naturally, the easiest way to go about this is to pay for everyone’s transportation, but that’s an expensive choice. On a more practical level, feel free to pay for close relatives’ airfare, siblings, or your best friend from high school who’s struggling with three kids and a mortgage. The one concern with this plan is if one guest feels as if another guest received special treatment. Do not pay for one bridesmaids’ fare, and ignore another’s, and don’t give Aunt Joan a free plane ride, and then leave out Uncle Bill.

Paying for transportation is a bit like arranging a seating list; just when you think you’ve solved a problem, another one pops up. Chances are, even if your friend Judy can afford to pay for her travel expenses, she’s not going to be happy that your friend Amy got a “free ride.” The rules that you apply to who you pay for—only relatives, only siblings—should be strict. (Think of it like the “plus-one” rule; it’s not fair to tell one single friend she can bring that guy she just met, while telling another girl she has to arrive solo.)

If you can’t figure out a diplomatic solution to guests’ transportation needs, or if you want to do a bit more than just pay for a couple of people, offer up a sweet gesture to, say, every bridesmaid and groomsmen. You can pay for one night of their hotel, or hire limos or taxis for their time before or after the wedding. If every bridesmaid but one came from afar, do something special for the remaining girl and offer her a facial at the local spa. Keep these tips in mind, and everyone will travel with love in their hearts.

-David Toussaint

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