all images via stock.xchng (1,2,3,4) | photography by veralu, chadwood, allergyfre, illustration by lockheed

In the early stages of planning–no, make that pre-planning, dreaming and wondering–I thought that it might be interesting to do a destination wedding. Not necessarily to a passport-requiring tropical destination, just somewhere in the middle of our spread-out network of family and friends.

Mr. Trips is from Nebraska and his immediate family is still there. My family is spread out with key figures in Florida, New Jersey and Louisiana. What centrally-located city would provide a major airport, enough hotel space, plenty of venues and vendors and enough interesting stuff to amuse those not involved in the wedding minutiae?

Nashville.

And you know? When I first mused this aloud to Mr. Trips, he already knew the answer which makes me wonder if he’d pondered the same thing, himself, for a hot minute before throwing it right out of the window.

As fun as it would be, it’d be a bit of a haul for everyone, we know absolutely no one in that town so we’d be flying blind and planning long-distance–not a comforting idea–not to mention what it would do to our budget. Tallahassee may have an artificially inflated cost of living due to being the capitol city and having 2 major universities and all that, but at least we know the territory!

Another destination we considered and unconsidered was New Orleans–while beautiful and one of my favorite places on Earth, it’s also very close to home and our small, intimate wedding would very nearly double in size just for the fact that it’d be rude to return to my home state and not invite all of my family that lives within an hour of the Crescent City. We’ll talk about guest list decisions later on, but I didn’t want to have to sneak my wedding into even such a gorgeous place as the French Quarter.

Then there was Vegas–wedding capital of the world, right? Granted, we’ve said we wanted to go back there one day (our 3rd weekend together and first Valentine’s was spent there as part of a meetup for the site we met on), but a Vegas wedding didn’t really feel like “us.” Though, really, fall seems to be their slow period (we found out as we planned a February mini-convention–busiest month of their year, apparently).

Ultimately we decided to stick closer to our current home. While that didn’t completely rule out destinations up to, say, 4 hours away, it did increase the likelihood that our local friends will be able to make it to the party without too much fuss.

Did you consider a destination wedding?
What were your reasons for picking one (or not)?