A destination wedding weekend gives you something I wish more wedding timelines protected: enough time to enjoy the people who came all that way to celebrate with you. When your guests are crossing an ocean or sacrificing a slightly alarming amount of PTO, I’m very much in favor of giving them more than six hours and a sparkler exit before everyone heads back to the airport.
By the time the wedding day arrives, you’ve already had dinner with the friend you haven’t seen in two years. Your guests have had a night to settle in, so cocktail hour doesn’t need to double as a speed round to catch up with everyone you love.
Amanda and Mike’s wedding weekend in Tuscany at Villa Grabau is such a good example of this. They started with a Palm Springs-inspired welcome dinner, and by the next morning, the weekend was already underway. Everyone had been together before the wedding day asked anything of them.
That’s the part I love. Your wedding day doesn’t have to carry the entire weight of everyone being together. By the wedding morning, your people already have stories from the trip that have nothing to do with the ceremony. I love that.
Why Turn Your Destination Wedding Into a Wedding Weekend
A destination wedding weekend starts taking pressure off the wedding day before anyone gets dressed. By then, your friends already know which cousin is which, and you’ve had enough time together that cocktail hour doesn’t need to become a very glamorous networking event. Nobody should be spending the reception mentally working through a list of people they still haven’t talked to.
I can feel that shift when I’m photographing, too. People linger at the table because they’re enjoying the conversation, and you get to finish the story you’re telling without constantly looking across the room for whoever you should find next. There’s less urgency hanging over everything, which makes the whole day feel easier to be inside of.
Your families get that breathing room too. I pay a lot of attention to parents on wedding days, and I love what happens when they’ve already had time to settle in with everyone. Your dad can get caught up talking with one of your friends over dinner instead of trying to fit every meaningful interaction into the reception. Those quieter pieces of the weekend often end up mattering just as much later.
The extra days give the wedding itself less to carry. Every reunion and long conversation doesn’t have to fit into eight hours, which leaves you much more freedom to enjoy whoever is standing in front of you.
What Should You Include in a Destination Wedding Weekend?
Your wedding weekend doesn’t need to be scheduled down to the minute. Please resist the urge!
Plan a few moments that bring everyone together, then leave enough room for people to enjoy the place they traveled all that way to see. The best weekends have a natural rhythm to them. You gather for dinner, disappear for a few hours, then come back together again without anyone feeling like they need to check an itinerary every twenty minutes.
Here are a few events that work especially well:
A Welcome Dinner or Party
A welcome dinner is where your destination wedding weekend starts feeling like everyone is here together instead of twenty separate groups of people who happen to have flights to the same place. Your college friends finally meet the cousins they’ve heard about for years, and by the end of dinner, people who arrived knowing only you are making plans to get another drink together.
It can also double as your rehearsal dinner if that makes sense for your plans. I’m a big fan of combining things when it keeps the weekend from becoming a series of events everyone has to hurry toward. Give people somewhere to gather, feed them well, then let the night take its time.
Amanda and Mike’s welcome dinner at L’Arancera di Villa Grabau did exactly that. The Palm Springs-inspired design gave the evening its own personality, but what I loved most was watching everyone settle in with each other before the wedding had even started.
By the time everyone sees each other again the next day, they’ve already broken the ice. Nobody feels like they’re walking into a room full of strangers, which changes the energy of the wedding in the best way.
A Day in The City
A destination wedding weekend should give you enough time to enjoy the place you convinced everyone to cross an ocean for. If you’re getting married in Tuscany, I want Tuscany to show up in more than the ceremony backdrop. Go into town for dinner. Leave an afternoon open so people can wander. Let everyone find the wine bar they’ll still be talking about when someone inevitably suggests an anniversary trip.
Think about what made you choose the destination in the first place, then let some of that shape the weekend. Maybe there’s a restaurant you’ve been dying to try, or you simply give everyone a few hours with nowhere they’re expected to be. Your planner can help you figure out what makes sense locally without turning the entire trip into a guided tour.
I love photographing those pieces because they give the final gallery so much more context. The images bring you back to what being there felt like, not only where you stood for the ceremony. You flew all that way. Let the place earn a few stories of its own.
The Wedding Day
By the time your destination wedding weekend reaches the wedding day, you’ve already done a lot of the catching up that usually gets crammed into cocktail hour. You’ve had dinner with the people who flew in from three different time zones, everyone knows which friend is which, and nobody needs to spend the reception making a mental lap around the guest list.
That means you get to be at your own wedding instead of constantly trying to make sure you’ve properly talked to everyone. Cocktail hour can be a place where you’re allowed to have a cocktail. Dinner can last a little longer because you’re enjoying the person sitting next to you instead of wondering who you still need to find.
I’d also save the moments you care most about for the wedding day. Let your vows have their own space. Let the toast you’ve been thinking about for months land without competing with three other big events.
The wedding day gets to feel important without having to carry the entire trip on its back. You can stay in the conversation you’re already having, dance when you feel like dancing, and enjoy the fact that all of your favorite people somehow ended up here with you.
A Farewell Brunch or Slow Morning After
A farewell brunch is the soft landing after a very full weekend. The wedding is over, nobody has anywhere to be except eventually the airport, and you get one more stretch of time with everyone before people start disappearing with their suitcases.
I’d keep the morning loose. People should be able to wander in when they’re ready, preferably with coffee waiting and very few expectations. If the dance floor went the way I hope it did, someone will probably arrive wearing sunglasses indoors. I support them.
What I love about this part of a weekend is how relaxed everyone feels. You can sit with the person you barely caught during the reception or hear the story about something that happened after you left the dance floor. The weekend doesn’t need some elaborate grand finale. One more slow meal together before everyone heads home can be exactly enough.
Don’t Feel The Need to Plan Every Second of The Wedding Weekend
A destination wedding weekend doesn’t need something scheduled for every open hour. Once your guests know when they need to show up, give them some room to enjoy being there. Let them wander into town or take over a few lounge chairs by the pool. They crossed an ocean for this. Nobody needs a clipboard itinerary waiting in their hotel room.
That freedom matters for you too. You shouldn’t spend three days wondering whether everyone is sufficiently entertained just because you invited them to another country. If you want to disappear for lunch with your partner, go. If dinner runs long because nobody feels like leaving yet, let it.
Those unscheduled stretches are often where I start paying closer attention. People linger when nobody is watching the clock. Conversations take weird little turns. Someone ends up pouring another glass of wine long after dinner was supposed to be over. Those are usually the moments I’m watching for because nobody is trying to make anything happen.
Plan the gatherings you’d be disappointed to miss together. The rest of the weekend can figure itself out a little.
Let Each Event Have Its Own Personality
Your destination wedding weekend doesn’t need one mood board stretched across several days. I’d much rather see the welcome dinner have its own personality and let the wedding become something completely different the next day.
Amanda and Mike did this so well in Tuscany. Their Palm Springs-inspired welcome dinner felt playful and a little unexpected for the setting, while the wedding itself had an entirely different energy. Nobody needed matching flowers at every event to understand that it all belonged to the same weekend.
Your taste is already going to connect everything because you’re the person choosing it. You don’t need to prove the welcome dinner and wedding are related by dragging the same color palette through three days of meals. Think more about how you want people to feel when they walk into each event. Maybe the first night is the one where everyone loosens up over dinner, and the wedding gets to feel like the moment everything builds toward.
I love that shift from a photography perspective too. When each event has its own point of view, the images change with it. You can look through the final gallery and feel the weekend moving forward instead of seeing the same party repeated in different clothes.
Think About Where Everyone Will Stay
A destination wedding weekend gets a lot more interesting when at least some of your people are staying in the same place. I love venues with on-site accommodations because everyone keeps running into each other without anybody needing to put it on the itinerary.
You come downstairs for coffee, and your friends are already sitting outside. Someone heads to the pool for an hour and somehow ends up there until lunch. After dinner, nobody immediately disappears into a shuttle because their room is a two-minute walk away. Those little pockets of time are where the weekend starts feeling less scheduled and more like everyone is simply living in the same place for a few days.
You don’t need every guest sleeping under one roof for this to work. Even keeping your closest friends or family nearby creates more chances for the things nobody could’ve planned. I love those moments because there’s no announcement that they’re about to happen. I just get to notice them.
A Real Destination Wedding Weekend in Tuscany at Villa Grabau
Amanda and Mike’s destination wedding weekend at Villa Grabau worked because every part of it felt like another piece of who they are.
Their welcome dinner at L’Arancera di Villa Grabau went full Palm Springs in Tuscany, which I was obsessed with. Amanda carried a handmade Aperol Spritz clutch, and their guests received custom gift bags featuring a toile designed by her brother-in-law. The pattern included architecture from places that mattered throughout Amanda and Mike’s relationship, including Villa Grabau itself. Those are the details I love because they tell me something about the people who chose them instead of simply giving me something pretty to photograph.
By the wedding day, everyone had already settled into being there together, which gave Amanda and Mike room to enjoy what was happening instead of rushing through it. We made portraits earlier in the day, then slipped away for a few more during the reception when the light had completely changed. Tuscany gives film plenty to work with too. The warm evening light and old buildings already have so much character, and film leans right into that. It romances your life a little, and dinner outside in Italy doesn’t exactly make it work very hard.
One of my favorite moments happened during dinner when Amanda surprised her dad, who loves opera, with a tenor singing for the room. Everyone stopped and listened. That’s what I want a wedding weekend to leave room for. When something that good happens, nobody needs to hurry it along.
Hire Vendors Who Understand Multi-Day Destination Weddings
A destination wedding weekend has a lot happening behind the scenes, and the best vendor teams make sure most of it never becomes your problem. Multi-day weddings have a different rhythm than a single wedding day, so I’d look for people who understand how to move through several events without making the whole weekend feel like one very long timeline.
That matters to me from the photography side too. When your team knows how to work together, I’m not watching everyone race toward the next thing or trying to photograph around logistics that could’ve been handled earlier. There’s enough structure to keep the weekend moving, but there’s still room for dinner to run long when everyone is having too good of a time to leave.
Ask potential vendors about their experience with destination weddings and how they handle events across multiple days. You want people who can adapt when plans shift and communicate with the rest of your team without pulling you into every conversation. There may be a mildly terrifying spreadsheet somewhere behind the scenes. You should never have to look at it.
Should I Hire a Wedding Planner?
For a destination wedding weekend, 100% yes. I strongly recommend working with a planner who knows the destination and understands what it takes to host several days of events somewhere you don’t live. There are enough unfamiliar logistics involved without you becoming the person figuring out transportation in rural Tuscany from your hotel room.
A great planner is also the person protecting your experience once everyone arrives. They know who needs to be where, they’re communicating with your vendors, and they can solve the random problem that inevitably appears without turning it into your new personality for the afternoon. From my side, I can feel when that support is there because everyone else gets to stay focused on the celebration instead of checking a timeline every six minutes.
You hired a planner so you can be the person drinking wine with your friends while somebody else figures out where the shuttle went. I’m extremely in favor of that arrangement.
How to Choose a Destination Wedding Photographer
Your destination wedding photographer should know how to photograph a place that deserves attention without letting the scenery become the entire personality of your wedding gallery.
Start with the practical side. Ask how they handle travel and what happens when coverage spans more than one day. I’d also want to know whether they’ve photographed weddings away from home before, because working somewhere unfamiliar requires a little more flexibility than driving twenty minutes to a venue you’ve photographed twelve times.
Then look beyond the portfolio highlights. Ask to see a full destination wedding gallery and pay attention to what your photographer notices when nobody is standing somewhere specifically for a portrait. I want to see the view too, of course, but I care just as much about your dad’s face during dinner or the friend across the room who’s already crying before the toast has properly started.
I’d also ask how they approach direction. I love making creative portraits, but I don’t want you disappearing from your own wedding for two hours because we spotted another scenic overlook. Your photographer should know when to step in, get what they need, and send you straight back to the people you flew all that way to celebrate with.
Choose someone whose images make you care about the people in them, even when you have no idea who those people are. That tells you far more than one spectacular Tuscany sunset ever could.
How is Wedding Photography Different for a Destination Wedding Weekend?
A destination wedding weekend gives your photographer more than one version of the celebration to work with, and that’s what makes multi-day coverage so interesting to me. The welcome dinner has its own energy before the wedding has even happened. People are arriving, seeing each other for the first time in months, and settling into the place together. By the next day, everything feels different.
That shift gives the final gallery more context. You get images of everyone before they’re dressed for the wedding and before the timeline really begins. Then you move into the wedding day and can feel how much the weekend has changed. I love when a gallery can bring you back to the whole experience instead of making it feel like everyone appeared at the ceremony fully dressed and disappeared again after the last song.
That doesn’t mean I need to photograph every breakfast and poolside Aperol Spritz just because we’re all in Italy. More coverage doesn’t automatically make the story stronger. I’d rather help you figure out which parts of the weekend have something different to add.
If the welcome dinner matters to you or has an energy we won’t get again, I want to be there. Those extra hours should earn their place in your gallery.
Frequently Asked Questions About Planning a Destination Wedding Weekend
How many days should a destination wedding weekend be?
A wedding weekend is typically three or four days, especially when everyone is traveling internationally. I like having at least one night before the wedding where nobody has to do much besides arrive and settle in. Landing in Italy at 2:00 and trying to steam a dress by 4:30 with jet lag is a level of stress nobody needs.
That extra day gives the trip a chance to start feeling like a celebration before the wedding begins. By the time the wedding morning arrives, people have already seen each other and gotten their bearings. You also don’t need to fill every hour just because everyone is there. Three or four days gives you enough time to be together without turning the weekend into a field trip.
What events should I include in a wedding weekend?
Start with the events you’re excited to experience. A welcome dinner before the wedding can give everyone time together, and a farewell brunch can be a nice way to close out the weekend. You don’t need to include something just because it appears on every destination wedding itinerary online. If it doesn’t add anything meaningful, leave it out.
How far in advance should I book my wedding vendors?
Once your destination and date are set, I’d start reaching out to the vendors you care most about. Destination weddings involve travel on top of everyone’s regular wedding calendar, so availability can get a little weird. If there’s a photographer whose work already feels like you, I wouldn’t wait until every other detail is figured out before getting in touch.
Your planner can help you decide when to book the rest of your team based on the destination and what tends to fill up first. From my side, the earlier I know where you’re taking everyone, the more room we have to think through what photography could look like across the weekend without forcing it into whatever time is left.
How far in advance should I invite guests?
For an international wedding weekend, giving your guests around 10 to 12 months of notice can make the travel part much easier. International flights and time away from work take a lot of planning, and nobody wants to find out six months beforehand and immediately have to make arrangements.
You also don’t need every detail of the weekend figured out before sending a save-the-date. Your guests mostly need to know where they’re going and when they need to be there. The welcome dinner menu can remain a mystery for the day of. Your planner can help you decide when the more specific travel information should go out based on your destination.
I like giving people enough notice that the trip gets to become something they’re excited about. By the time everyone arrives, they’ve had a few months to look forward to being together instead of spending the week before your wedding frantically comparing flights.
Do I need photography at my welcome dinner?
Not automatically, but I love photographing a welcome dinner when it adds something different to the story. The energy tends to be more casual than the wedding day, and it gives me a chance to photograph everyone together before the main event begins. If your welcome dinner has its own personality or feels important to you, it’s usually worth considering. More coverage just for the sake of more photographs isn’t the goal.
How much does a destination wedding photographer cost?
The cost of a destination wedding photographer varies quite a bit depending on travel, lodging, how many events you’d like photographed, and the overall scope of your weekend. Because of that, I don’t really believe in one-size-fits-all pricing. The best way to get an accurate idea is to reach out and tell me a bit about your plans so I can put together something that actually fits your weekend and what you care about most.
Do destination wedding photographers charge travel fees?
Yes, but every destination wedding photographer handles travel a little differently. Some photographers include flights and lodging in their collections, while others list them separately, so it’s important to know exactly what’s covered before you book. For my destination weddings, I’ll walk you through all travel details upfront based on where you’re getting married and how much of the weekend I’m photographing, so everything is clear from the start, and there are no surprise invoices later.
When should my destination wedding photographer arrive?
Your destination wedding photographer should arrive early enough to settle in before photographing anything. I never want international travel and wedding coverage scheduled back-to-back because airports are not reliable enough for that. When your photographer should arrive depends on your location and whether you’re including pre-wedding events.
If I’m photographing your welcome dinner, I’ll plan to arrive well before it starts so I can get oriented and be fully ready for the weekend. We’ll work through all of this together during planning so you don’t have to worry about travel logistics.
Hire a Destination Wedding Photographer for Your Wedding Weekend
By the end of a destination wedding weekend, there are going to be parts of the trip you never saw happening. Your friends became friends somewhere between dinner and another round of drinks. Your parents had conversations while you were across the room. Someone stayed at the table long after everyone else moved on because the story they were telling was apparently going to require another glass of wine.
Those are the pieces I want your images to hold onto. I’ll photograph the wedding you spent months planning, of course, but I’m also paying attention to everything happening around it. Years later, I want your gallery to bring you back to the people who were there and all the wonderfully unplanned stuff that made the weekend feel like yours.
If you’re searching for a destination wedding photographer and planning the kind of weekend where everyone has time to stay for another glass of wine, reach out through my contact form. I’d love to hear where you’re taking them.
Client Love from Amanda & Mike
“Where to even begin! Colette was an absolute dream to work with at our wedding in Italy this year. From our first coffee meetings to discuss visions to having so much fun on photoshoots on location to obsessing over the final product and exceptional photos together, I couldn’t imagine working with another photographer. Colette’s use of lighting and impeccable style in capturing moments made our final albums so magical. Cannot recommend Colette more!!”
Vendors
Photography: Colette Elyse Photography
Planner: Alessia B. Weddings
Florist: Stiatti Fiori
Hair & Makeup: Suely Menichetti
Wedding Dress: Jenny Yoo from Unbridaled
Reception Dress: Doen
Bride’s Shoes: Manolo Blahnik
Groom’s Suit: Sid Mashburn
Ring: Korman
Catering: Guidilenci Catering & Delizie Deliziose Catering
