The polling locates the line precisely, and it is not where the phrase "destination wedding" suggests. YouGov found in November 2023 that just 39% of Americans thought it inappropriate for couples to ask guests to pay for their own travel to a destination wedding. A slight majority accept it. But 78% said it was unacceptable to ask guests to pay for their own meal, and 48% said the same about alcohol. So the objection is not to spending money on somebody else's wedding. It is to being charged once you have arrived. Travel reads as a decision the guest makes, while the reception reads as hospitality the host owes, and that single distinction explains why the same person will happily book a flight to Italy and still resent a cash bar when they get there. The underlying economics push the other way for the couple: destination weddings kept growing through the 2009 recession precisely because their smaller guest lists made them cheaper to host.