Planning a Maine wedding from somewhere else
You picked Maine because it means something to you. Now everyone you love has to be told how to get here.
Pick the season before you pick anything else
July and August are peak. Everything is open, the weather is at its best, and lodging is at its most expensive and most booked. Coastal rooms for prime summer Saturdays go a year ahead in the busier towns.
Early autumn — September into early October — is what a lot of people quietly consider the best of it. Warm days, cool evenings, thinner crowds, and foliage at the end of it. Foliage weekends book out hard, so the "quieter" option is not always cheaper.
Late October onward, coastal tourist towns begin closing for the season. That can be wonderful and cheap, but your guests need telling what will actually be open when they arrive.
Winter is viable in the ski towns, where the lodging and the roads are built for it, and genuinely difficult almost everywhere else.
The things out-of-state couples get wrong
Assuming guests know the airport
They book the Maine airport they have heard of. For half the state that is the wrong one and costs them two hours each way.
Underestimating lodging
Most beautiful Maine venues have few or no rooms. Where the guests sleep is a bigger planning problem than the venue itself.
Trusting the map app
Service drops on the last stretch to a lot of venues. Written directions are not old-fashioned here, they are necessary.
Assuming their officiant can officiate
Out-of-state Notaries and JPs cannot marry you in Maine. Check this first — see the licence guide.
Believing the drive time
Route 1 and the peninsula roads in August are nothing like the map estimate. Publish departure times, not drive times.
Counting on rideshare
Outside Greater Portland it is unreliable, especially late at night. Plan shuttles or expect people to drive.
Tell your guests early, and in writing
Guests book flights and rooms months before the invitations arrive. If the lodging list does not exist yet, they either book badly or they ask you — and once forty people are asking you individually, that is your next three months.
This is the real argument for getting the website up early rather than perfectly. A rough travel page in January beats a beautiful one in June.
Keep planning
The other pieces of a Maine wedding.
Guides
Planning a Maine wedding from away?
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