Why Every Photography Lover Should Have an Airbnb Wedding
When my, at the time, future wife and I started planning our wedding, we were torn between two ideas: hosting a large wedding with all of our extended family and friends near our hometown, or travelling to an exotic destination for a smaller, more intimate wedding. As travel photographers, the idea of planning a small destination wedding, otherwise known as an elopement, seemed more in-line with our interests and general love for travel. After looking at a few larger wedding venues in our area and becoming a bit underwhelmed by the options (and overwhelmed by the prices), we decided to start considering a destination wedding. As soon as we started looking into potential destinations for our wedding, we knew we were making the right decision for us.
Now, planning a wedding in your hometown is tough enough. But finding a venue in a place that you’ve never visited can be a bit more challenging - and even more nerve wracking when you actually book something! From the start, we understood that it was a bit of a big ask to have our closest friends and family come stay with us in a foreign place, so we firstly determined that we needed to find some sort of accommodation where most people could stay if they wanted to, and, secondly, we needed to make sure people were able to stay long enough so that it felt like a mini vacation for everyone. Oh yeah, and the accommodations for everyone and our wedding venue needed to meet our budget! After a bit of research, an idea dawned on us: what if we rented an Airbnb for everyone to stay at and hosted the wedding at the Airbnb too?
So, with a new wedding vision forming, we started searching for epic Airbnbs in the United States that could house most of our guests for three nights, provide an epic backdrop for a wedding, and feature enough amenities to keep everyone busy throughout the long weekend. We considered getting married in Hawaii (because it’s one of our favourite places in the world) or Italy (because we got engaged there), but we figured those flights might be a bit expensive and tiring for our guests. With that in mind, we narrowed our search down to the States, as you can fly from Toronto to most places there in under five hours. Lydia’s family travels to Arizona every year and loves the desert, and I personally love any place with mountains, so we determined that our wedding location needed to somehow combine both of those elements. That’s how we settled on Palm Desert, California.
After scrolling through several incredible (and I mean really incredible) Airbnb listings in Palm Desert, we discovered a Mediterranean villa nestled in a desert valley beneath jagged, brown mountains. The villa, known as Casa Tierra, was designed by Bobby Berk. It features a large main villa with four bedrooms and a games room, a secondary villa with three additional beds, and a third pool-side villa with another three beds. Aside from the scenic mountain views, the property is covered in palm trees (it is Palm Desert, after all), cactuses and other desert plants and flowers. Oh, and it also includes a pool that overlooks the valley and mountains in the distance.
After pondering over and over and over about whether or not we should actually do a destination wedding and bring our closest friends and family on an adventure with us, we finally decided to book Casa Tierra for three nights in September 2024. Admittedly, planning a wedding in the United States when you live in Canada is a bit tricky, but, when we arrived at Casa Tierra almost a year later, we immediately knew that we’d made the right decision.
On the first day of our wedding weekend, our family and friends slowly started to arrive throughout the afternoon and into the evening. We swam in the pool, sipped cold beverages around the property and watched the sunset illuminate the jagged mountains in an orange glow. Our laughter and chatter intermingled with the chirping crickets throughout the night, as the stars twinkled above the desert floor. After midnight, we lay down to sleep, but the dream began when we awoke the next day.
Our Airbnb Wedding Experience
We woke up around 6 AM and watched as the sun illuminated the mountains across from our balcony. As we took in the view, we noticed a large truck pulling up to our Airbnb. My wife spotted the party rental logo on the side of the truck, so we threw on our clothes and sprinted out to the driveway to meet them. We used a company called Signature Party Rentals, as they were based in nearby Indio, California. Before we booked them, they helped guide us through the process and even chatted with us about specific items we were interested in renting for our day.
If you’re planning an Airbnb wedding, you will likely need to hire a party rental company. Why? Because most Airbnbs are not equipped with the chairs, tables and accessories you need to host a major event like a wedding. And, even if they do have enough of everything, you may want to rent items that match your wedding’s aesthetic.
Throughout the morning, a group of us started to assemble the tables, chairs and place settings for our wedding dinner. We set everything up on the Airbnb’s courtyard, which featured beige stone tiles, a Mediterranean fountain, string lights and large palm trees. The peaks of one of the nearby mountains also rose into view. In addition, we pushed two of the Airbnb’s long tables together to create one large family-style table, as we thought that would be the coziest way to celebrate our wedding with such a small group of people.
After Lydia, her bridesmaids, myself and my groomsmen got dressed for the ceremony, our wedding photographer snapped photos of us around the Airbnb for a few hours. The incredible thing about having an Airbnb wedding is that, in a place like this, there are so many different scenes to take unique wedding photos. If you’re a photography lover, this may be the best reason to have an Airbnb wedding.
The photographer captured our first look photos down by the pool villa, which was surrounded by vivid green plants and colourful desert flowers. We then moved up towards the front of the house, where the main villa’s white stucco walls really shined amidst the desert foliage.
As the sun began to set, our guests helped carry the seats from the dinner table down to a platform overlooking the Airbnb’s backyard and pool for our wedding ceremony. Dense green foliage wrapped around the seating area, framing the large brown mountain in the background. When our guests were seated, I walked with my mom down an exterior staircase surrounded by plants and flowers into the ceremony space. Our violin player played All of Me by John Legend. All of our friends and family sat in the chairs beneath the large palm trees and dimming sky.
After a few moments, Lydia walked down the foliage-lined staircase with her parents, glided up the aisle between our friends and family, and stopped in front of me at the end of the platform. The violin player played A Thousand Years by Christina Perri. Green leaves framed us, as we stood looking at each other. The mountain rose behind us.
After the ceremony, we held our cocktail hour down by the pool. Again, renting a large Airbnb for a wedding provides a lot of options for different parts of your wedding day. Lydia and I made our signature cocktails, margaritas and negronis, at the poolside bar, while our guests mingled beneath string lights and the brightening starlight. The violin continued to hum throughout the evening.
As night fell, we all headed up to the courtyard for our wedding dinner. We hired a local caterer, Desert Dine, to make our dinner. They essentially showed up a few hours before our dinner time, assembled appetizers for our cocktail hour, cooked our dinner in our Airbnb’s kitchen and then served it to us in the courtyard. They even filmed Lydia and I cutting our wedding cake on a pair of smart glasses! If you’re planning a wedding in the Palm Springs or Palm Desert area, I would highly recommend using Desert Dine for your catering needs.
After dinner, Lydia danced with her dad and I danced with my mom to 10,000 Hours by Dan + Shay and Justin Bieber. We then performed our first dance to one of our favourite songs: Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen. We all continued to chat, drink wine and take in the cooling Palm Desert air throughout the night.
One of the best parts of the wedding, and honestly one of the major advantages of doing an Airbnb wedding, is that we weren’t all kicked out of the venue at a specific time. Since most of us were staying at the Airbnb, we were able to change into our swimsuits after dinner, grab another drink and head down to the pool. In fact, we all stayed up until 4 AM celebrating, providing a completely unexpected end to an incredible wedding experience.
How to Photograph Your Entire Airbnb Wedding Weekend
For an Airbnb wedding (or any wedding for that matter), I recommend hiring a wedding photographer to capture the magic of the day. Even though Airbnb weddings tend to be fairly small, it’s still nice to have a professional photographer on site to capture all of the memories and the epic backdrop so that you, your wedding party and your guests don’t have to think about capturing photos throughout the event.
The one thing I would recommend, however, is snapping photos throughout the entire wedding weekend. The beauty of an Airbnb wedding is that you not only get to have a destination wedding in a beautiful venue, but you also get to have a mini trip with your closest friends and family! Your wedding photographer will of course capture all of the incredible moments throughout the wedding ceremony, but we found that some of the most magical moments of our Airbnb wedding weekend were the times when we were all just casually hanging out (see the photos throughout this article).
As travel photographers and portrait photographers, my wife and I were excited to capture all of the special moments throughout the weekend, as our guests hung out beneath the mountains, palm trees and cactuses. To make this easy, I tried to keep my camera somewhat close to me throughout the weekend so that I could grab it and snap candid shots when an opportunity presented itself. I also mainly used one of my favourite travel lenses, as it has an incredibly versatile zoom range for both landscape shots and portraits. In addition, I utilized a small 35mm f1.8 prime lens throughout the weekend, as it made my camera set up lighter and easier to carry around. And, if you’ve read my blog before, you know that I think 35mm lenses are some of the best for environmental portrait photography - which is the perfect type of photography for an Airbnb wedding!
My wife also purchased a few disposable film cameras for the weekend. Not only did she snap a ton of cool film shots throughout the weekend, but she also gave the film cameras to our guests so that they could snap their own retro-looking shots.
Our guests also snapped tons and tons of photos and videos on their phones over the weekend. Honestly, I love looking at the professionally edited photos that we took and the ones we received from our photographer, but there is something very special about candid, homemade-style photos and videos from your friends and family. The only tricky thing with this, however, is getting all of the content from your friends and family after the weekend. If you can, see if you can have your friends and family Airdrop (if you’re an Apple user) some of the photos and videos they take while you’re all still together. Firstly, it’s a lot of fun to relive the Airbnb wedding weekend memories right away, and, secondly, it’s a lot easier to transfer the photos right on the spot than trying to track down all of the content from everyone months later.
A Few Things to Consider When Planning an Airbnb Wedding
When planning an Airbnb wedding, you first need to make sure that the Airbnb you like actually allows you to host weddings. Most Airbnbs have a strict amount of people allowed on their property at one time, so you need to make sure your number of guests are allowed on the property for the ceremony. Also, some Airbnb owners don’t want events to take place on their properties (Airbnbs are intended for sleeping, after all). The best thing to do is be honest and upfront. Reach out the Airbnb host and let them know how much you love their space, and how you think it’d be the perfect backdrop for your wedding weekend. Some Airbnb hosts may be game, and others may not. If they say no, that’s ok. Move on and find another Airbnb to host your wedding. There are so many incredible options out there!
If you do find an Airbnb that will allow you to host your wedding, just know that some of them may charge an event fee. We were lucky, as Casa Tierra (at the time) didn’t charge us an event fee, but we did see a number of places that did. This can range, of course, depending on the place, but just make sure you factor this potential fee into your budget and, again, be upfront about it when you talk to the Airbnb host to ensure you know exactly how much your Airbnb wedding weekend will cost.
Also, since your wedding will be hosted at an Airbnb and not an actual wedding venue, you will likely need to hire your own caterer, party rental supplier and flower provider. As noted earlier, this can be tricky if you live in another country, as you will need be able to test the food or see the potential party rental options in person - unless you fly to your chosen destination beforehand. You can, of course, hire a wedding planner in your chosen destination. We ended up planning and booking everything ourselves, however, and our Airbnb host was extremely helpful throughout the entire process, providing us with local recommendations. So, if you want to save a bit of money and plan your own destination wedding yourself, chat with your Airbnb host to see if they can help guide you as you select local vendors.
Conclusion
If you and your partner are travel and / or photography lovers, you may have considered having a destination wedding, but planning a wedding in another country can feel daunting. Booking an Airbnb wedding, however, can help simplify the process, as most of your guests will be able to stay at the there, your ceremony can be held there, and your Airbnb host can help you select local vendors. Just remember to hire a wedding photographer to capture all of the incredible wedding scenes throughout your day and, if you are a photography lover, make sure you capture the rest of the weekend as well. An Airbnb wedding can provide not only an incredible scenic and dream-like day, but also an unforgettable weekend adventure for you, your partner, your family and your friends.
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