The 7 Rules for Destination Wedding WhatsApp Groups

How to behave in this very special community for a very special day(s)

Note: hyperlinks will take you to other QL articles that vibe with the text.

The rising bar for getting anyone to look at a wedding post on social media means that every wedding that you will ever be invited to will be a destination wedding, which means that you will travel to a place that is far away, which means that it will be far less expensive for the couple and far more expensive for you.

The prestige of the destination wedding is directly correlated to how many hours it will take you to get to this destination, so you will be invited to a tiny island off the coast of a small island that is only accessible via sea plane, military helicopter, or cargo ship in Southern Europe. Because traveling for 24 or more hours would yield a poor ROI for just a rehearsal dinner and the main event—where a local DJ will play Euro-pop mixes from either 10 years ago or 10 years in the future—destination weddings are at least a 3-day affair and often as long as two months.

The complexity of wrangling 75 to 150 people with ADHD for an extended period in a country where there is no air conditioning requires constant communication, so an unknown phone number with no profile photo from a suspicious country code will invite you to join a destination wedding community WhatsApp group (DWAG) so that the many members of the wedding planning team can repeatedly contradict one another about shuttle times.

Knowing how to behave in the DWAG is an essential adulting skill that you will need between the ages of 27 and 36 and then probably again between the ages of 43 and 54.

Following these seven rules for how to behave in the DWAG will ensure that you strike the right balance between being an engaged wedding guest and that one person who uses too many exclamation points, posts a close-up selfie of themselves crying during the vows, and shares links to poetry written in the local language four months after the wedding.

DWAG Rule #1: Join the DWAG at the last possible second

Depending on how anxious the wedding planners are, you will be invited to join the DWAG anywhere from several days to several weeks prior to the wedding. A newly created DWAG is like a newborn infant: an amorphous thing, void of identity and utility, that makes a lot of noise and sucks up a lot of attention but adds no value in the early stages of its existence.

It is therefore best to wait until a member of the wedding planning team has written to you directly at least three times imploring you to join the DWAG. You should respond to the third message with a question, such as, “hey wats the wifi”.

DWAG Rule #2: Ask questions that have already been answered in the wedding guide

A destination wedding guest guide is to a wedding planner what an opus is to a composer. Every question that could cross your mind about the destination or the many destination events is detailed in this 8- to 70-page book that you will find in your extremely expensive hotel room inside of your own monogrammed welcome gift bag nestled in with a local bread product, a bottle of burpy Euro water, and a glass jar of preserved food that will break in your luggage when you try to take it home to regift it.

You will be able to identify this guide by its cover, which will feature the wedding logo—some mélange of an abstract flower, a sun, a star, a wave, or an indigenous tree— followed by the couple’s first names etched in Arrogant-Trustfund-Cursive font (France, Italy, Monaco) or Playful-Retard-Chalkboard font (Spain, Greece, Portugal, any island).

When you join the DWAG, make a great first impression on the wedding guests who have not yet had the pleasure of meeting you by asking a question that is already covered in the guest guide. Examples:

“What time is the shuttle to the [WHATEVER] tasting?”

“can i brush my teeth with tap or will I get the schitz lol”

“does uber work here”

“YO anyone have 300 euro cash RIGHT NOW, will Venmo u!!!! happy to share ❄️ 🤪”

DWAG Rule #3: Heart everything the bride posts

The bride will be flooded with oxytocin, caffeine, and probably several prescription medications during her very special day(s), so she will post a high volume of unhinged content. No matter what the bride posts, you are obliged to heart everything, even typos.

Part of a wedding planner’s job is to identify and tabulate the number of hearts that each wedding guest applies to the bride’s love- and drug-addled comments. Your name will appear on a Google spreadsheet following the wedding, and if you have a lower number of hearts next to your name than other wedding guests, the bride will start to cut you out of her new life with her forever human.

During peak destination wedding activity, you must also respond to at least three of the bride’s comments with words or acronyms, like “LFG”.

These words should be contained to a single line and must be followed by no fewer than two but no more than five exclamation points, like “LFG!!”. If you respond with one exclamation point, you will seem like a stiff Gen Xer who hates their investment banking job but cannot leave it, because you bought a house in Sagaponack. If you respond with six or more exclamation points, you will seem unstable, and you will be deported from the destination wedding like a Haitian Muslim in Palm Beach.

DWAG Rule#4: Post the exact same photo that everyone else posts

The 75 to 175 guests at the destination wedding will be shackled together at all times as the couple’s activity slaves. This means that, unlike any other time in your life other than a high school graduation, a cruise, or retirement home outings, you will be seeing the exact same thing as a lot of other people who are never not taking photos with their phones.

The DWAG will therefore become a dumpster for identical photos taken from slightly different angles.

So, when you see the bride feeding the groom a gluten-free cracker covered in caper paté, take a photo and immediately share it to the group. The combined effect of all of these photos—each different by approximately 3 degrees—will simulate those spinning, open-air phone photo booths that are used by Latina influencers in Times Square and other pedestrian tourist zones near Olive Gardens.

DWAG Rule #5: love-bomb the group on departure day

Guests who are employed and have self-respect will leave the destination by 11:30am on the day after the nuptials before the couple awake. It is customary to use some of the 24+ hours you will spend traveling home to compose sentiments about the couple that you would never say to them aloud or write anywhere other than NDA-protected confines a DWAG.

These sentiments must include the following:

1. How beautiful the couple are, even if they are not

2. The words “special,” “creative,” or “unique”

3. How much your feet hurt from dancing and/or how much your stomach hurts from laughing (not the dysentery you got from brushing your teeth with tap)

4. How much you love the couple (NOTE: it should be sooooo much)

5. How much you wish you could do it all over again (NOTE: 50% chance you will in 7 to 12 years)

Example:

“OMG you guys are so ridiculously hot and what a unique and creative wedding that was so special and so totally you!! My feet are killing me from all the DANCING and now I need more botox because of the LOLLLLing!!!! Can we do it all over again next summer!?!?!? Love you both sooooo much and see you back home!!”

DWAG Rule #6: Never leave the DWAG

The DWAG, which will gradually taper off in activity over the course of 11 days until it flatlines, will serve as an enduring digital monument to the couple’s forever friends.

Leaving the DWAG is tantamount to shorting the couple’s marriage stock.

You should only leave the DWAG if you drunkenly professed your undying love to one or both members of the couple, you urinated in view of the dance floor, or if you do not plan to give the couple something that costs more than $200 from the wedding registry, which is considered tacit abandonment.

DWAG Rule #7: Post a photo of yourself in the same destination one year later

You will probably have yet another destination wedding in the exact same location next summer, even though you have not yet finished paying off the loan that you took out to afford traveling to the previous destination wedding. Posting a photo in the now year-old, dormant DWAG of yourself in this same destination will make the last couple feel good about having colonized this wedding destination first.

In this photo you should be wearing large sunglasses, because you will be a year older, and you will look it because of all of the sun you have been exposed to at destination weddings. You should take this photo on the deck of a yacht that is much larger than the one the couple chartered last summer. Your caption should be the following:

“so many unforgetable great memories from this place!! miss u guys sooooo much and hope everyone is great and enjoying summer in Europe xooxox”

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You can save yourself some time by copying-and-pasting all of the things you posted in your last DWAG into this new DWAG. Enjoy your destination wedding.