"Destination wedding"

[Charles Doyle]

Yesterday I learned a new term:  "destination wedding"--
which could be defined (roughly) as 'wedding that's
scheduled at a site distant from the residence of the bride,
the bridegroom, and their families'.

That is, the term is new to ME, and it seems to have
acquired prevalence not much earlier than the late-1990s.
Nexis has an instance from 1990, then a total of 30 from the
remainder of the 1990s (some may be repeats)--in contrast to
an even 100 from 2005, with 63 so far in 2006.  A Google
search returns 872,000 raw hits (plus another 172 in books).

The term came up in a class I'm teaching, which comprises 24
females and 11 males.  Of the females, 100% knew the term;
of the males (including the teacher), 0%.  I reckon it's a
gender-dialect thing . . . .

--Charlie

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