Key Largo or Islamorada: Which Upper Keys Wedding Fits You

Eighteen miles apart and genuinely different weddings. The drive, the water, the guest experience, and what each does to your budget.

By Michael Willis · Last reviewed 2026-09-10.

Eighteen miles, two different weekends

Key Largo sits 58 road miles from Miami International. Islamorada sits 76.

Source: Visit Florida Keys and Key West.

Eighteen miles is nothing on a map and quite a lot in practice, because it is eighteen miles of the one road, and because of what sits on either end of it.

The case for Key Largo

It is the closest. Fifty eight miles from MIA is the shortest drive of any Keys wedding location, and the only one where guests can plausibly fly in the morning of a Friday welcome party and make it.

The water is the reason people come. John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park is America's first undersea park, covering about 70 nautical square miles, with glass bottom boat tours, diving, snorkelling, kayaking and a visitor center. For a wedding weekend that means the Saturday morning activity plans itself, and it is something your guests will remember separately from your wedding.

Source: Florida State Parks.

It reads as an easier ask. When you tell a guest list the wedding is an hour from Miami rather than four, more of them say yes. That is worth more than most line items in your budget.

The case for Islamorada

It feels further away, in the good sense. Another eighteen miles of bridges changes the character. Guests arrive having actually traveled somewhere, which is a large part of why you chose a destination wedding.

The resort inventory suits a group better. Islamorada's waterfront properties with their own docks are the kind of place a wedding party takes over. That makes the room block cleaner and the welcome party easier, because everyone is already in the same place.

It is the fishing village. If your weekend has a boat in it, this is the base for it.

Where they are the same

Both are Upper Keys, both are on the one road, both share the same cost structure. Keys hotels averaged $345 per night across the 2025 fiscal year at 72.8 percent occupancy per Tourism Economics via Visit Florida Keys and Key West, with April 2026 at $419.72 and June 2026 at $290.13 per Smith Travel Research. Neither location escapes that.

On our three night planning assumption, a traveling guest lands around $1,200 to $1,400 in either place, and closer to the same number than the eighteen miles would suggest.

Both need a car or a shuttle. Neither is walkable the way Old Town Key West is. Both set wedding room blocks nine to twelve months out.

How to actually decide

Ask one question: how far will your guest list travel before it starts declining?

If a meaningful part of your list is flying from the west coast, or traveling with small children, or elderly, the eighteen miles matter and Key Largo wins. If your list is a hundred people who would go anywhere for you, Islamorada gives them a better weekend for the same money.

If your weekend is built around the water, ask which water. Diving and the reef point to Key Largo. Flats fishing and boats point to Islamorada.

Either way

The room block is the earliest deadline in both places. Whichever way you go, the hotel decision lands first, and in the Upper Keys a single property often holds all the inventory that suits a group. [How to size and contract a block](/guides/florida-keys-wedding-room-block).

Visit Florida Keys and Key West supplies the distance figures, with park details from Florida State Parks. Tourism Economics and Smith Travel Research provide the rate figures published through Visit Florida Keys and Key West. Published averages, not quotes.

See Modern Era Weddings pricing.