Planning A Destination Wedding - Part I
Well, 4 days ago the 4 month countdown to our wedding in Mexico began! October still seems so far away but, looking through the checklist provided by the resort, I realized we are slightly behind a typical planning schedule.
I don't have any exciting travel experiences to share today (we are, after all, having a wedding soon) but I hope that some our trials may be helpful to others.
Bryan and I are traveling to Puerto Morelos in October and we are getting married at the NOW Sapphire Riviera Cancun Resort and Spa. The resort looks beautiful and belongs to the same family as chains like Dreams and Secrets, both of which are always gorgeous and well managed. With decent reviews on Trip Advisor, including positive comments about food and wedding planning, the NOW seemed like a great choice (we shall see in October).
Obviously, this is my first time planning a wedding, destination or domestic, so I was naturally quite uncertain about the whole process. Bryan and I knew we wanted to get married on a beach so that narrowed our options down quite a bit.
Trial #1: Where to go?
As you may have deciphered, we love to travel and we are starting to look at seeing places not common to the casual tourist. Our wedding is special, and we wanted to go somewhere atypical. Places like Roatan, St. Maarten, and Panama came up, but proved too difficult for most people to get to economically. We then thought about the Dominican since neither of us have been there, but flights/packages were quite disappointing. No one likes a red eye through Toronto and leaving your resort at 4am on your last day is not fun.
So, as much as we did not want to choose the Cancun area, it became our top choice because flights and packages worked from both Calgary and Winnipeg (where my family flies from).
(As an aside, our travel agent may have been getting her biggest kickbacks from the Cancun resorts she sold because she continuously pushed Cancun on us. More on this later.)
Trial #2: How to book?
Here is where my biggest beef with this entire process lies - the travel agent. Without naming anyone in particular, Bryan and I felt that using a travel agent was not worth the effort, time or money. If you are really uncertain about where to start when booking your destination wedding, know that you can contact the resorts directly to speak with their wedding planners. Between reviews on generalized destination wedding forums, Expedia and Trip Advisor, you should be able to find out enough about the resort in order to choose it. And, did you know you can contact reviewers on Trip Advisor and ask them direct, specific questions? It works wonderfully!
Okay, the travel agent angle. She charged us $250.00 to be our agent. She spent most of the time pushing Cancun on us and her comments about flights and prices contradicted packages I was finding online on my own.
She told us she'd be there to help us get in touch with the resort wedding planner - she gave us the same email address and name as was found on the resort's wedding website. That wedding planner only wanted to work directly with me after the 'introduction' so it wasn't like the agent was able to finagle any perks or hidden requests.
She found us a 'group rate'. Granted, the group rate had really great flight times in both direction (no 4am wake-up calls). However, the group rate was at least $400 per person more than what we were finding on discount travel sites. To hold the group rate, at least 10 people had to put down a $250.00 deposit by a specific date. Well, since most people thought the rate was too high, only 5 people (including Bryan and I) placed deposits, which we all either lost after the due date, OR our price per person went up even more.
In the end, Bryan and I reimbursed the other 3 people their deposits and we all booked through WestJet directly for $250-$400 less per person.
Bryan and I had to put down our deposit to even hold the group rate so we had to give up money before we even had a head count as to who wanted in on the rate. The group rate came back from the travel company (Signature, in our case) and was only valid for a few days. It all seemed rather rushed so we felt it wasn't enough time to ask around about the rate or see who was willing to pay it.
The travel agent also created a wedding website for us, which we didn't have control over to add content or update. There was an RSVP section but it only seemed to tell us who was booking on our group rate. We needed to know food choices for the wedding reception so I ended up creating a website on Wedding Wire, which is fully in my control. It's great!
Trial #3 - What do I want the wedding decor to look like?
Okay, so this hasn't been too stressful, I admit. My wedding planner, Juan, was in touch almost immediately back in January. He has given me tons of great information, answered all of my questions, and has been so helpful with helping me create my vision.
There are many pictures to look at from actual NOW Sapphire weddings to help you figure out what you want your wedding to look like. You begin with a basic white palette, included in your package, and any color, flowers and decorations are extra. Our budget is fairly low - $7000-$9000. Considering all of the prices at the resort are in US dollars, this is a tough budget to stick with this year but we are trying.
We have to choose decor for the beach ceremony. We need to decide if we want extra flowers, additional decorations, ribbons on the chairs, an aisle runner, music to play for certain portions of the ceremony, and what symbolic activity we will use (for example, sand ceremony, wine glasses ceremony, etc.).
I'm getting some ideas from Juan. It seems like every thought I have - lanterns, tea lights, sea shells, table runners - Juan can accommodate for us. It could get out of hand!
Status as of Today...
Today, I have chosen our wedding colors, decided what cocktail and dinner menu we will serve, and picked some flower options for the bouquets, corsages and boutonnieres. There is still a lot to plan and I want to manage the budget.
Every little thing costs extra so we need to reign in some ideas as we progress through the planning of our beach wedding.
I have my dress and I bought my wedding band, so that's two major steps completed. My maid of honor's dress is on order but she found one that fits great, looks amazing on her, and will be cool to wear outside in Mexico. The guys are still behind on their attire and I can only hope they choose something elegant (I do worry they'll show up in board shorts and loud Hawaiian-print shirts).
Stay tuned as I will most likely have more to say as I continue to plan the little things! Hopefully I can give someone a few good tips to consider when planning their own destination wedding.
Enjoy the long weekend and Happy Canada Day!!
I don't have any exciting travel experiences to share today (we are, after all, having a wedding soon) but I hope that some our trials may be helpful to others.
Bryan and I are traveling to Puerto Morelos in October and we are getting married at the NOW Sapphire Riviera Cancun Resort and Spa. The resort looks beautiful and belongs to the same family as chains like Dreams and Secrets, both of which are always gorgeous and well managed. With decent reviews on Trip Advisor, including positive comments about food and wedding planning, the NOW seemed like a great choice (we shall see in October).
Obviously, this is my first time planning a wedding, destination or domestic, so I was naturally quite uncertain about the whole process. Bryan and I knew we wanted to get married on a beach so that narrowed our options down quite a bit.
Trial #1: Where to go?
As you may have deciphered, we love to travel and we are starting to look at seeing places not common to the casual tourist. Our wedding is special, and we wanted to go somewhere atypical. Places like Roatan, St. Maarten, and Panama came up, but proved too difficult for most people to get to economically. We then thought about the Dominican since neither of us have been there, but flights/packages were quite disappointing. No one likes a red eye through Toronto and leaving your resort at 4am on your last day is not fun.
So, as much as we did not want to choose the Cancun area, it became our top choice because flights and packages worked from both Calgary and Winnipeg (where my family flies from).
(As an aside, our travel agent may have been getting her biggest kickbacks from the Cancun resorts she sold because she continuously pushed Cancun on us. More on this later.)
Trial #2: How to book?
Here is where my biggest beef with this entire process lies - the travel agent. Without naming anyone in particular, Bryan and I felt that using a travel agent was not worth the effort, time or money. If you are really uncertain about where to start when booking your destination wedding, know that you can contact the resorts directly to speak with their wedding planners. Between reviews on generalized destination wedding forums, Expedia and Trip Advisor, you should be able to find out enough about the resort in order to choose it. And, did you know you can contact reviewers on Trip Advisor and ask them direct, specific questions? It works wonderfully!
Okay, the travel agent angle. She charged us $250.00 to be our agent. She spent most of the time pushing Cancun on us and her comments about flights and prices contradicted packages I was finding online on my own.
She told us she'd be there to help us get in touch with the resort wedding planner - she gave us the same email address and name as was found on the resort's wedding website. That wedding planner only wanted to work directly with me after the 'introduction' so it wasn't like the agent was able to finagle any perks or hidden requests.
She found us a 'group rate'. Granted, the group rate had really great flight times in both direction (no 4am wake-up calls). However, the group rate was at least $400 per person more than what we were finding on discount travel sites. To hold the group rate, at least 10 people had to put down a $250.00 deposit by a specific date. Well, since most people thought the rate was too high, only 5 people (including Bryan and I) placed deposits, which we all either lost after the due date, OR our price per person went up even more.
In the end, Bryan and I reimbursed the other 3 people their deposits and we all booked through WestJet directly for $250-$400 less per person.
Bryan and I had to put down our deposit to even hold the group rate so we had to give up money before we even had a head count as to who wanted in on the rate. The group rate came back from the travel company (Signature, in our case) and was only valid for a few days. It all seemed rather rushed so we felt it wasn't enough time to ask around about the rate or see who was willing to pay it.
The travel agent also created a wedding website for us, which we didn't have control over to add content or update. There was an RSVP section but it only seemed to tell us who was booking on our group rate. We needed to know food choices for the wedding reception so I ended up creating a website on Wedding Wire, which is fully in my control. It's great!
Trial #3 - What do I want the wedding decor to look like?
Okay, so this hasn't been too stressful, I admit. My wedding planner, Juan, was in touch almost immediately back in January. He has given me tons of great information, answered all of my questions, and has been so helpful with helping me create my vision.
There are many pictures to look at from actual NOW Sapphire weddings to help you figure out what you want your wedding to look like. You begin with a basic white palette, included in your package, and any color, flowers and decorations are extra. Our budget is fairly low - $7000-$9000. Considering all of the prices at the resort are in US dollars, this is a tough budget to stick with this year but we are trying.
We have to choose decor for the beach ceremony. We need to decide if we want extra flowers, additional decorations, ribbons on the chairs, an aisle runner, music to play for certain portions of the ceremony, and what symbolic activity we will use (for example, sand ceremony, wine glasses ceremony, etc.).
I'm getting some ideas from Juan. It seems like every thought I have - lanterns, tea lights, sea shells, table runners - Juan can accommodate for us. It could get out of hand!
Status as of Today...
Today, I have chosen our wedding colors, decided what cocktail and dinner menu we will serve, and picked some flower options for the bouquets, corsages and boutonnieres. There is still a lot to plan and I want to manage the budget.
Every little thing costs extra so we need to reign in some ideas as we progress through the planning of our beach wedding.
I have my dress and I bought my wedding band, so that's two major steps completed. My maid of honor's dress is on order but she found one that fits great, looks amazing on her, and will be cool to wear outside in Mexico. The guys are still behind on their attire and I can only hope they choose something elegant (I do worry they'll show up in board shorts and loud Hawaiian-print shirts).
Stay tuned as I will most likely have more to say as I continue to plan the little things! Hopefully I can give someone a few good tips to consider when planning their own destination wedding.
Enjoy the long weekend and Happy Canada Day!!
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