There’s nothing like getting married on a beach or a mountaintop, but making that vision come true requires some special planning on your part to make sure everything goes smoothly. We got married in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (which is our favorite Mexican resort town – not nearly as Americanized as many Mexican resorts, plus lots of great restaurants and very friendly people), and I would do it again in a heartbeat. But here are a few things to keep in mind before you dive in.
1. Find a reliable, on-location partner – There’s really no way to plan a destination wedding abroad without having someone local who is running point on your behalf. It took us at least a month to track down the right combination of venue/planner who was on-location in Puerto Vallarta, spoke the language, had existing relationships with vendors, etc. I would highly recommend either hiring a planner here in the States who regularly plans destination weddings and can do everything for you, or find an all-inclusive venue at your destination who will pull everything together for you. Because, if you plan to go it alone, you better be patient; fluent in the destination language; and willing to arrive at least a week earlier to set everything up. (Hint: You could use a wedding website like this to keep track of all your guests and timelines, and then have an on-location venue/planner take care of everything else.)
2. Getting legally married here vs. abroad – Before you decide on this one, check into the legal policies of a legal marriage at your destination. I know Mexico requires you file for a legal marriage at least a few days before your ceremony, so you need to be in country at least a few days before your ceremony. My business partner got married in St. John (an American territory in the U.S. Virgin Islands) so their laws were pretty much the same as the mainland, but other countries may have different policies that make it tougher (or impossible) to legally get married in their country. We went the easy route and simply picked up a marriage license at our local courthouse (in Colorado, you simply need to file for a marriage license and sign it and you are legally married … so easy).
3. Size of wedding – Most destination wedding are smaller simply because of the demands made on guests (that is, it usually requires more money and time to attend a destination wedding than it does one locally). But you should consider the desires and means of your guests to attend a destination wedding before you move ahead with your plans, and ask around to see if your “gotta-be-there” guests are okay with taking more time off and spending more money. SECRET HINT: Attending a destination wedding usually has lots of extra expenses for everybody (like more expensive plane flights, hotel rooms, food, etc.). But the wedding itself is usually cheaper than holding a wedding the same size in the States. We spent around $7K for our wedding of around 25 people, and the same thing would have easily cost us $11K-$12K in the states.
4. Designate a “social coordinator” for your stay – We were in Mexico for a week for our wedding, and although we loved having our family and friends near us, there were lots of demands on our time and few opportunities to get moments alone. So I would recommend appointing someone in your family as social coordinator, who makes plans if people want to get together for dinner or see the sights and generally is the person who coordinates guests during your stay. This takes pressure off you and lets you relax and enjoy the week instead of being Julie McCoy (anyone who doesn’t remember the Love Boat can Google this).
BTW, the venue where we had our destination wedding was awesome. It’s called Vallarta Adventures, and you should ask for Nicole; she was our planner and was fantastic.
Groomasaurus Guy and Gal at our destination wedding
Today’s guest blogger is Benjamin Parker of GroomPower.com, and he will be sharing some great advice on how to choose wines for your reception. I don’t know about you, but when it comes to picking wines, I know just enough to be dangerous, so any tidbits of advice and guidance are always helpful. Oh, and you should stop by his site if you want more info on groom-related topics or more tips on wedding drinks, including pre-dinner drinks, calculating wine quantities, etc.
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Many couples find it difficult to choose the wines to serve at their wedding reception. Of course, it’s difficult to make choices that will please all of your guests, and it’s made harder still if you’re working to a budget. But if you follow a few simple tips, choosing your wine can be a pleasure rather than a chore.
If you are serving a meal at your wedding reception, then it’s best to choose the food before you choose the wine. There is endless and detailed advice available on which wines match which foods: for example, that grilled fish should be served with a Chardonnay, or that game is best paired with a Shiraz. It is safe to ignore most of this advice. Common sense will tell you whether or not a particular wine will clash with a particular food. If you are planning to serve a very delicate white fish dish to your guests, it would obviously be best to avoid a very heavy red wine. Likewise, a very light and young white wine is probably not going to go well with a rich, meaty dish. Have your food choice in mind when picking wine, but don’t let it dominate your choice.
You should also bear in mind the time of year your wedding will take place. A full bodied ten year old red might not go down particularly well in the middle of summer, regardless of what you serve it with. And in the depths of winter, your sparkling white, served at just above refrigerator temperature, might not be a great choice either.
Finally, you need to spare a thought for the tastes of your guests. You might be relatively experienced with wine and appreciate some of the more unusual varieties on offer. But be careful in choosing a “left field” wine, as your guests might not share your passion for it. Some wines really are an acquired taste. In this bracket you can put wines such as Moscatel (a sweet and fragrant wine from Spain), Gewürztraminer (another aromatic wine which is grown across Europe, particularly in Alsace) and sparkling reds (popular in Australia). This isn’t to say these wines aren’t good – many of them are excellent – or that you shouldn’t choose them for your wedding, just use care with wines such as these.
With all that in mind, we can now look at a couple of popular wedding wines that work well in most circumstances. For a white wine, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is a very versatile option. Most wines of this type are relatively light – it’s best to avoid the complex, oaky flavours of heavier white wines when you’re choosing a wine to appeal to a large number of people. They are also widely available, which is important: you might choose a wine now but decide not buy it in bulk for another six months.
For a red wine, it’s fairly easy to find a Rioja that will suit the season, the food, and everyone’s taste. Rioja is grown in Spain and comes in several varieties: Crianza (which must be aged at least two years before being released, one of which must be in an oak barrel), Reserva (which must be aged for three years, with one in oak) and Gran Reserva (five years aging, including two in oak). If a wine is simply labeled“Rioja” then it has spent less than the required aging time to be a “Crianza”. Generally, a Crianza is a good choice for a wedding wine: not too heavy and not too light.
Overall, choosing the wine for your wedding should be a pleasure and not a chore. It’s actually a great way to make others feel involved in your wedding: buy a few bottles and invite the family round, then choose your favorites.
Every December, Pantone unveils color trends for the coming year, and this year it chose turquoise as the color of 2010, with other colors such as tomato puree, violet, fusion coral, pink champagne, dried herb and eucalyptus ranking high on their list. And this got me thinking … who really follows these trends?
I ask this question because we recently conducted a survey of brides at My Wedding Workbook (a Web site that I own that provides online wedding software for brides) on things such as their preferred styles and colors, and brides’ preferences really don’t align much with the experts chosen colors. First of all, there was no real runaway winner. Navy was the winner with 13.2% of brides reporting that this was their main color, with black next 9.7%, dark red/burgundy 8.3%, brown/chocolate 7.9%, green/hunter 7.9%, purple/plum 6.9% and light blue/aqua 6.6%. But what it seemed like was that brides really went with either their favorite color and/or a more conservative, familiar color. Which tells me one thing … people choose the colors that they’re comfortable with.
This really isn’t anything new, but it does hint at a dirty little secret in the wedding industry. You see, the wedding industry is huge, with annual U.S. revenue estimates varying from as low as $40B to as high as $100B yearly. For an industry to sell this much stuff, it needs to constantly reinvent itself and to create new variations, varieties and permutations of products and services. Fashion can be a fickle thing, as what was cool and alluring last year is tired and stale this year, and wedding fashions and decor are no different. But the wedding industry in particular seems very adept at creating such variations of products in so many different colors and styles that not only are the choices baffling, but they are also always getting more and more elaborate and expensive.
I’m not blaming anyone here, because in our competitive marketplace, companies are always innovating, refining, specializing and customizing. But what this does do is cause untold amount of confusion and “decision paralysis” among engaged couples who are faced with a mountain of choices and an onslaught of expert advice.
So what do people usually end up doing? Sticking with what they know and like. So, as one who just got married, my advice to you is to take all that expert advice on colors, styles and everything else with a very large grain of salt and, as a rule of thumb, create the wedding that expresses who you are (and not some pundit or expert). If you can’t stand turquoise (which, although there certainly a place for it, was never at the top of my personal list), don’t feel obliged to use it. It’s your clam bake … pick the colors you want.
A few months ago, Groomasaurus Gal and I ventured over to one of the many bridal expos that are offered in the Denver area. Supposedly Denver has a large demographic of 20-somethings, which makes us very attractive to wedding vendors and marketers. When we signed up for the expo we provided our names and address, and since this is America, within a few days we were getting all sorts of junk mail and emails from photographers, caterers, tux rental stores and the like.
Now, I’m a marketer by trade, so I can’t well blame these vendors in their attempt to make a buck and survive this dismal economy. But because we’re having a destination wedding and really have no need for any of the vendors who are hitting us up, it seems like a huge waste of trees, fuel and effort. Which got us thinking…
We’ve been meaning to sign up for some of the stop-junk-mail lists for a very long time, and now seems like as good a time as any. So we tracked down a few online resources that allow us to minimize the amount of junk mail sent to our house, and here they are:
- DMAChoice.org – This site allows you to set preferences for what emails and direct mail you receive and control who sends commercial email and smail mail to you.
- Catalog Choice – A great resource that enables you to choose what catalogs you get in the mail. More than 900 merchants have signed up to allow you to opt in our out, so kudos to them for volunteering.
- 41Pounds.org – This organization contacts direct mail companies on your behalf to stop catalogs and junk mail like those ubiquitous pre-approved credit card solicitations. It does cost $41 for 5 years of service, but they’re a nonprofit, and that fee covers their costs (plus they donate $15 to the charity of your choice). Another fine option.
Here are also a couple Web pages with more information on stopping junk mail:
http://www.ecocycle.org/junkmail/index.cfm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18530707/
http://environment.about.com/od/greenlivingdesign/a/junkmail.htm
Check out these great resources and, when you want to turn off the spigot of wedding junk mail, try them out.
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Thanks to Tom Santilli over at Examiner.com, who blogged about our Workbook. For all those in Michigan who need a wedding videographer, check out Tom’s site at Complete Video Solutions.
So we followed through on our legal ceremony/marriage licence that I blogged about a few weeks ago, and it was as great evening. First, we had a few family and friends join us at the record store where we met in downtown Denver, and then we had our friend John (who is also a mail-order officiant) who introduced us perform a short legal ceremony. This is where the fun started…
First off, John’s a bit of a grumpy, curmudgeonly teddy bear (if there is such a thing), and despite the fact that I’ve seen him bark at customers for really no reason other than he felt like it, he immediately started crying within minutes of going into his ceremony. This was pretty entertaining, but not nearly as much when he screwed up our names. He had lost the only copy of his ceremony and so had to call the last couple who he married, and they faxed him over their copy. Apparently their names were David and Allison, because he called me David once and Groomasaurus Gal Allison once (and her real name is a far cry from Allison). Some people would get bent out of shape about this, but since our “real” wedding is in November and this was just a more formal extension of getting a marriage licence, we both thought it was pretty funny, kind of cute and definitely memorable.
Once the ceremony was over and I kissed the bride, we all had a toast … actually, make that several toasts, in which about 10 of us polished off a bottle of Petron tequila in 45 minutes flat. Pretty impressive and a little frightening at the same time. After that, we went to one of our favorite restaurants in Denver called Zeng0. It’s latin/asian fusion food, and although that sounds rather pretentious and gimmicky (and it is a little bit), the food is fabulous.
It’s getting late, so I’ll finish up this wrapup tomorrow.
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Big shout out to Amanda over at Stellina Events, who wrote up a very flattering post for Groomasaurus. You should definitely check out Amanda’s blog, as she has great advice and tips for making your wedding more personal and even exotic. Thanks, Amanda, and keep on bloggin.
Last week’s blog on wedding music got me thinking, which rarely happens, so here are my thoughts…
I’ve always dreamed of going balls to the wall and hiring not just a local band or a cover band for my wedding, but a quasi-popular touring band. You know, like in the movies when Rodney Dangerfield hired Oingo Boingo to play his college dorm party in Back to School. Or The Mighty Mighty Bosstones playing the school dance in Clueless.
Yeah, I know that’s reaching a bit, but I would surmise that, if you wanted to splurge (say, for $8-10K or so) you could get some indie band you really like that hasn’t hit it big yet, isn’t above playing a very hip wedding and happens to be on tour during your wedding. Or you could even hire a fairly well-reknown DJ (not the local guy whose old standard are the funky chicken dance and the hokey pokey), as all they need for your wedding is a box of records and two turntables (sans microphone).
But still, when it comes to the music at your wedding, you really don’t want to compromise, because that’s probably the one thing that will make or break your reception. Look at it this way, unless you’re shooting for a classy, sophisticated, uber-civilized reception (in which case, you should probably ignore everything I say … in fact, you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog) where people raise their pinkies to drink their apertifs, the music will make the difference between everyone leaving by 9 as opposed to having the cleaning crew pushing people out with brooms around 2 am … in which case, the party restarts at a nearby bar with a great jukebox.
However, we are in a bit of a pickle when it comes to the music at our wedding. We’re having a destination wedding in Puerto Vallarta at this beautiful beach location that was the old estate of the filmmaker John Huston (you know the movie the Night of the Iguana … Richard Burton, Ava Gardner … well, that place), and although it’s an awesome location, I have no idea as to the quality of the musical choices they offer. The people at the resort are great, but I’m just not that trusting a person when a stranger tells me that their DJs are great. I mean, what if I go with their advice only to find out that the people at the resort think Celine Dion is a goddess and swoon to the musical stylings of Michael Bolton. I think the pain of a jellyfish sting would be comparable to the DJ that plays cheese like this.
So instead of rolling the dice and losing big, we’ve decided to go the way of the iPod. It’s not nearly as spontaneous as the band or DJ route, but you know what you’re getting, and you can prepare multiple playlists for whatever mood people are in. Plus you can ask some of your guests to come up with their own playlists and do a little playlist mashup. I think that would be very cool. Lucky for us, our wedding venue is set up for the iPod thing, so we’re going to do some major crate diving this weekend and start putting together some playlists. Wish us luck…
Because we’re getting married in Puerto Vallarta, we decided to get our marriage license here in Colorado where we live, and that way we don’t have through the hassle (minor, but still a hassle) of getting it in Mexico. So Groomasaurus Gal came up with this great idea…
Since it really doesn ‘t matter when we get our marriage license, we thought we could pick it up next Friday, July 17, which is the 9th anniversary of our first date. (Funny aside: Our first date was in a downtown Denver restaurant that neither of us really like that much. Groomasaurus Gal picked it because it was between both of our offices and, more importantly, because if you sit at the bar – which we did – you can have a quick escape through the front door if the date starts to go south. She told me that years later. No lie.)
Then, after we pick up the license at the courthouse, we will pay a visit to our friend John who introduced us and who also conveniently is a mail-order officiant. Where we will visit him is in the record store that he owns, which is also the place where we first ran into each other. There, he will conduct a short legal ceremony in front of 10 family and close friends, sign the license and we will toast to the occasion, afterward going out for drinks and a nice meal.
Isn’t that a great idea or what. And to make it even more special, there are a few friends who won’t be able to make it to our wedding in Mexico, so we asked them to join us. I thought that was especially neat. So I guess a week from now I will legally be married, although our actual wedding will still be for me the day when I “get married.” More on that later…
Oh, and I haven’t done this much, but a quick shameless self promotion … the wedding website I own that provides wedding planning software tools to brides is getting a facelift next week. It’s taken me away from blogging this week, but now that it’s almost done, I can breathe a bit easier. More to come on that too…
We spent last Sunday really plunging in on our wedding planning, and one of the things on our list was to start thinking about our ceremony and vows. Oddly, this one piece of planning really made it sink home that we’re actually getting married. I guess that makes sense because the ceremony is the core of the wedding, and a wedding ain’t really a wedding without some sort of ceremony (even if it’s in Vegas at 2 a.m. and you’re both slurring the words “I do”).
Groomasaurus Gal came up with the excellent idea of a sand ceremony , which I guess was made popular by The Bachlorette series (which was news to me, as I’ve never watched the show). Regardless, our wedding will be on a beach in Mexico, and it seemed only fitting to include the sand ceremony as a symbol of us joining our lives together. Plus, I like the idea of having a keepsake in the form of a glass of sand (much better than the unity candle thing, IMHO).
The sand ceremony is perfect for a beach wedding, although these colors are so 1984. - Photo courtesy of AustinWeddingNews.com
As for the rest of the ceremony, it would be great if everything was written specifically for the occasion – readings, vows, officiant’s homily. Our officiant will be my mom, who is a retired ordained clergy in the United Church of Christ, so I’m sure she can help us out. I’d really like to ask a couple of our friends to write something for our service that they can then read. One of my friends asked me to do this a while back for their wedding, and I feel the poem I wrote for that occasion is still one of the best things I’ve written in a decade.
Anyway, there will be more to come…
We’re a busy culture, always working, always building, always growing, always thinking, always moving. All this activity means that, on occasion, certain things don’t get done because other things get in the way. In fact, sometimes it seems we have so much going on that life becomes a series of tangents in which we start down hundreds of paths but don’t ever arrive at a destination.
This perfectly encapsulates my last few weeks. Lots of projects, many deadlines, not much to show for it. The thing that always frustrates me about these patches of craziness is that the entire time I’m scrambling, I am thinking about all the important things these seeming trivialities are keeping me from. For instance, I really enjoy writing this blog, but I haven’t been able to devote much time to it lately. Ditto for planning our wedding … I had scheduled some time to work on our guest lists and invitations the last few weekends, but somehow the minutiae of life has kept me from getting to them.
Meanwhile, the entire time I was putting off my wedding planning, this little evil voice in the back of my head kept saying, “You need to get on this stuff. If you don’t get these things planned, you won’t have the wedding you and your fiancee want. You’ll run out of time, people won’t come because you informed them too late and it will all turn to shit.” (Yes, my little voice does swear at me; it is evil, you know.) Then the guilt sets in, and before you know it I’m in the midst of a big shame fest.
So now that I have some space to breathe, I wonder why we put such pressure on ourselves to take on so many tasks and put such pressure on ourselves to make everything perfect. Maybe life would be better if some things were less than perfect. Maybe our wedding would be a better experience if we didn’t kill ourselves beforehand to make it perfect and instead let some things slide and relaxed and enjoyed the journey leading up to it. I’m not saying put it all off until you’re forced to elope in Vegas (which is sounding better by the day), but maybe the invites don’t have to be perfect, the flowers don’t have to be so elaborate, the favors can be skipped, the vows can be written like a last-minute term paper when the pressure brings out nuggets of clarity and insights. Just the thought of this takes the pressure off … I think I’ll try this relaxed approach for a while and maybe find some peace in the planning process.
by Jeff on April 28, 2009
Both Groomasaurus Gal and I are people who can’t sit still and feel like we have to be doing something productive all the time. Although this usually makes for a good employee, it can also lead to a feeling a being overwhelmed (as well as other things like nervous breakdowns, coronary disease, etc. … but I digress), which is where I am today.
I’m in marketing, and the economy has really put the brakes to my business, so on top of usual life stuff (cooking, grocery shopping, yardwork, etc.) and planning a wedding, I now have to go out and spend even more time looking for new clients for my business. I admit that I’m one of those odd birds who actually likes networking and talking to strangers, but the problem is that it requires soooo much time with no guarantee that anything will come of it. A sage person once said that networking is about giving, not getting, but sometimes don’t you feel like you give so much that on occasion the universe should give something back? Okay, I’ll stop bitching and get to my point.
Wait a minute … did I have a point? Oh, yeah, feeling overwhelmed. I know many brides and grooms also feel the same us. You have full-time jobs, maybe even multiple full-and part-time jobs, household tasks on top of those, family obligations, possibly kids to care for and if there’s time left you squeeze in a movie and some sleep. Not much extra time in there for planning a wedding.
The first thing to remember amongst all this is that such overburdening is mostly self-inflicted. Sure, you can’t really do anything about your boss dumping a stack of work on your desk that will keep you awake all weekend – other than quit, that is. But we all have control over how much stuff we let into our lives and how many tasks we take on. I thought about this and figured I have three paths I can take to de-clutter my life: delegate some tasks (which we have by having a destination wedding); cut some tasks out (still working on that); and let some non-essential things slide (as in “don’t sweat the small stuff). In the meantime, I’m going to go walk my dogs, which I have found is a great way to take your mind off of the ruck of everyday life, and repeat this yoga mantra: Oommmmmmmmmmm.
