Tell Me about your Island Wedding!

[Tybee]

My dream is of a grean/blue sea...and white sand...a calm and relaxed island atmosphere. I''ve searched a bit on theknot...but most of the resort packages seemed a little cheesy (this is just a first impression, though.) Can anyone who had first hand experience with an island destination wedding help me get started?
This is only a dream right now. I think I might find that I HAVE to have a wedding here in Atlanta--but the list of people that we know keeps growing and growing. It seems to be getting more than we can afford! I''m starting to feel like I want to just escape it all!

 

[kniemi]

My sister got married in Riveria Maya Mexico in April and it was awesome. She had the ceremony on the white sand beach withthe blue-green water behaind. It was very inexpensive and very stress free to plan. She has 60 guests which is a lot for a destination wedding but most people wanted to come. They had a vacation and ateended a wedding in the same week. Asking people to go to Mexico to see your wedding really filters out the people who don''t really care to be there.

 

[NyssaLynne]

We had our wedding at Couples Resort in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. Blue sky, white sand, and a fascinating blue-green sea. A true paradise location. Jamaicans are know for their laid back attitude but everything still manages to get accomplished.

You can look at more pictures here: www.MyTravelViews.com/wedding The password is: NyssaLynne and you can click on the pictures to rotate through them.

 

[Mara]

ours was in Hawaii on Kauai in May 2004..it was bliss...and cheaper than if we did it locally! we had 30 of our closest friends and family with us on the plantation for a few days, and then we flew off to Tahiti for honeymoon. we are still dreaming about it. of course there were trials and tribulations as with any wedding, but hands down i am so happy we nixed the local wedding and went this route, the memories seem so much more 'rich'. obviously with any wedding memories, they will be fabulous, but for whatever reason, i know that the memories we would have had of a local wedding would not have held a candle to these. not to mention our photographer (who we brought with us from CA) was fantastic--that is a HUGE part of it in my opinion.

highly recommended...and for us it was a better budget idea too...we spent about 6k less than we would have locally and that included the stay in hawaii etc ! if we had gone local we would have invited up to 100 people and spent the whole evening trying to say hello to them all, whereas in hawaii we just danced the night away under our white tent up listening to the sounds of the ocean. we still invited everyone, but knew only the most important ones would come.

good luck with planning!

 

[Tybee]

Wow...these sound beautiful! And more and more what I am looking for. Do you all agree that you spent less on your destination wedding than you would have spent at home? That is really something to consider.
Oh, got me daydreaming again.

 

[NyssaLynne]

I definitely spent less on my destination wedding than I would have at home. Rough figures for my at-home wedding would have been $10,000+ and then the honeymoon on top of that. This was for a guest list of around 100 people. My destination wedding, with an at-home reception afterwards, cost under $7,000 including ceremony, all clothing, wedding bands, photography, videography, all monetary tips, and the honeymoon.

 

[chantal990]

If you can be bothered travelling half way around the world Hayman Island is fantastic. www.hayman.com.au the whole area around there is fantstically gorgeous. (it is my choice of where to get married if we actually do it in Australia which is the country where we live). Here''s a shot from the aire of the islands

 

[chantal990]

P.S. the deserted island on the right is where I got engaged.

 

[Tybee]

Holy Cow!
Gorgeous!
I doubt that I could get my whole family there, but what a dream!