Are you asking yourself where the very best destination wedding locations are to run off to and have your dream wedding?
As I'm sure you can imagine the answer to this question will vary greatly depending on who you ask, how far from home you want to travel (and even where home is to begin with), what time of year, how many guests you'd like to have and, of course, how much you want to spend on your wedding.
I ran into this very same problem when I was trying to figure out where we were going to get married too and it can be simply overwhelming! I'd start by making sure I've read our article on Destination Wedding Planning and our page on Destination Wedding Location first and that should get you started.
I don't know how anyone could tell you the best destination wedding locations because what's important and desirable for each of us is going to be totally different and our budgets can vary too (see our Destination Wedding Budget Poll).
I will share the locations we were considering before ultimately deciding on Tulum, Mexico:
Places that we put on our "maybe" list right away:
- San Diego (North County)
- Santa Barbara
- Hawaii
- Mexico
- Antigua
- U.S. Virgin Islands
- Texas Hill Country
Again, ultimately it's up to you to decide and we're here to help in any way we can. Please ask any questions you have in the comments section below and if I don't know the answer I will help you find an answer ... probably from one of the awesome vendors who are here on our site. Let us hear from you ... so we can all learn from each other! *SmiLes* Suzanne
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Our Destination Wedding was Awesome
After enjoying our fun and romance with many trips to Savannah Beach Inn on a littel island 20 minutes away from downtown Savannah, GA, we took it a step further and asked them to plan a unique and memorable wedding for us with their wedding planners at Romantic Weddings Of Savannah / Weddings by Savannah Beach Inn.
We were surprised beyond belief when they arranged the wedding of our dreams.
Our wedding on an uninhabited island beach near Savannah, GA in which we traveled to on a pontoon pirate party boat captained by Craig Markowski of “Pirate Charters Of the Caribbean”. And what a wedding it turned out be with the secluded romantic setting. Not only did we enjoy all the normal formalities like the toasts, cake cutting and great reception, everybody changed into their swimming attire for an afternoon swim as well. Although there were neither swashbuckling swords nor blunderbuss muskets, there was the romantic moments as we started our new journey as one and begin to conquer the world with the passion and challenges that lay ahead!
Pirate Captain Craig was the perfect host, and ultimate entertainer when sharing his experiences from not only the Virgin Islands, but the island coasts of the US and his adventures in Alaska. His own tropical punch recipe and delicacies of the traditional “Low Country Shrimp Boil” and Southern fried chicken were also a real treat.
Originally from Key Largo and fed up with the deceit he encountered as a successful investment banker on Wall St, he rebuilt his career on his terms. Self made and without deep pockets, he enjoys his career as he travels and works in destinations in which most only dream.
Working his way through some unique careers in Alaska for years of challenging climate and conditions, he accumulated the experience and savings to become a sailboat captain and a well respected author. With a uniquely positive and determined attitude, he seems almost a legend as he shares stories of his experiences
and travels of which many include his pet timber wolf, Buddy.
No adventurous dreams or goals would be complete without generating ideas from successes in his favorite works which include “Key West to Alaska” and “Trading Wall St For St John USVI”.
Enough about the awesome wedding and reception as we’ll leave it to your imagination for our honeymoon!
We only can wish that everyone else enjoys their wedding as much as we did ours!!!!
With All Our Love from the Big Apple!!!
The post written above cannot be trusted! It is written by the owner of those business himself – Craig Markowski, who is the owner of the Savannah Beach Inn, Romantic Weddings of Savannah, and Weddings by Savannah Beach Inn. He is an imposter – he has several different screen names, and gets on several different websites and promotes himself repeatedly under different names! They could be very good wedding planners for all I know, but what I do know is that the above post cannot be trusted, so proceed with caution!
Attention April/May Dreams Cancun Brides!!!!!
You may be in for a surprise if you have an upcoming wedding at this resort. We have just returned from our wedding on Apr 10. Let us start by saying our friends and family would all consider us very laid back people and very low maintenance.
We picked this wedding site a year ago, and even traveled to Dreams 6 months ago to check the locale out. We specifically asked at that time if there would be and construction/changes planned. Answer was no. When we arrived at the resort, we were upgraded to a towers room. However, the room overlooked the disastrous construction site where our special day was to take place. Our gazebo had been torn down!! Yes, the beautiful gazebo that is still up on the website is now gone. There was a huge blue tarp covering the now construction zone known as our wedding site. In addition, the beautiful surrounding area had changed. There were several hundred yards of huge concrete blocks with rebar sticking out, forming a new jetty that was quite unnatural appearing. The private adjacent beach where our reception was to be held was completely redone and built up so that it was not quite so private and communicated with the other resorts. Again, no planned changes as they told us. We immediately had a meeting with several managers (bride in tears of course). When I asked why they had withheld all of this information, they claimed it had all been done only 5 days prior. This was later found to be a complete lie as the local photographer who is at the resort 3-4 days weekly told me positively that it had been 25-26 days for the gazebo, much longer for the new jetty. We demanded that other arrangements be made as the bride would be wearing high heels and a beach wedding was not what we had been planning for a year. We ultimately decided to have our wedding at a sister resort (Now Resort) which was about a 45 min drive south. They provided a charter bus to transport our 50 guests. The wedding was nice there, although not what we had planned for so long and not what we were planning to bring our family/friends from another country to see. We proceeded to have meetings every other day or so with the wedding planner (Cecilia who was pretty good) and her boss (Rafael who was not so honest about timing of gazebo construction). As one can imagine, this made for a pretty stressful week prior to our wedding. One of the meetings was the day of the wedding, and finally another several days after. At each meeting was what we considered an insulting small discount on our botched wedding. In the meantime as our guests arrived, almost every guest was told at the desk that there were no rooms available for them. Some of them were upgraded after putting up a fuss in order to get a room. Many of them were not so fortunate and had to be put up in other hotels. The grooms own mother was not even staying at Dreams on our wedding day!
We finally had our room relocated away from the construction site reminder and were placed back near the dolphins. In the end, we paid a portion of our initial wedding bill. We were not offered a return voucher stay in the future even though we inquired about it several times. Overall the experience was quite traumatic. We felt they were intentionally deceitful before we arrived, then lied to our faces directly, and ultimately gave very little to zero effort to attempt to make up for it or try to make us feel happy or special in any way. We do not plan a trip back at this point, nor do we recommend to others for vacation or especially for a wedding. We are happy we are married but quite happy that our experience at Dreams Cancun is over. On a positive note, the food was overall pretty good across the resort. Also, the photographer and videographer were awesome and provided a great video and over 600 great pictures. But if you are expecting more than pictures and food for that special day of your life, you may rethink your options as it’s not too late.
Let me start off by saying do not use this company or should I say person (Ann) to plan the most important day of your life. I had a small 20 person wedding with guests from 3 different states using their vacation time and money to come to Georgia. I started planning with Ann and her company last fall. My wedding was in June. I first talked with Coco, who I was under the impression she would be my planner. That fell through after they received their deposit. Then after a few months of hearing nothing at all, I emailed Ann several times, just to see what the next step was. I knew that this wedding wasn’t going to take them long to plan, so I patiently waited and waited. I then finally got a call Easter Sunday from Ann. With a slight attitude assured me that everything was fine and that they don’t start planning the wedding until 2 weeks prior. She had another women with her that day who she introduced as my planner, maybe Dianne? I talked to her for about 2 min and never talked to her again. I know people reading this think, well maybe I am difficult to deal with. Let me tell you. I wanted a white, shell cake, a buffet with the food that is exactly in one of their options, no changes, stargaze lily’s, DJ, pictures. That is it, I don’t care what the colors are, what the seating is like, I wasn’t demanding. Finally, I got a planner named Amanda. She was ambitious, attentive, and wanted to know everything I wanted. Emails, phone calls, texts all the time. It stopped too! Her phone was disconnected. That was it. I started digging, reviews for Romantic Weddings went from great to awful. The BBB went from A+ to under investigation. I started communicating with recent review people and then any glimmer of hope I had was gone. Mind you I am in another state, and we now have all the money in this company and a beach house rental for our family that is coming. People with plane tickets. There is no backing out. So Ann tells me I am going to be the only person working with you, I am sorry that you have been flopped around so much. This is 4 weeks before the wedding. So we would call and ask who is the Pastor? Where is the location? Do you have the beach permit? Well the Pastor that she booked, or at least told us she booked, told me no I am not booked to do your wedding. The city of Tybee had no beach permit. I realized she never even asked what food we wanted a week before the wedding. At this point we contacted our credit card company and they said until she doesn’t do this we can’t do anything. When we got to Georgia I was put off again and again to meet with her. We finally took my whole family to her Bed and Breakfast. We contacted the Pastor again who assured us with or without this company we would have our wedding. The in keeper, Patty I believe, and the Pastor are the only ones who helped keep our heads up. Pastor David Laughner was Wonderful!! What a great caring man. We showed up the night of the wedding and were very pleased. There was a cake, DJ, food, flowers. Her son (Craig)was our photographer. It was very pretty with the lanterns and the real Southern look I wanted. What a relief. Except it is now late July over a month after the wedding. We were told 2-3 days for our pictures. Every week we have called and been told next Monday. Today after my father threatened to go after his money, Ann called me and said “there has been a mix up with the company we send the film to, can you email me a picture of yourself so we know which ones are yours?” All I could do is laugh at this point. I have received the amateur at best pictures. I was hoping for a good end to this night mere, but instead I have pictures that look like they came from a guest. Craig did manage to video tape our ceremony. He taped about 6 different 30 second sections leaving out the Grooms I Do and the announcement of us being Husband and Wife! I am just warning future bride’s to not use this company. If you are paying for someone to take the stress off of you, and you just want to pick your things and have a great wedding, this is not the company. We paid to have little stress and instead I had to worry and stress for almost a year. You could plan this wedding for a fraction of the price and be way less stressed out than if you use them.
I am doing a deiitnatson wedding in November in Jamaica and I believe it was the best decision we could have made.