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

We pretty much knew before we were even engaged that we wanted to have a destination wedding ... but we had no idea what destination ... much less what resort or venue.

In a previous post I wrote about all of our destination options and to re-cap that a bit:

Things we've taken into consideration while looking for the perfect destination and venue: 

• Our family is mostly all in California
• We will be traveling with 5 kids
• We will be traveling during summer vacation from school
• We don't know yet if we'll be able to get passports for all of the kids (there's a story for this one *sigh*)
• We want to be married on the beach - on the sand if possible
• We're working with a fairly low wedding budget (considering we'll be paying for travel and accommodations for 7 of us)
• We need to be careful about the travel time involved so none of us waste our vacation time in planes and airports

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 

In that post I go into how we decided that we'd like to get married in Mexico but finding a city and venue was another challenge altogether. 

I spent literally all day every day (drove Ken crazy! LOL) scouring the internet looking for information ... the good and the bad ... in hopes of finding the destination of our dreams. I spent time on Trip Advisor (warning: I think more people with a negative experience are more apt to come back and submit their review here) and I found some great destination wedding forums with my favorite being http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/forum/.  

I knew early on that I really wanted an all-inclusive resort so that we didn't have to stress about the cost of our food and drinks (keep in mind we're taking our 5 kids ... ages 7 - 13). The more I read the more I was convinced that I would be happiest with a resort that had "wedding packages" as I thought that would make it pretty easy to put the details together. With all this in mind I narrowed it down to RIU Resorts and Dreams Resorts. 

I started spending my time reading their websites and any bridal reviews I could find and eventually I found my dream resort ... Dreams Tulum. 

After this decision ... it was time to start pricing it all out and finding out if they had an opening on their calendar for our wedding. We'll see ... 

Are you in the process of choosing your wedding site/venue? What are your must have's? If you've already narrowed down or chosen your venue give us some tips and pointers! *SmiLes* Suzanne

It's always fun to see where everyone else is having their destination wedding isn't it? Please take the poll (if you've decided on a destination) and then leave a comment below so others can ask you questions too. Remember what a huge help it is if we all help each other out with our wedding planning ...
View This Poll

Were you surprised at the locations that others are choosing? If you've decided on a destination be sure to add you comment below ... it's a great way to help out fellow destination brides who have selected their destination yet. *SmiLes* Suzanne