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Choosing between an Island Wedding and a traditional wedding at home.
Island, or destination weddings are becoming extremely popular and many bridal couples compare the two but don’t have enough information to make an informative decision. Here are some facts that can help you along the way.
Traditional weddings in your home country are expensive. Even small intimate ones can be costly. Most times, couples will exceed the initial budget decided upon, because so much jumps out along the way. Example, you start out with 10 people on the invite list but this quickly grows because you can’t invite him and not her and you both have your own guest list and everyone on them, simply has to be invited in order to keep the peace. Then, you have the mother-in-law or mother who needs to help and simply has to do things HER way. (this doesn’t ALWAYS happen but it DOES happen from time to time)
If the bride and groom are from different nationalities, all kinds of problems can occur. Then you have to arrange and book the venue, minister, flowers, catering, invitations, music, photography and the list goes on and on and on. All of this sees the stress levels climb and it is a lot placed upon a young bride, even if she does have people eager to help. At the end of the day, you need to ask yourselves, who is the wedding day actually about and who needs to be the most relaxed and happiest on that day. The bride and groom will be the first to vote for themselves.
A wedding day is a joyous occasion and although great to have a celebration with family and friends, it can be extremely stressful for the bride who walks away thinking “Thank Heaven THAT is over!!” and then for the following six months she has to constantly hear about how things could have been better and if only she had done this a certain way and the music wasn’t quite right, the food should have been cold buffet because the weather happened to be soaring hot on that particular day and it caused problems and the cream went sour. Very sad but many brides will tell you, oh so true. Island Weddings have become popular because of all these reasons and many more.....
Bridal couples just don’t have the time or the patience to deal with the organising of a wedding and most young couples are very busy concentrating on their careers so there isn’t the extra energy to worry about all the finer details that goes with arranging a wedding. Wedding co-ordinators and planners are expensive and proven to be more expensive than an island wedding. Island weddings are completely stress free because your agent acts as your personal wedding co-ordinator. You decide on the destination where you would like to get married and you get quotes based on just the two of you. Make sure that you choose an agency that specialises in the planning of destination or Island Weddings. Ensure that legalities are included and can be arranged because some destinations do not allow for these. A good destination wedding planner will be able to tell you immediately if the destination that you have chosen takes care of legalities. Most packages are pretty basic but include everything that you will need to make your wedding day dream a reality. Make sure that the package includes legalities and find out exactly what documentation is required to make your wedding legal, a small decorated beach area where you will exchange your vows, a registrar to perform the ceremony, a bridal bouquet and buttonhole, soft music in the background, photographer and videographer, rose petals used instead of confetti and a great, private dinner celebration for the two of you with bubbly. Many packages also include breakfast in bed on the morning after.
Immediately thereafter, you are on honeymoon surrounded by blue oceans and pearly white sands and sunsets to die for. You can send a few photographs via email to your friends and family the very next day. Upon your return to your home country, you send out invites and everyone gets together over champagne to watch your wedding ceremony on a big screen. This way, you still receive all the wedding presents from friends and family and your bank balance is still intact. You could make a DVD copy for each of the guests.
Should you have guests interested in accompanying you, chat to your Island Wedding co-ordinator and ask him/her to put a basic quotation together for four nights. You can then send this out to everyone and they can decide if they truly want to be present at your wedding. Some might not be afford a basic travel package but they can make arrangements with your agent to pay it off over the months running up to the departure date. Here are a few tips when having a destination wedding with guests. Ensure that the destination does not include too many flying hours. Ask your consultant to arrange a celebration reception dinner on the beach. A barbecue on the sand with drinks and music is always a great idea.
If the guests travel package includes dinner, you can save money by taking your own table decor and then ask your consultant to arrange that one or two tables are set aside in the resorts dining area. Dinners are quite often buffets and many resorts have in-house live entertainment. So!!! Dinner will be taken care of and so will the music. In this instance, as bride and groom, perhaps you can opt to paying for drinks for everyone with a cut off limit. You can pre arrange this with your wedding co-ordinator.
Once again, it is highly important to choose your dates within your chosen destinations low season. Example, should you plan to get married in Mauritius, it would be highly recommended to choose dates between the 1st of May and the 15th September. This is when they have their low season and many specials are run during this time. This could cut your expenses in half.
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