Wedding Updates

I haven't done much this past month for my wedding. My mom is my official planner and she is back in the US until June. In the mean time, a friend is doing the invitations for us as a gift. He sent me an initial design and it looks nice! We still need to decide a few minor things: exact time and if we want to add our parent's names to the invitations. Small details but the date is getting closer. I also called my ex personal trainer to ask her to train me at least once a week since I am getting nervous. We will start in 2 weeks. She asked me to do lots of spinning to get my endurance up. I know she will be tough and I need that especially for my arms. I will write more updates as I get things done.

Since I wrote about Mexico last week I decided to share the wedding information that I collected when I was considering doing my wedding in Mexico. Maybe this will help other brides looking for the perfect place to get married. The idea started because we wanted a laid back ceremony at the beach. We live in Florida but the prices at the beach front hotels are too high to even consider doing it here. Plus I loved the idea of a destination wedding: a week of vacation with our favorite people and our wedding at the same time. We had been to Playa del Carmen before and we both loved the place. We didn't go together but we agreed that it was the most beautiful beach we had seen.

A coworker got married in Playa del Carmen a few years ago. I remembered looking at her beautiful wedding pictures a long time ago. I asked her for the details and she still had some valuable information. She recommended some places and I also contacted others for prices and information. She also advised me to get married in the US before. You have to do a series of things if you want to get legally married in Mexico that you shouldn't need to do if you don't live there. The list was long but I remembered a blood test, doctor's appointment, and arriving so many days before the wedding. Just make sure that you don't forget to read through if your plan is to marry in Mexico. I thought the best option was just to do a symbolic marriage.

My favorite place was Al Cielo Hotel in Xpu Ha Beach. Al Cielo is located just 20 minutes from Playa del Carmen. The reception site was for only 50 people but considering not everyone would make the trip we could maybe make it. I have a large family. I only have 3 sisters but we are close with our cousins, aunts, uncles, and of course we also have lots of friends. Probably 30 guests would be family and only 20 friends. Inviting 10 friends each was going to be though. The cost of the food and open bar were about $120 per person plus a $2,000 fee for the ceremony set up at the beach. It was around $8,000 plus the cost of the transportation, the photographer, and of course the week of vacation. When I contacted Al Cielo they were very friendly and sent me information right away. They also sent me this link with a full gallery of a wedding that took place in their hotel.

My coworker recommended this local photographer who did her pictures: Claudia Rodriguez . I contacted her but never heard back. I really liked her work. I would had tried harder to contact her if we had decided to do the wedding in Mexico.

One of Claudia's pictures

My favorite photographer Kyle Hepp will travel just about anywhere in the world to do your wedding. Make sure that you ask her. I had to stay on a tight budget to be able to afford our honeymoon but, if you don't need to worry about that please contact her.

I was also looking for hotels that offered wedding packages and they are very affordable but for smaller weddings (up to 30). Plus I didn't want to force our guests to stay at a particular resort. Most of the resorts charge a daily fee if any of your wedding guests are not guest of the hotel. I would feel really bad to invite someone to my wedding and tell them they need to pay around $100 to get in.

One of the most important issues when deciding our wedding date was that we had to either get married before May of 2011 or after November because of hurricane season. I know that they only happen once in a while but I did not want to be watching the weather channel non-stop the days before my wedding. Besides, I already heard a similar experience with weddings and hurricanes. My cousin got married in Cancun right after hurricane Wilma. My parents went and their pictures at the beach are sad. It was cloudy and the beach was dirty. Their hotel didn't have any damages but many people had to cancel their trip. It is very important when planning a destination wedding in the Caribbean to NOT do it between June and November.

My boyfriend and I decided that May was too soon and that it was going to be difficult for his family to travel from Ecuador to Mexico. Then we looked at the options in my hometown in Colombia. We looked at prices and we were going to pay about the same but we could invite more people. His family only needs to take a 1 hour flight to Colombia. Cali is not a tourist destination and, it will be more difficult to entertain our out of town guests the days before the wedding. I'm still thinking what we will be doing those days. I love my City and I have an idea of good things to do in Cali but, I'm afraid that they will get bored.

I'm getting ready to start to blog about the 20-day Euro Trip that my boyfriend and I took last year. Starting on March 31st since that is the day that we traveled last year. I will try to post things exactly on the date that we were at those places. By the way, I will always call my fiancé my boyfriend. In Spanish we are boyfriend and girlfriend until we are married. There is a word for fiancé, prometido, but people never used it.