Entries Tagged 'Destination Wedding' ↓

That is if you’re in Southern California. I wrote about the Queen Mary as a destination wedding location after my family and I had dinner there last Thanksgiving. The Queen Mary, built during the 1930’s, was the premier and most luxurious ocean liner of its time. Back in the day when crossing the Atlantic was done by the wealthy in first class elegance. The Queen Mary is now permanently docked in Long Beach, Ca and is preserved in its original beauty as a hotel and also houses several restaurants, ballrooms, and a wedding chapel. Well now I can tell you what it was like to actually stay there overnight and I took more pictures so you can get a better idea what a great wedding location this is.

First off, the staff treated us great! We had a few drinks in the beautiful art deco Observation Bar which was the original First Class Lounge on the ship. There you have a panoramic view of the city of Long Beach. We also had a great dinner in the beautiful Chelsea Restaurant. No that’s not us in the picture, I grabbed that picture from the Queen Mary website. We stayed in a King Suite on the ship, very roomy.

In the morning, we had coffee and pastries on the Sun Deck. Here are some pictures taken from where we were sitting.

For wedding location choices there’s the Sun Deck Gazebo on the stern of the ship.

Or, the indoor wedding chapel. There’s other locations too, just check with them if you are interested.

After the ceremony you can have your reception in one of the many grand ballrooms available. Then, your guests can stay right on the ship in one of the beautiful rooms. It truly was great imagining what it was must have been like on the ship crossing the Atlantic in the mid-1900’s and having the opportunity to relive a small part of history!

Your guests will love the experience and it will definitely stand out from the average wedding. For more info checkout the Queen Mary website.

Here’s a cute idea for place card holders if you are having a beach themed wedding. Your guests can keep these mini beach chair place card holder as a wedding favor and it can be used later as a picture frame.  The are 4″ tall and 4″ wide and handpainted.  If you want to get more information about it just click on the picture.  If you want to see a bunch of other beach wedding accessories just click this link: beach wedding accessories

Sorry for the lack of regular posting but we’ve been pretty busy setting up our new online Wedding Shop!

Our Wedding Plus just went live with our new Wedding Shop packed with pretty much every wedding accessory you can think of.  Including bridal jewlery, bridal veils, wedding bands, wedding cake toppers, unity candles, bridesmaid gifts, groomsman gifts and a whole lot more!  The selection is gigantic but we have a lot of easy links on the main page and there’s also a search feature to help you find what you want!

We plan on making the wedding shop landing page prettier in the near future but we wanted to get it online as soon as possible. 

As it turns out 8/8/08 has turned out to be quite the mystical date to get married. Evidently in some traditions around the world the number 8 has some symbolism much like last year’s 7/7/07 did. Not to mention the number 8 is the infinity symbol on its side symbolizing the lifelong commitment of marriage.

Sandals, recognizing the importance of the day, will be unveiling the Eight Steps of Love and the 8/8/08 Infinity Wedding Packages on August 8, 2008. I couldn’t find anything about them on their website but I did see it in their press release.

Here’s the details about the 8/8/08 Infinity Wedding Packages:

Beginning with a Preston Bailey Signature WeddingMoons(R) ceremony at sunset, the 8/8/08 Infinity Wedding package features all-new fresh floral decor designed by wedding planner to the stars Preston Bailey, an eight course gourmet dinner, and a two-tiered wedding cake designed by cake maestro Sylvia Weinstock. Priced at $4,888, this experience also includes the following, exquisite amenities:

– Personal Wedding Consultant
  — Spa Pedicure for the Bride
  — Half Hour Massage for the Groom
  — Solo Musician for Wedding Ceremony
  — The new Preston Bailey Caribbean Sunset Collection Decor for ceremony and reception, featuring fresh flowers including hot pink roses, gerbera daisies, gold lilies & birds of paradise draped in snapdragons and pale purple orchids, plus an organza overlay of bright oranges and warm pinks accented by fresh blossom napkin ties and jewel tone votives
  — Eight Course Reception for Bride, Groom and Six Guests
  — Chilled sparkling wine in Keepsake Beverly Clark Toasting Flutes
  — Two-tiered Wedding Cake by Sylvia Weinstock
  — Sandals Resorts’ Wedding Photography Package by Professionally Trained Photographer and Videographer Inclusive of:
  - Twelve - 5 x 7 Color Photographs in an Elegantly Appointed Album
  - Professional videography of Ceremony and Reception with Accompanying DVD
  — Rose Petal Turndown Service
  — Scented Bath for Two
  — Romantic Breakfast in Bed

And if you’re not quite ready to get married and just want to take part in the romance of 8/8/08, then here’s the details of the Eight Steps of Love.

The Eight Steps of Love package is priced at $888 per couple and includes the following divine amenities:

– Indulgent Breakfast in Bed with a Personalized Love Note for Your Special Someone
  — One Hour Morning Sail
  — Delicious Gourmet Picnic Basket Lunch
  — Romantic Couples Massage at the Exclusive Red Lane Spa(R)
  — Photo Session with One of Sandals Resorts’ Professional Photographers,  Plus A Memory Scrapbook Keepsake
  — Sparkling Wine and Chocolate Covered Fruit Delivered to the Guests’ Room or Suite
  — Candlelight Dinner on the Beach with a Private Waiter and Specialized Menus
  — Romantic Turn-Down Service with Eight Flickering Candles

Anybody getting married on 8/8/08? What are your plans and what does the day mean to you?

Here’s some additional information destination wedding information I received from the folks at Romance Travel Concierge  beyond what I wrote yesterday in my post “Not Your Average Destination Wedding.”  I wanted to include the text of an email I sent to them and their response just incase you had the same question and to give you an idea of the level of service provided whether you are a wedding planner or the bride & groom.

First here’s my question:

With your destination wedding packages, do you include/offer any advisory services or onsite assistance for the couple without a wedding planner? I believe when we talked you said you often work with the wedding planners rather than the couple.

Romance Travel Concierge’s response:

We work very closely with our partners (the hotels/resorts) who provide us with special wedding planning services, in advance + onsite. We also have our own inhouse wedding planners who will be on site if required/requested. For instance, you want a destination wedding in Africa - we can be there with you. We are 24/7, full service. Bar none.

Another example, one of our partners, a top tier hotel with a Swiss hotelier running the show as GM, personally buried an engagement ring in the ocean for a gal to find when snorkelling with her boyfriend, who was proposing that afternoon. We only work with professionals, inhouse + externally who provide an amazing level of service + detail.

So. onsite supervision, planning + coordination are certainly a large part of our product line-up! Having said all that, we are very much proactive in partnering with wedding planners. They have clients, we know how to put together all the travel aspects. A great partnership. We extend the same courtesies to wedding professionals as we do to our travel professional partners. Please know that we do business B2B (Wedding/Travel professionals) + B2C (brides/couples).

Hope this clarifies how we work with people + clients! Please do come back to me with any further questions! Many thanks, Rhonda!

Planning a destination wedding is hard! There are all the issues you would normally have in a local wedding plus the coordination of all the travel for you and your guests, event planning from a distance, plus you may have to deal with a different country’s laws and procedures all with no experience! Then there are all the things you didn’t even know to think about until it’s too late!

Wouldn’t it be great if you can just pay one price for the entire destination wedding package and have all the details covered? An amazing romantic experience, the food, the ceremony, the hotel, an amazing ceremony location already scoped out, plus pre-arranged pampering to top it off? I’m not talking about a Sandal’s pre-packaged wedding, this is something truly special!

Romance Travel Concierge is a service I found at A Soolip Wedding last weekend. They work with wedding planners or directly with couples to provide amazing prepackage destination wedding packages. Here’s some information they provided about their African Destination Wedding to Go package. It sounds amazing!

If you have a client or you’re a bride wishing to escape from a traditional wedding with a truly unique destination wedding, consider our Africa Destination Wedding To Go™. We include business class airfare from Los Angeles to Johannesburg for the bride + groom, platinum class domestic airfare within Africa, private round trip airport transfers for the bride + groom, 6 days/5nights in a luxury villa for the bride + groom, 6 days/5nights accommodations for eight (8) guests, daily breakfast, lunch + dinner for everyone, bottled waters and beverages in all rooms, plus spa treatments for the bride + groom.

And that’s just for starters. For the ceremony we provide a secluded beach for a barefoot, romantic wedding. The bride + groom each arrive on horseback with a guide horse as escort. The ceremony officiant + amazing local floral decor are included. Once the couple have said I do, it’s time for a Dhow cruise for the newlyweds + all of their guests around the bay with champagne toasts. After the cruise we gather the wedding party for a coconut tree planting ceremony in honor of the bride + groom, complete with a handcrafted commemorative plaque with the couple’s initials + wedding date. Then it’s onto the lavish BBQ seafood dinner reception on the beach, complete with wedding cake.

All of this is offered for one remarkable all inclusive price. Call us to learn more about our Africa Destination Wedding To Go™.

If you are interested in findingout more about Romance Travel Concierge checkout their website or contact them at (866) 459-6069.

If you’re planning a destination wedding in the Caribbean there’s a new resource available for you. Conde Nast Brides, Modern Bride, Brides.com and Caribbean Tourism Development Company have come together to provide a site called “Passport to the Caribbean,” a one-stop-shop for information on having a destination wedding in the Caribbean. On the site you can find out passport information, contact information to find out marriage requirements, and there’s information and links to help plan your trip.

This site, hosted by Brides.com, is also running a couple of contests. The first one going on now is the “Capital Wedding” contest. You can win a wedding in Washington DC and a honeymoon in the Caribbean. This summer they will be running the “Sparkle in the Sand Engagement Contest” where you can win a trip to the Caribbean to get engaged on the beach.

Here’s some destination wedding statistics from Conde Nast’s “American Wedding” Study 2006 that you might find interesting:

  — 16% of couples have a destination wedding which is a 400% increase in the last 10 years
  — average number of guests for destination wedding is 47 vs. avg # of 165 for a non-destination wedding
  — 25% of destination wedding couples honeymoon in the same location they were married

Are you having a destination wedding in the Caribbean or anywhere else? What is the most difficult part of planning your destination wedding?

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When you are hunting for love, the net is an awesome place to begin. By using free dating, you will be able to get good dating advice as well as get free personals.

I’m not sure about all the rules in this area, but I thought the Captain of a cruise ship could legally perform marriages at sea on cruise ships. But, I guess I was wrong. If anyone really knows the rules on this feel free to comment.

Anyway, it was just announced last week that Captains on Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Cruises can now legally perform weddings at sea. Before this point they could only perform vow-renewals at sea and weddings in-port with a local official. Why did this all of a sudden become legal? Here’s a quote from their press release:

“…with the recent re-registration of seven of Celebrity’s eight ships in Malta, where
Azamara’s two ships also are registered, government regulations have
changed to allow for captains to perform legal marriages while the ships
sail the seas of the world.”

Both cruise lines are offering wedding packages from the basic Captain performed wedding package starting at $2,500 to private full-blown receptions. Check the Celebrity Cruise and Azamara Cruise websites for details! This could be quite the destination wedding option!

Anybody planning a Cruise Wedding?

Don’t bother getting Preston Bailey to plan your wedding, unless you are planning on spending over $500,000. But, you can have a destination wedding designed by Preston Bailey for less than $5,000 at Sandals.

Preston Bailey put together a four destination wedding packages that include everything you need. By everything I mean the décor, bouquet, boutonnière, table setting, centerpiece, chairs, cake, and more.

Sandals calls their wedding packages Weddingmoons since you also have your honeymoon in the same place. Check them out here.

I never was a big fan of the all inclusive chain resorts like Sandals or Club Med but in the case of having a destination wedding this might be a good thing to look into. Planning a destination wedding can be pretty stressful, trying to coordinate all the issues with out being there can be a problem, especially if you are trying to do it on the cheap. If you can afford it, having a good wedding planner with experience handling destination weddings would take a lot of stress out of the planning process. But, these Sandals packages might just make this doable for the average couple.

Anybody have experience with Sandals or their Weddingmoons? Anyone planning a destination wedding? What problems have you had?

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Are money problems for your wedding getting you down?  Consider getting a credit card for your special day!  For additional info about cash back credit cards, the internet can be an excellent source. When looking for a Best Credit card or even reward credit cards, the web can give you many varying opinions.

I had the unique experience this last Thanksgiving to have dinner on the Queen Mary.  This was really something different and pretty interesting.  The Queen Mary was built during the 1930’s as one of the most luxurious cruise ships of the time.  It kind of reminded me of the Titantic but is actually bigger than the Titantic.  The Queen Mary was used for troop transport during World War II and served as a cruise ship through the 1960s.  Currently the Queen Mary is permanently docked in Long Beach, Ca.  

So why should you care?  As a wedding blogger, I’m always on the job!  First thing I noticed on the Queen Mary was the wedding chapel.  I also noticed the great food and the beautiful, history filled art deco salons available for receptions.  Not to mention the beautiful views from pretty much every where including the Sun Deck, which is also available for wedding ceremonies.  Plus, the 365 staterooms on the Queen Mary where you and all your guests can stay.

So, if you are looking for a unique and memorable wedding location checkout the Queen Mary!  It can be a very nostalgic destination wedding location!

Rhonda