Malone - How to plan your own destination wedding: do-it-yourself tips from an experienced professional

Copyright 2016 by Sandy Malone

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Jane Sheppard

Cover photo credit: Dollar Photo

ISBN: 978-1-63450-753-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-754-7

Printed in China

C ONTENTS

I NTRODUCTION

I am an experienced professional destination wedding planner, and Im telling you that without the right tools and guidance, trying to do it yourself (DIY) for your destination wedding is a bad idea. When you DIY, you want to make sure your wedding will go off as flawlessly, and be as much fun for the bride and groom, as it would have if you had paid a professional planner. If youre committed to planning your own wedding thousands of miles away from home, do it the right way from the beginning so you get the desired results. You only get one chance to get it right in wedding planning.

I was the original DIY bride. No, really, I was. Twelve years ago, when I was planning my own Caribbean destination wedding, there was no Pinterest, no Instagram, no Wedding Wire, or any other really effective online wedding planning resource or tool available to help me plan a wedding on a tropical island located seven miles off the coast of another Caribbean island. The Knot and the Wedding Channel were in their infancy and mostly just portals for wedding guests to find bridal registries, so I had to do all the research myself. Planning from scratch, for a wedding location where almost everything publicly available was only printed in Spanish, and the Internet was ten years behind the continental United States (which means there wasnt any), was no easy task. Seriously.

Was I daunted? Hell no. Im a troubleshooter by nature and had spent the last ten years of my life putting out massive political fires for my clients and employers. After all, I had represented the Government of Puerto Rico, the wrong side of the do not call lists for telemarketers, and the payday loan industry during my tenure at public relations firms and in representing a big corporation. Tackling something as simple as planning my own destination wedding would be a snap, right? Id planned press conferences and major corporate and trade events for work, and Id planned several big-budget weddings in DC for friends, just for fun. I had no fear.

In actuality, I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I undertook the challenge of planning my own destination wedding. There werent even any decent how-to books to help me with the process. What a nightmare! But when the day finally arrived, my guests thought it was perfect, and in the end, that was what was most important to me. Unfortunately, I was stressed out and didnt have nearly as much fun as my guests. Thus, my goal is to provide other DIY brides and grooms with the tools to make the planning organized enough that you can, in fact, enjoy your own DIY wedding much more than I did.

The success of my own weddingand the lack of fun I had at the actual events because I was the one running everythingwas what eventually inspired my husband and me to move to Vieques Island and open our own Caribbean destination wedding planning company. It wasnt easy, but we did it. You name it, weve got itor we know how and where to track it down on Vieques or another island nearby. If you can afford it, I can find it. But it took me years to get this all figured out. Its not something I could have DIYd when I got married. And even though more destination wedding spots can be discovered online today, wedding planning in a remote location is still the biggest DIY challenge any couple could possibly undertake. But you can do it (and do it well) if you plan it like a professional would.

Sandy and Bill Malone on their wedding day, September 4, 2004, on Vieques Island.

Over the more than eight years Ive been planning weddings in the Caribbean, Ive seen the dramatic shift in the mentality of my brides and grooms, from them wanting me to do everything for them to the wedding couples wanting to do everything themselves .

Even doing it yourself has taken on a different meaning, though. Five years ago, it was just about hand-making wedding favors and creative place cards at home. Now, brides and grooms with the DIY bug want to ship entire centerpieces and boxes of homemade goodies. Never mind the fact that half of what they ship arrives in boxes that look like a fat man sat on them the entire trip, or that half of what they send (if they dont follow instructions) melts en route to the tropics. These couples are determined to create some part of their weddings themselves, if only so they can claim they did it. Its rewarding, because many times I was a part of helping them figure out how to actually make their DIY dreams become a reality. More often than not, my interns and I are the ones doing half the assembly and all the repair work when things arrive.

You can have a devastatingly beautiful ceremony setup with just a few tiki torches, a rose-petal-covered aisle, and an amazing view. (Photo by Morris Malakoff)

I gave up trying to steer my brides and grooms away from DIY. Theres no point in fighting them. After all, I was the original DIY bride, and I shipped thirty-two boxes of wedding crap to myself via UPS for my own destination wedding in Vieques, Puerto Rico. I even ordered specially-labeled bottled water and had it shipped. What was I thinking? Some brides spend less on their wedding gowns than I did on shipping alone! I hand-painted glass Christmas ornaments for each and every guest as a wedding favor, carefully wrapped them with gorgeous bows, and shipped ALL of it to the Caribbean. We couldnt even walk into our bridal suite at the hotel when we arrivedthere were boxes everywhere stacked taller than me! And we spent the better part of the next two days prepping and distributing everything for the guests. That was LOTS of fun and a great way to start our wedding weekend exhausted. But we did it ourselves and lots of other couples want to do it too. This book gives DIYers the opportunity to learn from my mistakes rather than repeat them. Im not just a wedding plannerI was a DIY bride before it was cool.