Destination Weddings

Are you considering a destination wedding? Having recently been married abroad, I wanted to share with you our experience & some of the reasons why you should 100% go for it! Our day was so special, and I would do it all again in a heartbeat! 

No stress! - This one has to be top of the list, right? The hardest part for me was choosing the destination, you would think being a travel agent this would be an easy decision, but this was the exact reason it was incredibly hard, I think I must have been around the world twice over before finally decided! I had always said my dream would be to get married in the Maldives, never thinking I would even get to holiday there, to be honest! Because we had been the year prior, and we had got engaged there, it held a special place in both of our hearts anyway. I was torn between thinking do I want to experience somewhere completely new for us or do we stick with it as special, and we know it’s amazing… we opted to try a completely different island and after weeks of research, I finally booked LUX* South Ari Atoll. Safe to say, my final decision was the right one. As soon as I had made my mind up on the destination, the wedding planning was so easy and stress-free! I had my wedding coordinator, Jazz, on WhatsApp, and she would reply instantly to any questions at all hours, god bless her! She was amazing, I had a vision in my head of the set-up I wanted, the flowers, and the location, and she absolutely pulled it out of the bag. Flowers in the Maldives are expensive and harder to come by as they need to be imported, but she worked incredibly hard to get me what I wanted and in the end, managed to secure them for half the price we were originally quoted, they were perfect, we had so many compliments. 

When getting married abroad with most hotels & venues, your wedding coordinator will contact you a few months before your wedding, when you compare this to UK standards of booking things years in advance panic sets in a little, but you need to trust the process, these people are quite literally miracle workers you are more than welcome to contact them at any time like me, as soon as a question came into my head Jazz would get a message!

I think sometimes with a UK wedding it’s a lot easier for your guest list to spiral out of control, and you end up paying over the odds for your long-lost half-cousin to have the night of his life, but with a destination wedding you don’t feel the pressure, you can invite everyone you know, your immediate friends and family or escape just the two of you, which is exactly what we did. I know this isn’t for everyone, but it was perfect for us, neither of us liked being the centre of attention and the thought of standing there with all eyes on us, was an absolute no-go. With the money we would have spent on a UK wedding, we were able to have the most incredible wedding and honeymoon combined, memories we will treasure forever.

Whether you want to get wed on a powdery white sandy beach with clear blue skies and turquoise oceans in the background, or a winter wonderland wedding in an ice chapel in Finland or get hitched in Vegas (with or without Elvis of course) there’s certainly a package out there to suit all requirements & budgets. 

At LUX* South Ari there were 3 different wedding packages we could choose from, there were a few things that I wanted to add & remove from the standard package which wasn’t an issue, they were accommodating with our requests. The package included the wedding set up, bridal bouquet & groom buttonhole, symbolic wedding certificate, champagne & cake for the ceremony, tropical decorated buggy, room decoration, in-villa breakfast the morning after, private beach front BBQ with champagne, couples massage, bridal hair and makeup and photos. We upgraded the breakfast to a floating breakfast, added the videography package and removed the traditional bodu dancers and sunset cruise, having done this the year before. Our wedding date was booked for 3rd August, but they also booked our 4th August just in case of bad weather, which gave us that extra reassurance. Thankfully, we woke up to clear blue skies on the morning of 3rd August! 

The ceremony was perfect, we had our ceremony around 4.30 pm which entailed reading our vows, pouring coloured sand into one vase which was to symbolise our lives before marriage now joining as one, cand coconut tree planting (I love this one as I now have an excuse to return in a few years just to see how my tree is coming along ha!) and finally writing a mini love note to each other, placing this inside a wooden coconut and throwing this out to sea. We then got to watch the sunset before heading back down to the sandbank where we had our ceremony, for our private BBQ dinner. This was such a phenomenal experience, sat amongst our stunning wedding set up, candlelit, with our private chef cooking up an absolute storm, the food was spectacular and so much of it to the point they sent the dessert to our room as we couldn’t possibly eat any more! 

I woke up the morning after and cried, for all were still in paradise and had our floating breakfast and massage in the overwater treatment room to look forward to that day, I was just so sad it was all over after a year of planning, it was just such special day and I just didn’t want it to end. The following day the photographs were ready, so this sharp gave me my buzz back as it was like getting to relive it all over again! The day we left the island we got to see our video, which was overwhelming as it was so perfect, exactly what I had wanted. We feel so lucky that we have these special memories to treasure forever… I don’t think I will ever be obsessed with my photo album! 

So my answer, all day every day, to a destination wedding? What are you waiting for, let’s get it booked!!