Wanderlust Traveler: Destination Wedding

Shyawn and I on our wedding day.

Although this blog typically covers my experiences while traveling, this specific entry will be a review of our wedding that occurred in Playa del Carmen, Mexico in November of 2012. Since we had a destination wedding in another country, I figured it qualified as fitting within the travel category!

Immediately once Shyawn and I were engaged, we knew we were going to have a destination wedding for a number of reasons:

We wanted to avoid having the huge traditional American wedding at all possible costs.
We were hoping that having a destination wedding in Mexico would cost significantly less than your typical aforementioned traditional American wedding (since we were footing the bill ourselves).
Although Shyawn and I have traveled significantly, with the exception of my sister, very few other people in our families have traveled beyond the United States so we were hoping that since we were planning the trip others would follow suit and join us. We had a 19 month engagement, which provided our family members lots of time to save money and request time off from work.
I had always wanted to have a destination wedding. It just made sense to the traveler in me.

Selecting the destination:
Once we had decided that we were definitely going to have a destination wedding, the next choice was where. Although my dream destination wedding would have occurred in the vineyards of France or Italy, I knew that a far away locale such as those would have prevented many of our friends and family from attending due to the costs involved. I wanted to make the trip as affordable as possible for our family and friends so we both agreed that a beach wedding somewhere in North America was the next best option. From there we narrowed our decision down to Mexico or somewhere in the Caribbean. Since there are no direct flights to anywhere in the Caribbean from Seattle (and many islands require having to take three flights) the Caribbean was ruled out and Mexico came into play. From Seattle, there are multiple direct flights to resort towns on the west coast of Mexico. However, of those friends and family members who had been to Mexico, most had already visited places like Cabo San Lucas or Puerto Vallarta and we really wanted to try and find a destination that most people hadn't visited yet.

Additionally, I also wanted to have the wedding in a locale that I was somewhat familiar with while it was important to Shyawn that we have white sand beaches and turquoise waters. So, immediately we knew we would have the wedding on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. We had both traveled there previously before we were together (Shyawn to Cancun and I to Tulum) so we felt comfortable advising and recommending the area to our friends and family. And although it didn't have the direct flight that we wanted, we hoped that since only a few of our friends and family members had visited the Yucatan Peninsula previously it would be worth taking the two flights to get to someplace new!

Selecting the resort:
Our next major decision was to, of course, decide on which city we would stay in and whether or not we would go the all-inclusive route. Shyawn initially wanted to go with Cancun and stay at one of the Riu all-inclusives as that was the hotel brand he had stayed at previously. I was open to the idea of Cancun, but not so sure about staying at an all-inclusive. I had never stayed at one, and for myself, personally, the idea of being stuck at a large resort for more than a week with the same food terrified me. One of my biggest enjoyments in traveling is trying new restaurants and I knew that would be much less likely at an all-inclusive (since the price of your food and alcohol is included in your room rate). However, Shyawn brought up some good points in favor of the all-inclusive route: we would be traveling with a large group of people, many of whom had never left the United States. The concept of traveling to another country overwhelmed them, so selecting an all-inclusive, where all of your food, drink, and hotel is included in one single price takes a lot of the stress out of the equation. Additionally, all-inclusives are typically well-equipped to handle a destination wedding; they've got areas for the ceremony, reception, local vendors they work with for flowers, music, etc. It would require much less work on our end to plan the wedding, which sounded very appealing to me. So, I agreed that for a destination wedding of our size, it made sense to do it at an all-inclusive.

Initially we had decided on having the wedding at the Riu Palace Las Americas in Cancun. It was a moderately priced all-inclusive; essentially we wanted to get the most bang for our buck. However, after we had signed an agreement to have the wedding at the resort, I began to look at pictures on Trip Advisor and wasn't happy with the physical look of the beach. Since the beach in Cancun is man made, there are very few palm trees and the beaches tend to be very narrow. When I initially envisioned a destination wedding in Mexico, I saw palm trees and wide, expansive beaches in my mind. Neither of these were really an option in Cancun. So, we decided that, based on my preferences, Playa del Carmen (located about 45 minutes south of Cancun) would be a better fit. The beaches there are world famous: wide and beautiful with lots of palm trees. There were also several Riu resorts to choose from in Playa del Carmen and we ultimately ended up going with the Riu Palace Riviera Maya. It was the nicest of all the Riu resorts in Playa del Carmen but was still within our affordability range for our guests ($2500-$3000 per week, hotel and airfare combined for two guests from Seattle). You can find my review of the resort here.

Trip logistics for guests:
Once the resort was picked, and a date set, we began notifying our guests of the details. We set up a wedding website through eWedding (which I highly encourage all those with destination weddings to do) and contacted a travel agent with Destination Weddings to help assist our guests with their travel plans. I had never used a travel agent previously but had read that for destination weddings travel agents were helpful for those family members who had never traveled before. Additionally, I was given the impression that the travel agent could secure the best possible rate for the air/hotel/transfer package for our guests (which later proved to be incorrect with the travel agent we used). However, the biggest push for us to recommend a travel agent for our guests was that the specific agent we used accepted a payment plan for the hotel portion of the trip. This made paying for, what some considered to be, a very expensive trip much more manageable since they could break it out into monthly payments. Aside from the flexibility of accepting payments, our travel agent was a pain in the butt. She promised us the world and didn't come through with anything except her payment plan. Considering about half of our guests booked directly through her, I was hoping that Shyawn and I would receive some sort of benefit or discount but we received absolutely nothing. Additionally, she couldn't match the cheapest package prices that were being offered directly on the Riu website, which was incredibly frustrating. She wasn't timely in responding to our guest's emails (I received many complaints) and the actual booking process with her company required us to use this antiquated and confusing website that literally none of my guests understood. So in the end, for all of the hassle she created with our experience, I wouldn't recommend using a travel agent.

We initially thought that we would maybe have 20 friends and family members attend our destination wedding but in the end about 40 people came stay with us! About two-thirds of our guests stayed an entire week at the resort while the rest of our guests stays ranged from four to five days.

As a bride and groom, when planning a destination wedding be prepared to respond to five million questions from your friends and family. I didn't mind it at first, but as the wedding day approached, I started to get annoyed with the constant questions. I feel terrible for saying this but I just didn't have a lot of patience towards the end with the inexperienced travelers. Thankfully, realizing how stressed out I was getting, my wonderful sister stepped in and helped out a lot with this! I started a new job about two months prior to our wedding that was incredibly demanding and very intense so that also threw an extra wrench into the stressful wedding process.

Shyawn and I arrived at the resort eight days prior to our wedding and stayed an additional two days after our wedding. We encouraged our guests to stay with us the week prior to the wedding in hopes that it would allow both sides of the family and all of our friends to get to know one another prior to the wedding day. While my thought process actually worked out quite well (we are all one big happy family now!), it unfortunately back fired on me in a way I hadn't even expected. I wore a very form fitting (fit and flare) wedding gown in which there was no room to budge. Even just an additional pound or two would result in the dress changing from fitting perfectly to being way too tight. So what was the problem? Well, we were at an all-inclusive resort where the drinks were flowing and the food was unlimited. Additionally, I was surrounded by 40 of my family members and friends whom were all relaxed and on vacation. It was easy and natural for them to drink and eat. Me? Not so much. I had to really watch what I ate and barely drank one drink per day. Not only did I have to worry about the weight gain from extra calories (and lack of exercise) but I tend to get bloated quite easily from alcohol. It was hard to have a good time when I had to worry about every calorie that went into my body while no one else did. For this very reason, in hindsight, I wished I would have had the wedding occur at the beginning of the week. That way, I could have relaxed and had a great time and drank and ate as much as I wanted to with my friends and family.

Tours with guests:
As described in my sightseeing blog on Playa del Carmen, Shyawn and I encouraged all of our guests to participate in tours off of the resort as much as possible, We even went so far as to schedule and coordinate an all-day tour to Chichen Itza through Mayans' Explorers as I personally think that anyone who travels to the Yucatan and doesn't take the time to visit this amazing ruin is doing themselves a great injustice. Of our 40 guests, 23 went along on the tour. I highly encourage all bride and grooms to organize some sort of day-trip for your guests since many of my family members would not have left the resort had I not taken the time to organize the tour for them, which would have been a complete shame.

Out of town bags:
Initially when planning our wedding, I decided that doing out of town (OOT) bags for our guests was out of the budget. However, I quickly changed my mind when I began to realize how fun it would be for me to find and collect the items and how it was a great way to thank our guests for coming all the way to Mexico for our wedding. I was lucky enough to find awesome beach bags at Dollar Tree (this required taking several trips to multiple Dollar Tree locations). Additionally, many of the items I included in our bags came from our local Costco Business center making it much more affordable than I originally thought it would be. We included the following in our bags:

Anti bacterial gel (Dollar Tree)
Hand wipes (Dollar Tree and Costco)
Sunscreen (Dollar Tree)
Aloe vera gel (Dollar Tree)
Chapstick (Dollar Tree)
Tums (Costco)
Pepto bismol tablets (Costco; these were unfortunately used by many of our guests as there was a nasty stomach virus that invaded the resort during our stay)
Advil (Costco)
Insect repellent wipes (REI)
Gum (Costco)
First aid kit (Walmart)
Anti-bacterial ointment (Amazon)
Kleenex (Costco)
Dramamine (Costco)
Shout wipes (Amazon)
Energy shots (Costco; these were a hit!)
Custom beer bottle coozie (Unfortunately the resort didn't use any glass beer bottles so these went un-used, Instead, I would recommend a custom large plastic drinking cup since the glasses the resort uses for their drinks are tiny)

When it was all said and done, the amount we spent ranged between $12 for a single person's bag to $19 for a couple's bag, with our average cost per person working out to be about $13. Once we had everything purchased for the bags, we then had to figure out how in the heck we were going to get everything down with us to Mexico. It may sound simple, but it wasn't. We had a lot of items that were quite heavy. We ended up having to check five bags to Mexico, in addition to our carry on items. Thankfully, they all arrived safely but it was somewhat of an ordeal. We then put all of our bags together on our second night, which took several hours. However, it was worth all of the hassle and effort it took as our guests absolutely loved them. Nearly every single guest used their beach bag each day when heading down to the pool and/or ocean. It was so fun seeing our bags throughout the resort!