Bahama-mama wedding

[Clussy75]

Good morning everyone! Congratulations to everyone here! I've been reading all the excitement in everyone's notes and it's downright contageous (because I wasn't already excited enough to begin with? ). My name is Claudia and my fiance (Sean) and I just got engaged last week and are already excitedly planning our big day. We both knew we wanted fun for our family/friends, relaxing and surreal for us as well as less of a 'production'. We're tentatively planning on marrying November 11th in the Bahamas but we've actually never been before so we gots lots to learn about. We're also thinking of going with destinationWeddings.com as the planning service and wanted to see if anyone here's gone with them and what their experiences were. I'm going to search around these forums to catch up on all the info that's on here in hopes of gaining some more insight as well.

Happy Hump Day!
Claudia

[TA Jill]

Welcome Claudia! I looked into destinationweddings.com, but didn't like that I had to give them money before they did anything, so I ended up finding a TA that specialized in destination weddings and its worked out great. I think a couple of other girls tried dw.com and didn't really like it.

Tammy(host) on this site is also a TA that specialized in destination weddings, you might want to check in with her too to see if she could help

[BEACHBRIDEMA]

Welcome cant wait to hear about the details!
Sarah

[AnnR]

Welcome, and congratulations! I went w/destinationweddings.com as well, even paid my $50, but asked for it back eventually. In my opinion, they sell themselves as a destination wedding planner almost, and they are SO not that. They're just a travel agent, and not a very good one. It probably depends on the consultant you get assigned, but mine wasn't good at all. I needed help finding a location - I had no idea where to go. She just kept throwing Cabo quotes at me. Nothing wrong with Cabo, but I wanted options! I do think I've heard of some girls having a positive experience though.

Anyway, let us know if we can help, that's what we're here for!

[TammyB]

Welcome & congrats would love to hear your engagement story.. Everyone of the forum is really helpful so feel free to ask questions and we'll try to help in anyway we can.

[Tlseege]

Welcome! Congratulations on your engagement! Let's see the ring! Sorry, we really like photos!
Bahamas huh? That's exciting. What made you choose that, or lean towards there? Are you thinking All Inclusive, beach...?

[Clussy75]

First of all, thank you ladies so much for your warm welcomes so far. Holy cow, I read a few comments about this forum being addictive but... yeah, I'm hooked. I'm reading through all these different threads and getting more ideas so, in conclusion, I'm starting to think about other destinations to have more options. I really like the idea of an all inclusive resort if the price is right so I'm going to be picking at people's brains here, which I think is welcome, right? :-)

I've been to Punta Cana, DR in the past (Melios Caribe Resort) which I LOVED as well as to Cozumel and Cancun which I also really liked so am considering those locations. I'm reading more locations from all of your plans as well and hoping to get a better idea of where we really are going to tie the knot soon so that we can get to planning. Here I thought we could just pick a hot island in Carribean, tell our crew to come with and just do it. Uh, looks like it's more work. I'm really looking forward to this planning though, I think it'll be pretty exciting. I've been engaged just 7 days and already we're in the thick of planning. Might as well do it right...

Off to float around more of these fun threads!

[TA Jill]

Your welcome to ask all the questions you need, thats what we're here for.

And you can make your wedding as simple or complicated as you want to, all of our weddings are so different, you'll get tons of different ideas here and then you just have to decide whats important to you.

One tip, I noticed you have chosen a date 11/11/07, I don't know if you're stuck on that or if you don't care about changing it, but a lot of the weekends book up really quick at the resorts and some only do one wedding a day, just something to keep in mind when you're looking!

[leigh miller]

hi claudia - welcome to the forum. dont give up on the bahamas yet!

i shot two weddings there and i spent my honeymoon there. heres a link to the post on my blog about my honeymoon - Leigh Miller Photography

and here are a few great places in the bahamas to have weddings :)

harbour island - Rock House Harbour Island Bahamas
The Landing : A Boutique Hotel on Harbour Island, The Bahamas

eleuthera - capricorn house | Eleuthera Bahamas Vacation Rental Home on the Beach
Cocodimama

here are where i shot one wedding in the bahamas, the westin and the sheraton are on the same property -
Westin Grand Bahama Island Hotels: Westin Grand Bahama Island Our Lucaya Resort - Hotel Rooms at westin.com
Sheraton Grand Bahama Island Hotels: Sheraton Grand Bahama Island Our Lucaya Resort - Hotel Rooms at sheraton.com

please let me know if i can answer any questions about the bahamas. congrats!!!

[PaulaV]

Welcome Claudia!