I feel so overwhelmed

I've spent hours, days, weeks trying to pick a location and I'm beginning to feel a bit discouraged. We've decided we would like to get married in the islands, but that's about as far as I've gotten. I look at various resorts and think one things great, then see another and fall in love with that setting instead.....what's important to me is that it's affordable for my guests, so I would like a place with the option to be al inclusive. I am also looking to spend n more than $10,000 on my room, flight, ceremony and reception. Does this low amount mean I need to sacrifice beauty? I was hoping for live music (steel band or solo guitar), very simple and elegant reception...possibly a buffet or even at a restaurant included in the all inclusive. I fell in love with St. Lucia because of the lush mountains and beautoful beaches, but it seems so expensive.

Im looking at inviting 40, so i'm thinking 30 will prob come. PLEASE HELP!

(btw we're planning for May/June 2010)

I know how it feels to be overwhelmed with all of the planning. You may want to speak to a travel agent to get some information about a location that would best fit your needs. Some inexpensive places with lots of all inclusive resorts are Jamaica, Mexico and DR.

Once you find a spot and set a date it should all fall into place.

Good Luck!

Thanks for the kind words:) I finally just gave in and signed up with destinationweddings.com. I'm waiting for a TA to contact me. Thanks again!

Start looking for packages now. There are alot of buy so many nights and get a few free and % off discounts due to try to boost travel in this sucky economy. Most resorts offer "free" wedding ceremonies with upgrades, depending on the amount of people you are having.

A good idea is if you plan to register for gifts.... place the resort or Travel Company on your registry to help curb some of the costs or to help pay for your honeymoon!

We're getting married in Jamaica at the Riu Palace Tropical Bay and then going to Sandals Ochos Rios for our honeymoon.

The Riu breaks down the cost of xtras, and the steel drums were about $300 or so. Each resort is different.

For 7 guests for resort, flights,and ceremony ours came to about $6,000.00 for our 5 nights and 3 nights for guests. Sandals for 7 nights cost us about $3200.00 for a honeymoon suite villa ocean view butler suite with villa pool. We're sticking with a Classic Package for the wedding, which is $695.00 and includes everything from dinner reception,music,pics,ceremony,flowers,etc...

Just search the different resorts and search the wedding packages to see what they offer.

Keep in mind that when you find "THE" resort, you must put in a request for a date and time FIRST. Then they will get back to you via email to confirm that date is available. The, you can book your vacation days around your chosen date. Most resorts require that you be on their property for 2 days prior.... so also check this policy.

Also, it's a good idea to purchase travel protection insurance. This allows you to get a full cancelation refund for the hotel portion of your trip if neccesary due to weather, health, or anything.

Happy Hunting!

I just want to say that we had just under 6 months left when we did our site visit and started planning and things are finally going really well. I've talked with people who are planning over a year away and are struggling with hotels and agents that aren't ready to negotiate much because their 'rates' and packages aren't yet published that far out. I kind of feel like our short timeline helped us in negotiating. Of course I wish we had been able to give our guests a little more time to plan and save, but we knew we'd do DW about 10 months out - just took a while to pick the destination... Now, we're less than 4 months away and our hotel wedding planner doesn't even want to start planning for a few more weeks. We're excited about Aruba but I can't say there are many great deals to be had there...

January is a much better month so I expect you'll have a lot of options. At this point I would just say to try to have patience and be prepared for ups and downs. Somehow I was naive and thought this would just be fun. Lately, as soon as I think I'm totally going to get depressed, something will click into place for me. I'm sure its going to be worth it. Good luck!

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Originally Posted by goNDmay9 My goodness. I read this post and thought - did i just write that?? That is exactly how i am feeling. I call it wedding ADD. My issue is that our initital preferred date is in Jan 2010! ahhhhhh. We too are just trying to find some good deals so we don't have to sacrafice a lot of beauty. Happy Wedding Hunting and keep us posted when you find something.

I think we all went through the same thing when it came to picking the resort - there's so many and it's really overwhelming to look at all the resorts, islands, packages, etc.

Every island is beautiful - I have not seen pictures from any one of them that were not gorgeous. Some have better beaches, some have more mountains, but basically, if you get married on an island, you will have a gorgeous setting.

That being said, you have to look at which ones will be more affordable. Like Sheree10 said, Jamaica, Mexico and DR tend to be less expensive, and having been to all 3 places - all beautiful.

I chose Jamaica because it was my favorite island, and there were plenty of resorts to choose from. Once I picked the island, I started looking at the resorts and their prices, as well as their distance from the airport.

This is the hardest part - once you do this, you will feel much better -

also if you can, request sally from destinationweddings.com - she's really nice and good at following up.

Yes, we're getting married at the Aruba Marriott. I have to say they are terrible to communicate with but I do think they'll do a good job. Because we're getting married in the fall we don't have a lot of options thanks to hurricane season, hence our choice of Aruba. Our first choice was Puerto Vallarta but then swine flu hit as we were getting ready to visit and we decided we didn't want to take any chances with the wedding only 6 months away.

We're excited but its definitely expensive and I often feel like they're about 10 years behind some other locations (for example I have been unable to find Chiavari chairs to rent). There are probably places you can get a lot more for your money but we had our date picked and wanted to keep moving forward.

Good luck! Wherever you choose I'm sure it will be beautiful.

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Originally Posted by goNDmay9 thanks cjaruba! aruba is on our list too - but then again everything seems to be on our list ha! i just keep telling myself to keep looking and the right venue will hit me and everything will work out. we have already been telling people it is a destination wedding too - just not sure where. I have already alerted most people to go ahead and get or renew their passports because we are going somewhere!!   are you getting married on the resort?