diadiamond

Hello, I just wanted some clarity on what this means as I do not wish to violate any of the rules. Does this mean that we can't share any facebook group links or tell other members about facebook groups on the forum or through private messages? I love this forum a lot, it's been super helpful in the planning of my wedding, but I find that there isn't a lot for Cuban brides here; whereas, on Facebook there is. I do love being a part of the community on this site though which is why I keep coming back and posting.

@@MrandMrsBonitto2016 Thanks hun =) I know it's so exciting!!! I've been on this forum for almost a year and a half and I'm finally at the point where I'm doing stuff =) @@acw271011 Thanks hun! I'll admit I got really lucky with my dress. I was on Facebook in a brides group and this woman was selling a dress she bought for her daughter that her daughter didn't like and when I saw the pictures and realized it was a size 18 I had to at least make the effort to try it on. It was never worn and I got it for $350. I know that there are some websites out there devoted to selling second hand gowns, I don't know the names, but I know they are out there. I went shopping at David's Bridal and their dresses weren't that bad. I liked one that was $599. Hopefully the dress you want becomes available for you.

@@rachelia160 Thanks for the advice hun! I might try it at a different salon and see how it works out. There's still quite a bit of time till my wedding. I'm also guilty of peeling them off which I now know I shouldn't do.

Hi Brides! I LOVE reading planning threads in my spare time. I love that you brides want to share your stories and weddings with us and I feel like I'm a part of the planning process when I read them. I learn so much from them and I love watching your wedding journey unfold. (Hope I don't come off as creepy I'm just a fan). Anyways, I have a little over 4 months until my wedding and I've been looking forward to starting my own planning thread for so long. My question is how far in advance of your wedding should you start your planning thread?

I hope you can see it, but that's a picture of my dress! It needs to be altered a bit (needs to be bustled, the bust needs to be adjusted, the panel in the back needs to be replaced, and some of the beading needs to be replaced). I bought my dress second-hand and got a really good deal on it.

I have the same questions with nails. I know my wedding is a while away, but I've been thinking about the small details lately and this was one of them. Since I am on vacation I do want to do the things that I love. I love the pool and the beach and doing lots of activities. A regular manicure will usually last a day or two. I was thinking of doing either shellac, gel, or Jamberries. I've had shellac before and it ruins your nails, but it does last a while and doesn't chip. Also, I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but my shellac nails usually look dirty after about a week. I shower and wash my hands often, but it just looks dirty. I like gel nails, but I'm worried that they might break and I'll have no way to fix them. My friend is a Jamberry consultant and I do really love the product it does last a long time if you apply it right. I was thinking of taking some jamberry wraps with me and just apply it the night before my wedding so my nails will look good. I'm not sure what I want to do yet.

@@TinkerSofi What's your wedding colour?

I'm having the same issue! I wanted to do it just the two of us before we left, but my FI didn't like that idea as he felt like he was betraying his family. So I came up with the idea of having a small ceremony with just his parents, my mom, my step-dad, and our siblings either before we leave or when we came back. Nothing big just maybe a city hall ceremony and dinner or something. My MIL hasn't been supportive of our choice to have a destination wedding so at first she tried to take over and plan it. Then said to me "If you're not getting legally married there what's the point of your wedding why not just have a wedding here instead, no need to go to Cuba since it's not a 'real' wedding." My feelings were beyond hurt by this. We are putting the significance on our Cuban ceremony on the beach the legal ceremony is literally just signing a piece of paper. We would have done a Cuban legal ceremony, but we didn't want to wait up to a year just to get our marriage certificate. At the end of it we decided to do a small legal ceremony after we come back on the day of our anniversary with just parents and siblings at a restaurant. My FI had a talk with him mom about the wedding and she's backed off quite a bit. We still want her involved, we just want to be the ones to plan our day.

I'm getting married in Cuba so I don't think this will be a huge issue. I've been to Cuba twice before and they have internet, but you can only use it in the lobby on their computers. The internet is slow and I wasn't able to read the CAPTCHA to get into gmail or Facebook. I love the experience of being "unplugged" we're so bogged down by information and distraction it's nice to get away from it for a while and focus on the simple things in life. If somehow my resort does have a good internet connection I don't mind people posting pictures of my wedding on social media.

We had asked 10 people to be in our wedding party and only 6 members of our wedding party have confirmed. I chose not to have a MOH because I didn't want the possibility of my MOH not coming. Also, I didn't want to value the friendship of one girl over the others. We have decided to give a cash gift to the members of our wedding party that are coming to the wedding. We are giving them $100 each. We realize that we are asking a lot of them to come to Cuba for our wedding so we felt that a cash gift would ease the burden a bit for the cost of the trip. I'm also letting the members of my bridal party choose their own outfits as long as they are red. Again, I realize that I'm asking a lot of them to come and I know that a lot of my bridal party is on a budget. One of my girls got her dress at Forever 21 for $20 and it looks great! I will also love seeing them express their individuality on my wedding day. My fiance has a best woman since his best friend is female. Most of the bridal party is on my fiance's side and I haven't decided if I'll just have it be uneven (my brother and friend on my side and everyone else on my fiance's side or divide them evenly).

I remember reading on Weddingbee a while ago when I started planning my wedding that people thought that Destination weddings were selfish. It totally ruined my mood about having a destination wedding, but after doing some more research I decided to have one and never looked back. My wedding is less than 5 months away and I couldn't be happier! Most of our family loved the idea of us having a destination wedding as they also got a vacation out of it. Pretty much everyone we invited loves to travel. My MIL wasn't on board at all though and she kept trying to pressure us into having a traditional wedding. She even threatened to not come to our wedding! I don't think having a destination wedding is selfish at all! It is YOUR day after all and YOU should be able to do it YOUR way. A wedding is the celebration of a marriage, two people pledging to spend the rest of their lives together. I hate how that message has become so lost. I think that it would be selfish to be upset with people who cannot make it for a good reason. As destination brides there's a lot of challenges that we have to face. Not having everyone I invited to the wedding RSVP for my wedding was one of mine. My best friend can't make it, and that upset me a bit. Some people that you think won't come may surprise you. The biggest lessons I've learned through my planning experience are not to set too many expectations and not to take to heart the opinions of others. You are planning your dream day and as long as the two of you will be married the day will be perfect.

Thanks for asking this question! I have a large family, but I'm not close and don't like most of them. I invited 3 of my aunts and their kids along with two of my best friends and their plus ones, my mom, dad, step mom, step brothers, and step sisters. My fiance is not close with his family either so it's just his mom, dad, sister, and a few of his friends. I invited more people than my fiance only because I have a HUGE family and invited the ones that I'm closest to. He has a smaller family and invited only those that he was close to. I never put a limit on the number for him, but my MIL seems to think that I have and that I'm intentionally trying to take over and control the wedding. Anyways we have 17 confirmed and more people booking last minute so we're expecting 30 people. I have had some family members take it upon themselves to invite others to my wedding. My MIL tried to invite her cousin to our wedding without asking us. My fiance got into a huge fight with her about it. I'm not sure if she's coming or not. Also, my dad tried to invite his cousin to my wedding and I said no. I'm less than 5 months away form my wedding and I've already bought my favours and stuff. Sorry for the huge rant I just hate how etiquette just goes out the window for a DW. I think that people feel that since they are paying to come to your wedding they should have a hand in planning it as well.

I read part two first =p but these are great tips! I'm a bride on a budget and we chose to have our wedding during hurricane season to made the trip economical for us and everyone coming. We were able to afford having our wedding at a 5 star resort in Cuba because of the time of year and skipping on some wedding traditions as well.

Love your bags! So adorable. I started buying things for mine recently as my wedding is less than 5 months away. I like the life saver candy's and I think I'm going to add those to mine.

Congrats hun! We're less than 5 months away!

I'm so sorry for you loss hun! My thoughts and prayers are with you. I think everyone here has given really great advice. I had a similar situation. I had sent out my invitations and save the dates and the deposit deadline was about a week away when my fiance's grandmother passed away. It was incredibly awkward to talk about it with my fiance when he was really grieving. Since his side was just his mom, dad, and sister and they had already told us they were coming we paid their deposit for them and they paid us back a few months later. I felt so bad to do wedding planning during that time, but we were told that if we didn't get enough people we would lose the quote we were given and we wouldn't qualify for the free trip and we would lose our date. I was also worried that I came off as inconsiderate for thinking about my wedding during a family crisis. Since you still have some time If I were in your position I would wait, but still be in contact with them. I also think that hand delivering that invitation would be a nice gesture and letting your uncle know how special your aunt was to you.

Really good tips! I am a very detail-oriented person and I have never been to the resort I'm getting married at you're article helps to keep me into perspective and let the beautiful scenery do the talking.

Hi Brides and other readers! It's been quite a while since my last post. Life's been really busy and honestly I've been using Facebook a lot for wedding planning lately. There's some really great groups on Facebook for destination brides. You should check them out if you haven't done so already. There are brides groups that are resort specific and those are really helpful. This forum has also been extremely helpful during the planning process. During the past 8 months life has really changed for me both positively and negatively. I lost my job back in December and have been unemployed ever since. This has really impacted our budget, so we're doing all we can to keep costs down even though we had saved up quite a bit for our wedding. It's been difficult trying to find work when you don't have much experience in your field. My mother had to have surgery and I had to take care of her for a while. I got into a car accident in back in mid-February and it took me a while to fully recover from it. My FI and I ended up moving in together at the beginning of February. Because of my recovery and other health issues I ended up gaining a lot of weight which had me feeling really depressed for a while. There was a good few months where I debated cancelling my wedding because I was really depressed over everything that had happened. My fiance has been amazing to me during the past while and very supportive! Sometimes I feel that brides lose focus on what's really important and get caught up in all the little details. We often forget that we are getting married because we want to spend our life with that special person. I know I'm guilty of getting caught up in the little details. After everything we've been through this year we've happily decided to go ahead with our wedding! I've decided that at the end of the day all I want to do is marry my best friend and if I've done that then there's nothing to regret or change because I've gotten what I wanted. I may not be where I want to be, but I'm happy with where I am. I'm learning to relax and let life happen. To roll with the punches and deal with situations as they come instead of crumbling because something didn't go right. I definitely want to make it a habit to post here more often. I consider it my wedding planning diary where I can vent and hopefully help other brides with my experiences and connect with other brides. Until next time, Dia Diamond

Hi Brides! I haven't seen many September 2015 brides around here or on the Facebook pages. I'm getting married on September 24, 2015, at the Iberostar Varadero in Varadero, Cuba. Where are all my September 2015 brides at? Where are you getting married?

@@Pienkowskin Hey hun! Thanks! I'm about 5 months away from the big day. I'm just going to use the resort photographer as I don't have the funds to bring my own. Also I heard that they are giving photographers that you bring a hard time. @@JoannaBanana I hear you on that girl! I chose my resort and sometimes I still question if I chose the right one. I haven't been to the resort I chose so it makes me a little nervous, but I have been reading and hearing good things from people who have been to the resort. We chose Iberostar Varadero because it had better reviews than the other resorts we were thinking of and we really wanted our guests to feel comfortable (most of them have never been to Cuba before). I really wanted Iberostar Laguna Azul because the spa terrace looked so beautiful, but my fiance said no because of the slightly lower ratings.

@@shanb thanks hun! I see you're getting married at Paradisus Rio de Oro in Holguin. My parents went there and absolutely loved it! My step-dad is a vegetarian and my mom only eats halal meat, but they both enjoyed the food options they had. You picked a great resort too!

September 24, 2015, at the Iberostar Varadero in Varadero, Cuba! I can't believe I'm less than 9 months away!

Hi Everyone! I was just wondering if there are any brides on here that are getting married in 2015 at the Iberostar Varadero? My wedding date is September 24, 2015.