Diadiamond's Planning Thread - Iberostar Varadero, Cuba - Sept.24.2015

[MissJen3]

I love that there is another Cuba bride! I am getting married November 20 in Cayo Coco 

[diadiamond]

I think $1375 for the Iberostar Varadero is awesome!  $1145 is SMOKING!!!  awesome!!

I have only been to Cuba once and went at the end of March and it cost us $1700 for the upgraded room, so I think you did well.   

 

We are pretty laid back too and didn't want a lot of fuss.  All we did was the bachelorette/bachelor parties.

Since we married in January we decided to do them before Christmas, so I was Nov 15 and Shawn Nov 29.   Not that I suggest you do them that far in advance, BUT I think you should do them more than a week before.  Your last weekend before you fly out is going to be SUPER busy getting last minute stuff in order and trying to do it with a hangover will not be fun.

Heck, I was fed SO much booze I didn't even make it to the bar. I was a hurting unit.   Just my two cents hehehe!!!

 

September really isn't that far away now!  

 

Like I have said before, Cuba has a special place in my heart and I love you are marrying here.

Hey hun!  Thanks.  I thought our quote was amazing!  I've seen so many other brides have much higher quotes.  I know that from Eastern Canada the quotes are pretty much $2,000.00.  

 

Thanks for the advice on the bachelorette!  I think I'll take that advice.  I'm already starting to feel the stress like there's just so much to do!

I love that there is another Cuba bride! I am getting married November 20 in Cayo Coco 

Congrats hun!  What resort are you getting married at?  I'm so happy to find another Cuban bride too!  There aren't that many of us on this site.

Invitations:

 

I really don’t know what the etiquette is with STD’s (Save the dates) and invitations.  I’m not really sure if there are rules for a destination wedding.  Dan and I wanted to give our friends and family about a year of notice so that they could save and book the time off.  Immediately after booking with our travel agent we scouted for invitations. 

 

During our wedding meeting the month before, aside from discussing the resort and the date we also talked about invitations and save the dates.  We decided that we wanted to send “save the date magnets” along with our invitations.  We loved the concept of a passport invitation and Wedding Paper Divas had an amazing tri-fold passport style invitation.  It was super easy to do and didn’t cost as much as I thought it would even with express shipping!  I wanted to get those invites out ASAP!  I was really happy with the quality of the product.  We paid extra for the pearl shimmer, the style of envelope, and the colour of the envelope.  We also bought the burgundy seals separate too (from Staples).  We wanted to incorporate travel into our invites.

 

I can’t remember where we found our save the date template from, but we did our magnets ourselves which saved us a lot of money.  We bought business cards and printed what we wanted on them then attached them to magnets.  We messed a few of them up, it was difficult to get the placement right.

 

For the bridesmaids and groomsman we sent little cards with a cute graphic picture on it asking them to be either a bridesmaid/groomsman.

We sent out about 23 invitations and invited about 52 people. 

 

It's been a while since we sent out our invitations.  We had 17 people (including ourselves) book with our TA and then we had 12 people book seperately.  We may have another 3 people coming as well.  So I'm thinking we're going to have a total of 32 guests attend our wedding!  We're really happy that our friends and family are able to make it.  We really didn't expect that many people.

 

 

Edited June 25, 2015 by diadiamond

[calgarybride2015]

Love. Great job!!!!

 

 

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[diadiamond]

Our Colour:

I have always dreamed of my wedding colour being Lavender since it is my favourite colour; however, Dan said that if it has to be purple he would rather it be plum.  I agreed since it seemed like a fair compromise and I do also like plum.  When I tried to envision it on the beach it just didn’t work for me.  When I picture a beach or destination wedding I think of something bright that pops and is vibrant.

Dan’s favourite colour is red.  I don’t mind red, but I wouldn’t call it my favourite colour.  I thought that it would be cool to incorporate both of us by having two different colours.  We thought about doing red and orange.  I tried to plan the wedding with the orange and red colour scheme, but it wasn’t working to me and I felt that having two colours would end up costing me more. 

At the end of it we decided on one colour which is red.  I think it will look amazing on the beach as red will definitely stand out. 

 

Theme:

At first I really wanted to go for the vintage theme.  I loved that even though it’s simple, it’s still elegant.  I really love mason jars!  They are amazing you can do so much with them.  I even got plastic mason jar tumblers for our favour bags.  Anyways, after a while I found I wasn’t really following the vintage theme so I changed my theme to “Red Romance.”  I just want it to be simple, elegant, romantic, and red.  

Sorry for not being more active with my thread.  A lot has changed since my last post.  I ended up getting a job downtown and getting used to my new schedule and routine have been taking up a lot of my time.  Also I'm finding that the closer I'm getting to the wedding the more there is to do!  I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed!

 

Also, with me having a job now this has enabled us to increase our budget a little bit and add some extras that we otherwise wouldn't have.  More on that coming soon =)  

 

I hope everyone is doing well!  How is your planning going?

[calgarybride2015]

Congrats on the new job!! As I said above love your invites and STDs. Turned our awesome.

 

I think plum would be awesome on the beach. Love that color too. Red is also beautiful. Can't go wrong with either.

 

Look forward to more.

 

 

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[acw271011]

@diadiamond  I love everything you've done so far! And red will be beautiful on the beach! Not long to go now. September is right around the corner. Mind if I ask which Marlin at which Walmart? lol We really have some similarities lol I work downtown too (University & Queen) and I'm also a law clerk and we're in Mississauga. We used Marlin when we got married and had a great experience but when it came time to try to put our October trip together the agent we used before just wasn't responsive. She's an outside agent now so it's really hard to get in touch with her. Her turn around time for responding totally sucked! Other than that we had a great experience with Marlin.

[TinkerSofi]

I love your invites! they look great and I think you did a great job with the STD's  

 

OMG! Your wedding date is coming up so quickly too! I'm having such a lazy week, not much planning going on. Sometimes life does get in the way and the wedding takes second place, that's ok though. As I get closer and closer I started to think that as long as the big things are done and planned for, everything else will come together so I'm not going to obsess over them. 

[diadiamond]

Love. Great job!!!!

 

 

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Thanks hun =)

@diadiamond  I love everything you've done so far! And red will be beautiful on the beach! Not long to go now. September is right around the corner. Mind if I ask which Marlin at which Walmart? lol We really have some similarities lol I work downtown too (University & Queen) and I'm also a law clerk and we're in Mississauga. We used Marlin when we got married and had a great experience but when it came time to try to put our October trip together the agent we used before just wasn't responsive. She's an outside agent now so it's really hard to get in touch with her. Her turn around time for responding totally sucked! Other than that we had a great experience with Marlin.

Thanks hun =)  I work near Yonge and Dundas!  We have so much in common =)  We went to the Walmart on Argentia near the 401 in Meadowvale.  Our agent is a nice guy and he's doing a good job, but if I were to do it over I think I would go with someone who was a previous destination bride.  I know our wedding is so soon, I'm getting really nervous!  Hope all is well with you =)

I love your invites! they look great and I think you did a great job with the STD's

 

OMG! Your wedding date is coming up so quickly too! I'm having such a lazy week, not much planning going on. Sometimes life does get in the way and the wedding takes second place, that's ok though. As I get closer and closer I started to think that as long as the big things are done and planned for, everything else will come together so I'm not going to obsess over them. 

 

Hey hun!  Thanks so much!  I know it's coming so fast I'm starting to panic lol.  Yours is too hun!  I think you're like a month away almost, right?  That's a great attitude to have!  I know that things will work out well for both of us.  I think some of it is that I feel like I should be more stressed out because I'm a bride lol.  

Our Wedding Bands:

Shortly after Christmas I thought that we should go shopping for our wedding bands.  I love deal hunting and I figured that we could score an awesome Boxing Day deal on our rings.  We went to Peoples shortly after Boxing Day just to browse, we didn’t plan on buying our rings that day. 

 

I envisioned us having plain white gold bands and I budgeted accordingly, but honey I was wrong!  I tried on a band that had diamonds on the top half and I fell in LOVE!  I had to have it!  Also, surprisingly my fiancé wanted a little bling on his too (he didn’t strike me as the type lol, but whatever makes him happy).  We loved our rings so much, AND we ended up getting 20% off of them.  With their lifetime protection plan and the rings we went over budget by $250.00.  We justified it as being okay because we do have to wear them for the rest of our lives so we should have something that we love.

 

I'm not sure if the picture uploaded properly.  If it didn't I'll try taking it again and posting it.

 

[calgarybride2015]

Yes please post pics sometimes I wish I had more diamonds lol I totally get it.

 

 

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[acw271011]

@@diadiamond. Now that's really funny.... That's our Walmart and the superstore across the street. I go from the Meadowvale Go station!