Weddingbee Blog

Dreaming of a destination wedding?

After 10 months of long distance planning, my idea of the process was very different from the actual experience, both good and not-so-good. And looking back, I wished someone gave me a little survival guide before my planning adventure began. And now that almost all is said and done, I created a little survival guide of my own, with my story and the tips and tricks that I hope will be enlightening and reassuring for all awesome DW brides out there.

Act 1 - 14-12 Months Before:

The Spot: Mr. O and I knew that we wanted to say I do with sand between our toes, along the sea. But what beach? What island?

We had our hearts set on Boracay, a tiny island in the Philippines, first. It holds cultural meaning to the Ostriches and it would be way affordable! But a 16+ hour $$$ flight would be brutal for our guests and the 16 hour time difference would be brutal for wedding planning.

Maui was next on the list, since the location and airfare would be more reasonable for everyone.

And the 3 hour time difference was workable for vendor communication, etc. Did I mention we’re madly in love with Hawaii? But after reaching out to a few locations and doing some investigating, we realized getting married on a public beach in Maui involves permits and all sorts of hoops to jump through that made our small beach wedding a complicated task. Then we tried to compromise and considered a wedding on a cliff overlooking Kapalua Bay, but we missed our beach.

Enter Oahu. We discovered a gorgeous resort on the North Shore that has a few private beaches…and you can get married on them! We got in contact with the catering manager and found the costs to be in line with our budget. While the venue fees were lower, this would be made up in our higher food and beverage costs. Another plus? This resort is massive and affordable—they gave us a great wedding guest room rate and also have condos for rent on verbo.com for as low as $100/night!

But we didn’t have the time or the extra funds to spring a scouting trip to paradise. So how were we going to know which locations to choose? Photos, lots of them. We asked the catering manager to send us every photo of each location, including actual wedding photos held in these places. I also went Google crazy and looked up every image and review of weddings at this resort. Finally, we asked our friends who are from Oahu, have lived there or vacationed at this resort for advice. Armed with all of this info, we felt confident in our decision. So we booked!

The Wedding Planner and Event Designer: in our early wedding planning days, we had a short list of wedding planner-slash-event designers who we hoped to hire for our wedding to make the planning smoother. So I contacted them, sending them a brief description of our vision along with inspiration boards, many which I’ve shared with the hive. They responded quickly, but once they asked for our budget for the wedding, they just as quickly declined, explaining that their fees were out of our range (i.e. they cost 1/3 of our budget. Um, what?).

Enter Plan B - DIY decor and the hunt for the best wedding coordinator our wedding piggy bank could find. Project Wedding, SMP’s Little Black Book and WB’s local boards were our valuable resources whose personal testimonials pointed us towards the terrific Dianna Shitanishi of Hawaii Weddings and Events. Since the first email we sent her, she has been prompt, resourceful, and oh-so-organized. We hired her for three months of service and it’s been worth every penny. Six months ago, Dianna was in the Bay Area and during our two hour meeting, she secured our florist and our officiant and emailed me a list of reputable hair and makeup professionals to consider. She showed me reception layout options based on past weddings at our venue and the online files she keeps for every bride. She told us to ship all our DIY decor to her house and she’d transport it to the resort. Oh, and she’s picking up our flowers to avoid the North Shore delivery fee. The decor setup, the schedule managing, the vendor communicating, the rehearsal practicing? Yep, all Dianna, all the time.

*picking up jaw from the floor*

So I’m officially obsessed with our wedding coordinator. And she has made the final stretch of this planning adventure as low stress as can be. We couldn’t have planned this day without her…no lie!

Miss O’s Location, Event Design, Wedding Coordinator and Planning advice:

• When considering destinations, considering your guests budgets/locations and time zones for planning is just as important.
• If you can afford a scouting trip, then that’s amazing (and I’m jealous ). If you’re like the Ostriches, ask for photos, from all angles, of every venue you’re considering. Go Google crazy. Friend or family testimonials, if they’ve traveled there, is like gold. And, in some cases, Yelp can be your friend.
• Negotiate a special hotel rate for your wedding guests at nearby hotels. And if possible, work with select airlines on a special airfare rate, like Miss Cheetah did!
• Hiring someone to design your wedding costs BANK. So, us DW brides have two options: rent decor or DIY…or a blend of both. For my fellow DW brides, keep in mind the shipping costs and time for all of your charming items and plan accordingly.
• Wedding coordinators…if you can swing it, I highly recommend having one. You’ll be a mellower, more blissful bride. From DOCs to 3-12 month out coordinators, there are options for every budget. For the amount of support Dianna is giving us, we scored a great deal for her by booking her while she was offering a special deal.
• Constant Communication - be as detailed as possible when sending emails to your potential vendors: ideal wedding dates, what type of wedding you are planning, approximate # of guests, desired start times for ceremony and reception, etc. Provide deadlines to receive info, if possible. Follow up on vendors if they haven’t responded after a few days. Scheduling phone meetings is even more effective.
• Contracts: Before booking any vendor, ASK FOR A CONTRACT. We’ll go into more details about this later.

*HIGH FIVE* hive! You’ve made it through another epic post. I hope it’s been helpful.

DW Bees, what other advice and topics do you want to know more about? Where are you planning to have your wedding?