We have a dreamy destination wedding from LBB Members, John and Theresa at Altura Studio, today. Just two months ago, Jennifer and Brian invited their closest friends and family to Zihautanjo, Mexico to share in the intimate weekend celebration of their wedding. Like SO many couples, they were torn between a smaller destination wedding or a larger local wedding. The gorgeous bride tells us all about it …
Jennifer says, We chose a destination wedding for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons was that we had heard from so many people who had recently been married about how their day was a blur or didn’t feel that they had the opportunity to really connect with people at their wedding.
We felt this was a natural way to keep it intimate and knew that only our closest friends and family would attend. We were right. We got a vacation and real connection with many of the people that we love most in the world. And many people came away with friendships they didn’t have before which was such a treat for us.
A destination wedding gave us a fun instant theme to weave into our wedding weekend. We were married in Mexico at Hotels Las Palms and had such a great time planning the decor ~ from day of the dead invitations, candy and favors for the welcome dinner and wedding to pinatas for the reception and maracas. Additionally we researched Mexican traditions and wove that into our ceremony.
Lastly we chose it because of cost. Although we probably spent the same amount of money that we would have spent had we had a larger wedding at home. An intimate destination wedding enabled us to really treat our guests that were able to attend well. We were able to subsidize trips for a few people who wouldn’t have otherwise been able to afford it, we included every guest in an entire weekend of events from a welcome dinner to the wedding day activities and a day after brunch. This made it so very special and enabled people to really get to know each other and share more fully in the experience.
There isn’t much that I would do differently, I would just say that if you have a destination wedding, you have to be prepared that there may be a few people that are important to you that can’t make it. If that happens, I suggest video taping it! We didn’t think we cared about that and when it turned out so amazing, we wish that we had captured it so that we could share it with loved ones who missed it and also have it for ourselves.”
Thanks SO much to Jennifer and Brian for sharing your day and our sincere Congratulations!!
To see and hear more about their destination beach-side wedding to Zihautanjo,Mexico, take a look at Altura Studio’s blog feature or the SMP photo gallery of their images.
We recently featured another of Altura Studio’s terrific weddings ~ Yohanna & Craig’s snowy Oregon mountain-top wedding at Silcox Hut. And to see more of Altura Studio’s terrific work, check out their super blog, Aisle Style! They also have great examples of how the completed albums will look, another