I’m currently nine months away from THE day and I definitely don’t have it all figured out but I can share a few of the things I’ve learned so far and would DO or DON’T do again.
DO talk budget from the start.
Nicky and I are paying for the whole shebang ourselves so we started by sitting down one night and organizing all of our priorities in a list. The list ended up looking something like this:
- Honeymoon: 1-2 months of travel
- Fun destination wedding party for our friends and closest family.
- Separate banquet celebration involving older family members (those who can’t or don’t wish to travel long distances)
- Beautiful pictures and video footage for the memz (duh!).
From there we pretty much divided our budget in half with 50% being saved as our honeymoon fund (our #1 priority) and the other 50% being priorities #2 to #4.
*If you have parents or family helping to pay for the wedding I would include them in the making of that priorities list*
DON’T discuss the potential locations with too many people. Other than your partner and immediate family, try to keep the options to yourself until you fully make up your mind. I went from wanting a wedding in Miami, to Tulum, to Dallas, to Italy and finally pulled the trigger on Cabo. But by the time I made up my mind a lot of my friends/family had heard of a few different locations and everyone was confused and had an opinion about it.
DO start by researching average wedding costs on all potential locations.
My first option was Miami and overall costs were significantly more expensive than most other locations. Italy was a no-go due to COVID (and budget) and Mexico ended up being the best value for our buck. We chose Cabo over Tulum because #1 Nicky gets eaten alive by mosquitos and #2 it rarely rains in Cabo.
DO hire a wedding planner before picking the venue.
Once we decided on Cabo, I immediately started researching wedding planners in the area. I knew an experienced planner would be able to help us find the right venue since they’re obviously more knowledgeable and are constantly working directly with these places (this is especially true for destination weddings). Soon after we shared the budget with our planner she sent us a list of venue suggestions fitting our wants & needs, reached out to our top picks and provided us with proposals/quotes alongside all pertinent paperwork.
DO or DON’T
Nicky and I decided not to send Save The Dates since it’ll be a pretty small wedding and everyone already knows the date but that’s just us.
Up to this point this is pretty much all I can confidently tell you to DO and DON’T. I still don’t exactly have my wedding dress (I do have a fitting with a designer coming up in Oct though). I have yet to meet with vendors in person (scheduled for January/February) and I have not created/sent official invites either.
I will most likely be sharing Part #2 once I have most of these things checked off my list, I presume a couple months before THE day. In the meantime feel free to follow my wedding prep on IG stories and my wed stuff highlight for more inspo!
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Where did your bridesmaids end up getting their dresses from?
Nice read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing a little research on that. And he just bought me lunch as I found it for him smile So let me rephrase that: Thanks for lunch!
So glad to hear this!
-Lya
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Glad I read this ! We recently decided on Getting married in Cabo too! Currently struggling with the guest list since we both have big Hispanic families ! Thanks for sharing! Can’t wait to read more.
Thank you for sharing. I just got engaged and have no idea of where to start. I want a very small private wedding with close family and friends. Also we are from two different places I’m Hispanic and my fiancé is Polish so we gotta figure out how things are gonna work because Hispanic wedding are loud and we have our own traditions etc. I will keep an eye for your second wedding plan blog. This is stressful lol. Also annoying people keep asking when is the wedding when we got engaged 2 weeks ago 😣.
Evelynmedinna thank you!
LOL I feeeel you. I’m puertorican and my fiance is english/irish & italian so our party is going to be an interesting one! Crossing my fingers that my side of the family doesn’t end up scaring his away. Worst case it should make for some pretty good stories 😛
-Lya
Congrats on the engagement! I’ve been editing and re-editing our guest list for the last month and its a struggle! I’m a little over on the head count atm but since its a destination I know in the end a good amount of people won’t end up making it. The hardest part is trying to guessing what that amount is going to be. At this point I’m just crossing my fingers it’ll all workout in the end!
-Lya ^
Love the blog already Lya! I feel like we’re already friends from your IG (even though you probably have no idea who I am lol) so i’m so happy to get so much more content and inspo from this blog! 🤎
-Cindy
@misscindirella
YAY! I’m so glad to hear this 🙂 Thanx for sharing your thoughts! Just checked out your page and its sooo cute!
-Lya
Such an amazing read! You guys are seriously goals! Thank you so much for this, it’s totally something no one talks about! Love you! – Kim
Thank you Kim! So glad you liked it 🙂
-Lya