Planning Your Destination Wedding Without Going Insane

You’re engaged! What an exciting time …

and congratulations! But wait, you and your fiancé have decided that you don’t want to stick around the old homestead for your wedding. You would like to plan a destination wedding instead! Time to gather your best friends and closest family members in a place far from home, where you can celebrate for days or even a whole week!

Location, Location, Location

Of course, we think that Sarasota is the ideal location for you, but regardless of where you go, how do you start planning??? We’re already behind. Oh no!

Stop. Breath. Think about places that have special meaning to you and your fiancé. While you may think it is a grand idea to plan your wedding in that exotic and far-away place you always wanted to see… Maybe you should save that for your honeymoon. You won’t have the time to explore it during the days/week before your big day.

Maybe consider a place that’s easy for your guests to get to from wherever they are coming. Do they need to change planes five times or are there direct flights, for example.

DIY or Wedding Planner?

Once you have decided on a location, decide if you want to do all the planning yourself or hire a local wedding planner to help you. Either way, you have to start getting organized. Know your budget (other than travel).

Some venues have their own wedding planners to help you — if not, they can certainly recommend one. Don’t reinvent the wheel, though. Use websites such as The Knot or Wedding Wire for planning tools and suggestions. These sites also contain real person reviews … very important!

Make Lists – Don’t Count on your Memory!

As we mentioned, organization is the key to sanity in your destination wedding planning. There are a multitude of checklists out there (some included in the websites we mentioned before) that can help. Ask a friend how she planned her beach wedding, for example.

Remember that this is YOUR day and try to shield yourself as much as possible from added stress such as Aunt Jane telling you you simply MUST use her brother as the DJ, or from Uncle Stanley telling you that it is a waste of money to go to the beach instead of having your wedding in the local union hall.

Thank them for their helpfulness, and forge on.

Of course, don’t forget that if you DO decide on Sarasota for that most exciting day, that’s one less thing to stress about. You can count on us to be there for you – a limo for the bride and groom, or classy transportation for the whole wedding party. Whether it is for your ceremony; getting your guests to those parties or golf courses; or making sure they are picked up in style at the airport… Rest assured we will provide you all with the best, safest, most reliable and most professional transportation in the area. That’s the Blue Ribbon way!