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The amazing thing about all the planning, scrimping, worrying, arguing, imbibing and saving for a wedding is when you actually pull it off. The successful arrival of all your guests to your island paradise, the sigh of relief knowing that both sets of parents get along so well that you can stick them at the corner of the wedding table and not have to check up on them too often. These are just some of the things that make you breathe a sigh of relief, look your Prewife in the eye knowing all is well with her too, and then go hit the beach.

Of course, even the best wedding is not all smiles and sunshine… From our own personal experience – we learned to be very flexible. We saw our guest list drop from 50 to 15 people. It worked out well, since in the end it was actually quite an intimate affair (and what I wanted all along). We went from having a full band and a buffet style beach dinner, to a DJ and buffet dinner, to an iPod hooked up to speakers at a restaurant, to what was playing at the Restaurant. This was fine as well as the restaurant was excellent. As usual props go out to the Prewife – always cool under pressure, and nary a hissy-fit in sight. Gents, make sure your Prewife has nerves of steel and the flexibility to match. Getting married at an island destination is not for the faint of heart.

The one thing we did not scrimp on was the photographer. If there is one thing we can say is most important, it is the photog. Now this doesn’t mean you have to blow all your money on the most expensive one. But make sure to get the best one you can afford. Take your time on this. If the wedding is local, look at their pics and talk with the photographer and find out how they interact with you. If they have references, by all means use them. If the wedding is a destination, then as soon as you decide where to have it, find out who is going to shoot it. Check out their website, email them, etc. Destination weddings tend to be in beautiful places that sometimes have limited resources – such as a photographer’s availability. So get the best one you can quickly, before they are snatched up by another wedding party. Do not rely on friends or relatives for anything more then “fun photos” or you will be very disappointed.

If you happen to be going to Turks and Caicos, where we had our wedding, the photographer we used was Ileana, from Tropical Imaging. I cannot say enough good things about her. Professional, relaxed, engaging, on the ball, excellent photographer, the list goes on, you get the idea. Tropical Imaging’s setup for picking out pictures you want to keep is straight forward and is as easy as opening up your laptop, logging on to their site and selecting the images you want.

So, this week and next, we here at Prewife will focus on some great locations for destination weddings.

In the wild, wonderful, crazy, expensive, nutty, world that is your engagement, nothing else is quite befuddling and expensive as “Save the Date Cards”. You see, you poor sap gentle reader, save the date cards are Pre-invitation wedding cards to notify your loved ones of the joyous days approach…without actually explaining very much except the fact that the wedding is indeed Read the rest of this entry »

The PreWife and Myself were talking the other day about what kind of wedding we want. Once she 86′d my suggestion of two fiddlers, moonshine and a ho down, she suggested that a simple non-traditional wedding would suit her fine. I scratched my head and tried to convince her that nothing could be more non-traditional then a greased pig chase after a few belts of my Uncle’s home brew after saying our vows with her daddy’s shotgun in my back, but she looked through at me and with a patient smile said, “no”. End of discussion.

The hardest part I think of a simple wedding is, well, keeping it simple. This is actually harder then it sounds because now you have freed yourself from the bonds of tradition. In fact there are so many variations on the theme, that you can go hog-wild just trying to reign in the possibilities. We put our heads together and thought about all the weddings we had been to (me about one, but that was to my sister, so it doesn’t count in 49 of 50 states and Guam…her about 200) and we landed on Read the rest of this entry »