To begin with, I must say I never was like most little girls when It came to dreaming of a fairytale wedding.
I was busy climbing on the roof with my brother and then crying because I couldn’t get down. When I wasn’t running behind the demon seed, aka my brother, I was usually with my besties playing with dolls; Cabbage Patch, Barbie, nothing out of the ordinary. Of course we would marry our dolls but for some reason it was never on my mind as much as my friends. Sidenote, I must say barbies have come along way there is pretty much a barbie for everyone!
Now let’s skip ahead…..when I first met my now husband we discussed marriage and both agreed we didn’t want to spend a lot of money. We also discussed that I didn’t feel that it should take five years to know if you want to be married to your boyfriend/girlfriend. I mean come on we know after a couple of years if this is someone we want to spend the rest of our lives with. Anyway, since we both love to travel we felt the money saved could be used to do just that or spend it on purchasing our dream home. I always thought if I am going to spend thousands and thousands of dollars I’d rather us travel across the world and have a very luxurious vacation.
However, once he finally proposed (and I do mean FINALLY) my mind slightly changed. He was very close to that five year mark! Being the only girl and since my mom never had a formal wedding, I knew it would mean the world to her if I had some sort of celebration. I quickly began researching small venues in the Dallas/ Fort Worth area and wanted something nice but again, didn’t want to spend a lot of money. I spoke and visited with close to 20 venues and all were going to cost approximately 15k or more and this was just for the venue and food…..WHAT?!!! I was still going to have to purchase a dress, florist, grooms ring, DJ, cake and the list goes on and on and on. It is so easy to spend $20k plus on a wedding and this is being very budget conscious.
I wasn’t feeling it, not one ounce. I couldn’t stomach paying that much money for a local wedding. When people mentioned having a destination wedding, the only thing that came to mind was a beach wedding. No offense to those who had or plan on having a beach wedding (they are absolutely beautiful) but I felt like this was the norm and I wanted to be different. Furthermore, the heat and I don’t mix very well so do the math. A beach wedding or anything in the heat wouldn’t work for me.
One night while traveling for work I was having a conversation with a friend who is an event planner. I was telling her how the different venues and cost were too much for me to digest. My then fiancée sent me a link for destination weddings while I was chatting with her. I was shocked to see one was for Greece and the other for Italy. I told him right then, this is it. I had know idea that destination included other continents, it was always the thought of the Caribbean. I loved the information he sent to me on Mykonos Greece (which is still on my list to visit). While I was still on the phone with the event planner I asked her how do I go about getting more information on destination weddings. She advised that I go on Thumbtack and create an account (I hadn’t ever heard of Thumbtack before that night). So, that same night I created a Thumbtack account and begin the process of planning our international wedding. I created projects on Thumbtack and pretty quickly received responses back from travel agents. I chose one and she turned out to be amazing. Wendy Snider from Encore Luxury She specializes in Europe and Africa destinations. We set up an initial call where we gave her our preferred dates and our budget.
A couple of days letter she identified several potential spots. We set up an initial call where we gave her our preferred dates and our budget. A couple of days letter she identified several potential spots. We had another call where she presented the venues along with costs for each place. We were able to eliminate our options down to one, based on costs and available dates. I really wanted our anniversary to be on New Year’s Day or New Year’s Eve, neither of those days were available but January 2nd was so this was how we landed on Castello di Meleto.
Our travel agent planned our entire trip from flights to lodging and tours. It was a trip that is still talked about today from all of our guests.
The venue we chose came with a wedding coordinator. This was huge since we wouldn’t be visiting prior to the big day. She coordinated everything from the rehearsal through the end of the wedding. It was truly amazing and and nothing short of a fairytale.
The following day we had another tour planned so we got to enjoy a final day with our guests before they headed back home.
Our travel agent coordinated our honeymoon where we traveled from Tuscany down south to the Amalfi Coast to Sorrento. We honeymooned for 3 days, relaxed and just took the days as they came.
I would highly encourage if you are interested in a different type of destination wedding check out Italy, the country known for love. Get my step by step process on planning your international wedding here