Our Aruba Wedding

California (Napa and San Francisco), Arizona (Scottsdale and Sedona), Florida (Naples), Costa Rica… I really wanted a ‘tropical’ wedding and just didn’t feel Florida was quite enough. Unfortunately, end of October is hurricane season throughout the Caribbean.

California? We have absolutely loved our trips to San Francisco and Napa Valley. Could it be a good wedding destination for us? Well as much as we love it we had a hard time imagining our families loving it. So Napa for us? Absolutely. For our wedding? Maybe not.

Arizona? Maybe Scottsdale or Sedona? Again, maybe not. We decided Scottsdale would be pretty expensive and Sedona, while beautiful is starting to cool off at the end of October. I want heat!

Florida? We decided to reschedule our Puerto Vallarta spring break trip and go to Naples. Naples is well protected from Hurricanes and is easy to get to. While it was hard to get excited about Florida, there is the fact that it would be very accessible to our guests. It could be more affordable for them and they could easily come to our wedding without having to take time off of work.

We started researching alternate destinations… Mexico is now out and we’re feeling kind of lost because we hadn’t seriously considered other destinations. I didn’t even realize how much I had my heart set on a tropical wedding. Naturally, that would bring us to the Caribbean but guess what? It hurricane season in October. I suggest postponing the wedding to a month when we would have more options but my guy wasn’t going to have it. While I was so frustrated my friends we’re excited by how romantic it was that he didn’t want to wait. Ya, ya… he’s a doll. That’s why I’m marrying him, but now what?

My fiance and I love to travel and decided a destination wedding would be just the thing for us. We liked the idea of sharing a little adventure with our closest friends and family, and knowing that our event would remain small and intimate. 

The date was set for late October. In researching destinations, we decided Puerto Vallarta would be a great destination for us. A little exotic, affordable AND we have friends that spend a lot of time there that would be able to get us the ‘inside scoop’ on hotels, vendors, etc. We were anxiously awaiting our upcoming April 2009 site visit (and spring break vacation).

That is, until the drug cartel violence started to increase and a Mexico travel advisory was put into effect by our government. About that time there was also a feature on the kidnappings and violence on an evening news program that was seen by some of our guests. Understandably they started to get uncomfortable with the idea of Mexico. While Puerto Vallarta is a ‘world away’ and had been completely unaffected, we wanted our guests to feel safe so it was time to pick an alternate destination.