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.