We had our ceremony on the beach at the Aruba Marriott. Sunset was at 6:14 that night so we chose to have our ceremony start at 4:30. We did not want a ’sunset ceremony’. Our idea was we would have the ceremony, then guests would move on to the cocktail hour to enjoy steel pan music and the sunset while we were taking photos. Also, the photographers told us the best light is the hour just before sunset, so we wanted most of our photos taken between 5:00-6:00. (Believe it or not, we don’t care about ’sunset photos’. Instead of capturing sunset photos, a little after 6:00 we were on our way inside to enjoy an orange mojito in the lobby bar before going upstairs to change clothes.)

The day of the ceremony, guests were asked to gather in the lobby around 4:15pm. Desireé, the Marriott’s wedding planner, would be walking the guests in groups to the ceremony location, when she confirmed everything was on schedule. She didn’t want our guests to spend more time than necessary waiting in the heat if we were for some reason delayed. Good thing too, because it was HOT! And Aruba’s characteristic ‘wind’ seemed to have left us that afternoon, so the ceremony was probably 90º with very little breeze! (Desireé had recommended we instead had the ceremony start at 5:00 because of the heat, but we stuck with 4:30 since we didn’t want to miss out on the hour of primo light.)

My groom joined his two groomsmen up at the arch while the guests were being seated. (We did not have the groomsmen ‘walk the aisle’ with the bridesmaid and maid of honor.) His eldest son seated both of our mothers and then it was time to begin!

Steel pan music played as my bridesmaid and maid of honor walked down the aisle up to the bamboo and white fabric arch. Our flower girl (daughter of the maid of honor) started off great, but then decided to walk off and do her own thing which was fine. For us it was something to laugh about – after all, she had just turned 3 so we knew something like that might happen. Then my dad walked me down the aisle to the steel pan ‘here comes the bride’. Somehow I thought it would be cheesy to have that song played by the steel drum, but it was actually quite nice. That tune tugs at the emotion but the steel pan playing it made it seem so cheerful and fun – perfect for the beach!

I wore a gorgeous Romona Keveza Collection silk gown, Nadri chandelier earrings and bangles, and high heeled wedge flip flops. Luckily Romona’s dresses have the most amazing construction so I didn’t need any ’support undergarments’. A simple pair of lace undies is all was needed under that dress! And I heeded the advice from bridal consultants that said limit the veil to simple single tier of fingertip length, though I also brought a cathedral length veil which I used for other photos. (I purchased both veils on eBay for only $20 each!) Had there been a lot of wind, I would have just tucked a little bit of the veil in the back of the dress to hold it in place. (My ‘reception’ dress which I’ll show in the reception review was a gorgeous Nicole Miller gown purchased on RueLaLa.com. RueLaLa has short ‘private sales’ of designer clothes and accessories, during one of which I purchased the $2600 gown for only $650! They emailed me a teaser two days before and I was lucky enough to snag that dress before it sold out.) My bouquet was white cymbidium orchids and white freesia and the bridesmaids carried orange calla lilies. (I loved my bouquet even though it was really expensive but wasn’t impressed with the bridesmaid bouquets. I’ll elaborate more on flowers in another post.)

The Ceremony:

For the ceremony, we chose Reverend Gibson, whom I had communicated via email for a few months and we met in person the day before. He’s definitely a pro and very comfortable in front of the group. There was something that put me off a little bit, but I can’t put my finger on what is was (maybe I’ll figure it out by the time I write a more detailed review for him).

We exchange traditional vows and were then asked to say some words of our own. He had warned us the day before that he would ask us to do this. He insisted ‘Don’t worry about it – don’t even give it a thought’. He said he had never seen it go wrong. He said relax and something beautiful will come out, ‘it always does’. We decided to go ahead and leave that part in and trust him. When the time came though, I hate to say that I felt a little lost (luckily the groom had to go first!). Did some beautiful words come to me when it was my turn? I’m afraid not. I thought it was really awkward and I remember feeling embarrassed. I haven’t seen the video yet – when I do maybe I’ll decide he was right. My hunch though? Probably not.

After we are pronounced husband and wife we were invited to participate in the ‘sand ceremony‘, kind of Aruba’s version of a unity candle. We invited my husbands children to participate with us and filled the sand vase as a family. (By the way, we hired Rev. Gibson directly and in our email communications he never mentioned we’d need to provide the vase for the ceremony. We found out about that the day before. Luckily, Edwina came to the rescue and found us a beautiful vase and some colored sands.) The vase gets filled, the ‘keepsake certificate’ signed and then he invites guests to come up and congratulate us. It was nice to get that hug from each person right after the ceremony, however it took a while and I kind of feel like our guests were wanting some shade and a drink and not so excited about waiting in line to say their congratulations at that moment. (And we wanted to move on to our photos so we could stay on schedule.)

Decorating:

We chose to simply line the aisle with palm leaves. (The pink / orange ombre rose petal pattern I had in mind would have likely been disrupted by the wind and sand. I had instead chosen a white carpet runner which I decided against at the last minute. I had been considering the runner so that it would be easier for me to walk in my high heeled wedge flip, but then a carpet on the sand just didn’t seem right.)

We chose to do almost no decorating of the ceremony – no flowers at all and no sashes. We rented the folding chairs (which I think are more sophisticated than the plastic slip covered / sashed chairs) and bamboo and fabric arch from Edwina / E2. I had briefly wondered if I should have at least decorated the chairs at the ends by the aisle, but was glad we chose to leave them plain. We just didn’t want to spend more money than necessary on the ceremony – we wanted to save our budget for the party! I never felt like anything was missing.

The Beach:

If you’re planning an Aruba wedding you probably already know that there are no private beaches in Aruba! Many couples are bothered by this and its probably one of the biggest reasons some choose Renaissance Island, where you get to rent out the whole Island and you have ultimate privacy. Edwina warned us that Palm Beach is much busier than Eagle Beach which is why she prefers Eagle Beach for weddings. We had read posts from couples that were concerned about having tourists and water sports activities in their photos. The fact that Marriott is the Palm Beach hotel furthest to the north, we hoped these things would be less of a problem.

So, were there sunbathers laying around watching the wedding? Was there water sports activity going on in the background? Was there anyone in a speedo walking the beach? Yes, Yes and Yes! Were we bothered by these things, like the fact that some of our ceremony photos show a person in the water in the middle of the arch (shown here)? Surprisingly, no! Aside from one group of skimpily clad people that we politely asked to move during family photos after the wedding, we weren’t bothered. We really didn’t even notice the extra audience to the sides and were able to laugh off the occasional person strolling the beach. You may notice two of the photos in this post are almost identical with the exception that in one the swimmer is easily Photoshop-ed out of the arch. With as much as I get hung up on so many other things, I’m surprised that this didn’t bother me. I will try to post more photos later and let you judge for yourself how big of a deal it is. If you do want to be assured more privacy though, I’d consider Ren Island or Eagle Beach.

Things I am glad we did:

• Kept the ceremony decoration simple! I did not want to spend a lot of money decorating a short ceremony and wondered if I would regret that later. In the end, that simplicity was something I loved.
• Steel pan player: I believe Tico was the steel pan player and he did a fantastic job. Marriott positioned him perfectly between the cocktails and ceremony and the volume was perfect. I had wondered if a single steep pan would be enough and I totally think it was. (Other options were a steel pan trio or a steel pan and guitar duo.)
• Timing: I’m glad we kept the 4:30 timing (vs. moving back to 5:00), even though it was hot.
• Cocktail hour: Arranged for a cocktail hour to follow. (We limited it to 2 signature cocktails, beer and wine and fruit and cheese displays to help keep the cost down.)

Things I might have done differently:

• Sand Ceremony: I would have brought a vase from home for the sand ceremony. I think we paid $80 for a simple glass vase that I could have purchase for a fraction of that here at home. I also might have liked to pick out this keepsake myself. For the sand, you can keep it as simple as using some beach sand, or you can use some colored sands. Luckily we loved the combination of natural sand and earthy colored sands Edwina found for us.
• Vows: Put some thought into the words Reverend Gibson would ask us to exchange

So, the final verdict – should we have done our ceremony elsewhere? No way! We found the Marriott’s beach to be much less crowded than other hotels on Palm Beach and really wanted the convenience of having everything in one place. We didn’t have to worry about transporting guests between the ceremony and reception site. We wanted everything to be as easy as possible for our guests who had come so far. Also, some guests like being able to sneak up to their room to change into something more comfortable for the reception. Having spotless facilities nearby (bar and restrooms) was a plus as well. And we actually enjoyed having total strangers come up to us the rest of the weekend telling us they had watched our ceremony on the beach. Some said that it was the most beautiful ceremony they had ever seen. Every “Congratulations” was well received and we even had one lady say our ceremony brought tears to her eyes. Awww…. !