We’ve taken the plunge and set a date - November 6, 2008.
Our vacation for this time was already planned, but we figured, hey, lets get married while we’re away!
October 26 to November 4 we are taking a bareboat sailing course. The tentative plan is to get our parents and siblings (a total of 10 of us) to fly down on the 4th and meet us, where we will do a bareboat charter and sail to where we decide to have the wedding. We’ll stay on the boat most likely, but may spend one night in a resort, for comforts’ sake.
This is to take place in the provinces of Sonora and Baja California Sur. Our sailing school is located in San Carlos, near Guaymas in Sonora. We’d likely be chartering a boat there and sailing across the Sea of Cortez to (probably) Los Cabos.
Questions:
How hard is it to just book a wedding without booking a resort?
If you had a destination wedding, what was the cost (where was it, etc., etc.)?
Anyone have any hints on finding a charter in the area?
Oh, and by the way, following the wedding we’ll be sailing around for a couple of days, dropping people off to fly home, and we’re flying into Central America for a few weeks.
My husband and I had a destination wedding - We spent 5 days in Vegas with about 50 friends and family. Everything was arranged by the place where we were married, so it was all pretty simple. Show up with rings and a dress basically. We spent just under $7000 total, but we got a deal on the wedding/reception package by buying it on ebay.
We’re qualified with The Moorings - they’ve got a nice fleet and lots of destinations, including Baja, Mexico.
On the one hand, we got married in Charleston, SC, not where you’re going to be, so I can’t recommend a specific place. That said, here’s what we did; we rented the courtyard of a small inn and it held our 50+ attended wedding & reception perfectly, could even have had more people if we didn’t need a walkway or dance floor. It was outdoors, charming and even though we had to stay there 2 nights and it wasn’t cheap, it was nowhere near the cost of a large resort’s ballroom/atrium, etc. IIRC, the courtyard fee was $750. A local restaurant catered (Sticky Fingers, yummm) and took care of the chairs and tables.
It wasn’t hard at all to find the inn, another Doper got married there and suggested it! But I don’t expect it would be hard for you to find one in your target area; there’s inns and B & B’s everywhere.
I booked my wedding cross-country (we were married in Lake Tahoe) while I was in my last semester of law school. It wasn’t tough at all–I just spent a lot of time e-mailing people back and forth, and a little bit of time on the phone. Everything worked perfectly and was lovely. We had 11 people there besides us, got married on a cliffside overlooking Emerald Bay, and had our wedding reception in a small private dining room in a nice local restaurant.