Choosing a Destination Wedding Location

Choosing a Destination Wedding Location | Cobalt Chronicles | Washington, DC | Style Blogger

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Last week I shared my first wedding related blog post with you, how I asked my bridesmaids to be in our wedding! I mentioned that Michael and I decided on a destination wedding in The Bahamas. The first question we inevitably get every time we tell someone where we’re getting married – How did you decide on The Bahamas?!

Choosing a Destination Wedding Location

Michael and I love to travel, and we’ve actually been to several destination weddings, including three in the Caribbean. We always discussed that we loved the vibes at those weddings. They were so much fun, so much smaller, and allowed the entire group of wedding guests to hang out together to celebrate the bride and groom. Before we were engaged, we chatted about the possibility of having a destination wedding.

After our engagement, we really narrowed in on a potential destination wedding location. We wanted to get married somewhere warm, relatively easy to get to, and not too incredibly expensive for our guests.

Narrowing Down the List

We narrowed in on Mexico and the Caribbean. Mexico has TONS of great options for destination weddings. Lots of beautiful resorts (a plethora of all-inclusives too), flights are typically pretty cheap, and it’s warm nearly year round. And Michael and I have never been to Mexico together.

However, there’s one big pitfall to choosing Mexico as a destination wedding location … Zika. At our stage in life, we have multiple friends who are either pregnant or trying to become pregnant. With that in mind, we started digging a little further into Zika. While it’s not really in the news here in the States that much anymore, but if you check out the CDC’s website, it’s actually still a real threat in all of Mexico and almost all of the Caribbean.

With that new knowledge, we then narrowed it down to our Zika free options: Bermuda, The Bahamas, Grand Cayman, Martinique, and Guadeloupe. Bermuda was immediately tossed out because we knew we wanted to get married in December/January. It’s too cold in Bermuda that time of year. Martinique and Guadeloupe are incredibly hard (and expensive) to get to. So that left The Bahamas and Grand Cayman.

Choosing The Bahamas

We loved a few resorts in The Bahamas and Grand Cayman, however, the resort we really loved in Grand Cayman never responded (and it was a big box brand name resort), so we scratched them from the list. The two resorts in The Bahamas that we reached out to responded immediately. We loved both resorts and what they had to offer, but ultimately ended up going with a Hyatt property. The resort is stunning, there’s lots to do on the property, and it’s located very close to the airport (convenience for our guests factored into our decision). We’re so excited to have all of our closest family and friends celebrate with us in such a beautiful place!

I’m heading to the resort with my mom this fall to finalize all of the plans, and I can’t wait to bring you along!

I hope this provided some insight into how we chose our destination wedding location, and hopefully provided a little value to you if you’re thinking about traveling somewhere for a wedding of your own!

Choosing a Destination Wedding Location | Cobalt Chronicles | Washington, DC | Style Blogger