My Destination Wedding

My wedding is OVER!  I had an amazing time marrying my best friend with "most" of the people we are closest to there to witness it.  I had a few key people missing, but at the end of the day, we had the wedding we wanted. We paid for the wedding ourselves, with help from some very awesome people.  My husband & I are very lucky to have people in our lives that love us very much.  Our wedding was a group effort for sure!

Having never been to a destination wedding, I was not sure what to expect.  We did our wedding on a tight budget which made it even more difficult.  Many things were being done by us, so we did the best we could.  I was fine cutting certain things out & do doing them on my own. Some of my visions were executed due to other people wanting me to have what I wanted.  I was fine with baking cupcakes myself & making a backdrop for my beach wedding, but my friends had other plans.  Did I mention I have amazing people in my life???

Ceremony Site
I had my heart set on a pergola.  Two of my best friends, a couple, live in Los Angeles where they both work in the "business".  The husband makes props for movies & television shows so he was very excited to help with a few things I wanted.  Unfortunately, shipping from Los Angeles to Virginia Beach was going to cost 3 times what it would cost to even make.  So my friends rented us a pergola for our ceremony space.  I had a back-up plan, but was very happy with our gift.  I will note that when having chairs or an arch delivered to a beach, be sure to have a clear plan of when & more importantly WHERE your delivery will be made.  There was a little miscommunication with the delivery guys & over an hour was wasted by my friends waiting at the ceremony site for the items to be delivered.  Turns out they were 1 mile down the road waiting to follow someone else to the site. In the end, it was just what I wanted.

Cake
Cake was not that important to me. I ordered a small cake from the grocery store for us to cut.  I decorated it with these cute little Adirondack chairs & some little fences.  I was very happy with how it turned out. As for the cupcakes, they didn't work out so great.  It blows my mind that people charge so much for cupcakes.  I decided that I could just make my own.  Once again, my loving friends decided that they would have their cousin who lived close, make cupcakes at her bake shop.  She was a professional & I wasn't paying for it, so I was not worried.  When my friend picked up the cupcakes, she was unpleasantly surprised.  My cupcakes looked like a Pinterest FAIL!  My new brother-in-law's girlfriend came to the rescue.  She helped a woman back West with her cupcake business.  She really transformed those cupcakes.  They looked 100% better!

Food

Dinner was something that I wanted to do ourselves.  It saves a lot of money & to be honesty, I would rather have dinner at home than go to a restaurant.  My husband is an amazing cook.  Although he is the maker of a very popular sandwich in Pittsburgh, he is great cooking regular food. My original vision had us doing most of the work the day before the wedding.  I stayed up late & woke up very early to make sure there was little that needed to be done. We did appetizers for cocktail hour.  Quite a few of them came from Pinterest (not all of them were fails, lol).  

Appetizers

Veggies w/Dip Cups

Taco Dip Cups

Mozzarella, Tomato, Basil skewers

Cheese, Pepperoni, Crackers

Olives, Pepperocinis, Pickles

Dinner

Chicken Marsala

Chicken with Brown Sugar & Garlic sauce

Tortellini with Marinara

Low-Country Boil 

Green Beans

Salad

We had an amazing day when it was all over. 

I will be sharing some more of my DIY wedding decor in up coming posts.  

On a side note, Happy New Year!  Here is to 2014 being an amazing year for all!