Destination Wedding Bavaro Beach - Punta Cana Dominican Republic

Planning your wedding can be the most exciting and thrilling experience in your life, however it can also be the most stressful that is why the second we got engaged I knew I wanted a destination wedding!!! The first step when deciding to go the untraditional route of a destination wedding is to decide on a location!! For us there were only a few options to consider and below I have listed detail on the pros and cons of each destination we investigated:

Mayan Riviera Mexico - We have already been here and decided to explore somewhere new to us and many of our guests. They also require you to arrive a few days before the wedding to take care of paper work and you are also required to take a blood test to check for STD's. There national language is Spanish.

Jamaica - This was a very strong contender in our decision, however we just didn't think it was the best place to take 50 of our closest friends and family. Jamaica is one of those locations I have heard so many great things about as well as many bad things. It depends on the person you talk too but I feel if there were any bad review of the island at all it was not a good place for us. The bonus was the abundance of all inclusive resorts and the ability to go at a reasonable price to a very nice all-inclusive resort. Jamaica also uses English as the official national language which would be one less barrier of communication.

US Virgin Islands - We loved the idea that we would still be in US territory and that our guests would not need passports to travel here. This is a huge consideration for travel now with the new passport laws that have gone into affect in the beginning of 2007. We quickly decided the Virgin Islands were not for us when we began to investigate resorts there are very few all inclusive resorts and the prices were very high for us as well!!

Punta Cana, Domincan Republic - We have heard great things about the DR and my fiancé's parents have been there twice. Since they are not the easiest people to please this was a huge positive to me. The bad part about Punta Cana is that there is only one judge who performs marriages in the province and he does not speak English. This presented a very hug barrier and some complications for our travel agent but it worked out in the end.

There are many important things to consider when planning a trip for other people to a foreign country. The language barriers, passport requirements, activities, all-inclusive resorts, quality of the hotels, safety in the country and of course costs are all considerations. These are all very important things we had to consider and which led us to our final decision of Punta Cana Dominican Republic!!!