I’m Allie. I’m 25, and I run a business in Chicago with my fiancé, Jeff. I’m also in the process of settling into a new apartment and launching a photography business, Avei Photo—and somewhere in there we’re both finding time to re-plan our wedding.
We’re currently on round two of wedding planning. Round one was scrapped after we found out the week before Christmas that our wedding venue had gone out of business two months prior. I’ll go into more detail on that once we (hopefully) settle things, but long story short—we haven’t gotten our money back, there are a number of other couples involved, there are potential lawsuits in the near future and our dream wedding in a chic urban Chicago loft has now been spoiled.
Enter Plan B.
Last October, just after signing a contract with our would-be venue, Jeff and I went to a friend’s wedding in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. It was an absolute dream. While we were there, we talked about how perfect a destination wedding would have been for us.
So when we found out the contract was void, we adjusted our mindset (which can be tricky—as any bride can tell you, you’ll spend many hours daydreaming about every detail of how your wedding day will be, so it’s a difficult mental transition at first). We pushed our date back from July 31 to November 12, 2010, and we booked the Occidental Grand Xcaret through destinationweddings.com—the same site our friends had used for their wedding.
I can’t wait to tell you more about our experiences so far, from the budgeting tricks we learned while planning in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. (rumor has it that the average Chicago wedding is upwards of $50-80k), to planning a relaxed destination wedding where most of the planning takes place in the last three days leading up to the big day.
We’re looking forward to many adventures this year.
