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LOVE ON EARTH, With this trip, I thee wed |
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Written by Nancy Benac, asap
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Monday, 29 May 2006 |
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 It’s almost June, and that means peak wedding season. Got your bags packed?
Odds are, if you haven’t already been invited to a “destination wedding,” there may be one in your future. The idea was foreign to me when I got word that a nephew planned to be married this spring in St. Thomas, some 2,000 miles from the family’s home base in suburban Detroit.
I’ll admit: I started out a skeptic. Move the entire wedding party and guests to a place far, far away? Aren’t exotic locales for honeymooners? But by the time my toes dig into soft, white sand, I’m a convert.
 It’s a couple of hours before Jim Harrington’s wedding, and here is the scene: Jim and an uncle are hanging out at the beachfront reggae bar of our resort as I flip-flop up to the restaurant to check out a paddle for one of the kayaks lying nearby in the sand.
 No one takes any notice when an iguana saunters across my path on the way back down to the beach. But when some guy who is fishing knee-deep in the water reels in a 3-foot-plus barracuda, the late lunch crowd at Fungi’s stands to applaud the fisherman’s performance. I steer my kayak to a more comfortable distance as he throws the Big One back.
Oh, yeah. The wedding.
Jim and his fiancee, Andreea Gligor, who live in Walled Lake, Mich., decided to do things a little differently. Instead of tying the knot around town, they opted for a destination wedding, a hot trend in nuptials these days.
This year, 15 percent of U.S. couples who marry are expected to do it away from home, up from 10 percent in 2000, according to industry statistics compiled by “Destination I Do” magazine. (www.destinationidomag.com).Nine out of 10 will at least give it some thought. Top destinations include Mexico, Las Vegas, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Hawaii, California, the Dominican Republic, Fiji and Italy.
BEYOND ELOPING
Once mainly elopements, destination weddings now more often amount to a long weekend or even a weeklong event with plenty of people in tow.
“A lot of people are waiting later in life to get married and ... what they’re envisioning is what they’ve always wanted — not what their parents wanted,” says Jennifer Stein, publisher of Destination I Do. “They’re wanting to do the beach wedding. They’re wanting to do it at the top of a glacier. They want 30 of their closest people around them.”
Jim, a 29-year-old lawyer, and Andreea, a 27-year-old sales representative, researched a dozen islands before settling sight unseen on St. Thomas in the American Virgin Islands. It offered great beaches and foreign flavor yet the reduced hassle of keeping it on U.S. soil. And they figured they couldn’t go wrong relying on the Ritz Carlton to pull it together from afar.
Somehow, just a few hours after the barracuda episode, about 45 guests are seated on white, wooden chairs facing a beachfront gazebo swathed in gauzy white fabric that billows in the warm island breezes. A harpist and violinist are playing softly.
Happy chatter wafts up from the beach, where yachts bob in the distance and curious beachgoers try to catch a glimpse of Andreea, who arrives at the gazebo via golf cart in full bridal splendor. Jim is properly tuxed and, for the most part, the guests are formally dressed (except for one guy in flip-flops).
Hotel staff strew rose petals along a white runner before Andreea takes her not-quite-traditional walk down the aisle. A half-hour later, the new husband-and-wife lead their guests along a beachfront path back to the Ritz for drinks before dinner. Jimmy and Andreea pose for photos in the surf.
LESS RUSHED
Even as the reception winds down around midnight, though, this wedding experience is far from over: Some people refer to destination weddings as “weddingmoons,” because the nuptials can evolve into a sort of group vacation for couple and guests.
Over the next few days, as we kick back at our resort and explore the Virgin Islands, we run into other wedding guests and the newlyweds at every turn -- snorkeling on the beach, at brunch (featuring more iguanas), even at the local grocery store. Instead of a few rushed conversations at a crowded reception, there are hours to catch up with extended family members who rarely have a chance to get together.
It turns out to be a great bonding experience for those who made the trek. But not everyone can.
“It becomes a very cozy, private time for you and your family, but it does cut out certain people that would love to come,” says Norma Morse Edelman, a wedding planner from San Diego.
That’s not always bad, she says, since moving the wedding out of town can be a good way to trim “fringey people” from the guest list. But financial or health barriers also may prevent some close friends or family from attending.
When Jim and Andreea first considered a wedding at home, “without even blinking, we had a guest list of 325 people, and that was just the beginning,” says Jim. “We had not even scratched the surface of all of our co-workers. We wanted an elegant wedding, but with the number of people we were going to invite, it would not have been possible. We wanted our wedding to be more intimate and elegant.”
The upshot? About 50 people, including a large contingent from the Detroit area, made the trek.
Such success stories aside, Edelman thinks destination weddings aren’t as hot as recent hype might suggest. “People hear jet-setters and celebrities hollering ’castles in Scotland’ and they get the idea to do such a thing,” she says. “I think it’s not that common.”
Even so, she says, a destination wedding can be the fantasy every bride craves. Edelman arranged one last year just over the border in Mexico that was just that: The bride waited on the beach; the groom arrived on a white horse.
Find it online here:
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