Sarah will be marrying Rich on 21th June 2020 at Tikitano Beach, Marbella, Spain. Click here to read all Sarah’s planning posts to date.
THREE FACTS: (1) Sarah knew Rich was the one when he brought a gift of dog treats for her toy poodle Nuala along to their fourth date! (2) They are crafting an amazing destination wedding weekend in Marbella with beloved Smashing The Glass Recommended vendor optimum weddings as their planner. (3) Sarah is a member of Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club!
Richard and I both knew that we wanted a destination wedding from day one! We have been to so many weddings in London which are fabulous, but we wanted a more relaxed atmosphere with a huge party and no one having to worry about waking up early for work the next day!
With a destination wedding there is a lot more to think about! Since we are asking people to come out to another country and spend that much more on our wedding, we felt that we needed to provide them with a weekend of fun to make it all worthwhile!
The Importance of a Website
There are so many little details which are important with a destination wedding – recommended hotels, airport details, airport transfers, the details of the various events, travel information and the rest!
So, we decided to have a wedding website which we gave people the details for on our Save The Dates. Our website uses our hashtag for the wedding as the name so that it’s personalised.
We paid a little more to have a private domain which will be valid for the whole year in the lead up to and just after the wedding. We were incredibly lucky as Sara from optimum weddings is a website pro and she set everything up for us!
We recommended two hotels, one five star and one four star and we are providing coaches from both hotels to and from the venue on the day of the wedding.
We spoke to the hotels and managed to secure special discounted rates, without having to guarantee a number of rooms up front, which was a real win for us!
We asked Dyana from optimum weddings to recommend some airport transfer services and we have included this on the website too. Essentially, we hope that the website answers all the questions which people may have and hopefully will help to keep our weekend stress free!
Friday Night Dinner
Our cousins have a place in Marbella and they very kindly offered to host a Friday night dinner for up to 70 family members. We were so blown away by their generosity and it really goes to show just how wonderful family are at times like this.
We have limited the Friday night dinner to just family members so that we don’t have another sit-down dinner for 185 people! It is going to be kosher catered and one of the two kosher restaurants in Marbella will be providing the food.
Luckily, our amazing wedding planner Dyana knows my cousins really well and is friends with them as she organised my cousin’s wedding in Marbella a few years ago. This has meant that we have not had to worry about any of the planning for this night and that is so appreciated!
The Welcome Party
We are having a welcome party for all the guests on the Saturday night. We felt like it was important to host an additional event for all of our guests since they are traveling all the way to Marbella for us.
We are having this at Besaya Beach which is a stunning beachside restaurant overlooking the sea. Coincidently it is the sister restaurant of our wedding venue, Tikitano.
We are having an evening of cocktails and canapes from 7-9:30pm so that people can go on to party after or have an early night before the wedding if they fancy! This also gave us the perfect opportunity to incorporate a few more speeches! We really wanted to limit the number of speeches and toasts at the wedding so that they don’t break up the party atmosphere.
However, there were still a couple of people who we really wanted to give the honour of giving a speech too, such as my siblings and Richard’s dad. This means that everyone who we love has the honour of playing a really important part in our weekend and it makes it that much more special for us.
As Besaya and Tikitano are run by the same management, it has made organising this event so much easier! We met with the lovely manager to go through both events at the same time which was great!
The Main Event
The wedding itself will be at Tikitano Beach, the most stunning venue with sunsets and views to die for! We really want this to be an amazing party and so we were incredibly lucky that the venue has its own private nightclub downstairs which opens out onto the beach.
We are having the live band play until 12:30am and then we are having the after-party downstairs in the private club until 3am with mini pizzas and cheesy chips to help fuel the party goers at around 2am!
We made the decision to fly the band out from London. The bands in Spain were good but we love the Jewish dancing and the show bands and so that was always essential to us.
One Entertainment are so fantastic and they allowed us to customise the band to include five musicians and four singers which was a huge bonus as we did not want more than nine performers as we felt that otherwise it would take over the venue and be too much.
We are also using one their DJ’s who is flying out with them so that he can DJ the after party!
We also decided to fly out the toastmaster and chuppah singer from London. I think a good toastmaster is essential as they really hold the evening together and help it to flow well.
Jamie Paskin has been a friend for years and he really is the best toastmaster out there. It makes it more special knowing that he has such a big role and he’s more than just a business acquaintance as it’s a more personal touch.
JJ Hodari is our chuppah singer and he is literally magical! He has the most amazing voice and we loved hearing him perform at my cousin’s wedding last summer.
We made the decision to fly the band and the toastmaster out the day before the wedding just in case something happens with flight delays or cancelations on the day of the wedding. I figured that the spending that bit extra to avoid any additional stress on the day was so definitely worth it!
Extra Little Touches
We are going to have little goody bags/survival kits for all our guests which will be given out at the Welcome Party! We haven’t quite finalised the contents yet but we are keeping that under wraps for now!
Additionally, we are also going to have big baskets of flip flops at the wedding to incorporate the beach theme, and so that when people’s feet start to hurt, they can carry on partying in comfort.
We are going to have hand held classic looking fans which will be handed out for the chuppah ceremony to keep people cool in the heat and hopefully people will use them again on their holidays and remember our wedding weekend!
To Conclude
There are probably a million more things which I need to do before June next year but for now I think it is pretty much covered! To cut a long story short, the main bit of advice I can give to anyone planning a destination wedding is to have an amazing wedding planner!
There is so much to organise, so many contracts to sign, multiple vendors to deal with (often in another language!) and as you are not in that country the whole time, having a planner who knows exactly what to do is an absolute life saver.
So, with that in mind, Richard and I would like to dedicate this blog post to the best wedding planner out there! We love you Dyana and her amazing team from optimum weddings!
Click here to read all Sarah’s planning posts to date.
Sarah and Rich’s Wedding Vendors booked so far:
Venue – Tikitano Beach
Photographer – Nani De Perez
Wedding Planner – optimum weddings {offers 10% discount to all members of Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club}
Videographer – Antonio De Perez
Stationery – Simcha Invitations
Chuppah singer – JJ Hodari
Band – One Entertainment
Hair + Makeup – Alex Harrocks and Nicola McGeorge
Welcome Party – at Besaya Beach
Toastmaster – Jamie Paskin
