We planned to elope in one month in Punta Cana - Part 5 - Upon Arrival

If you’d have told me, at any point in my 20s, that I’d be married before I was 30, I’d have laughed in stubborn and sour disbelief. In the ‘olden days’ when my parents were my age, if a woman wasn’t married or have plans to marry by the time she was 30, other women would assume there’s ‘something wrong with her’. To be quite honest, I was leaning more towards accepting a life as a lonely spinster, until I met my other half, Brendan.

After only a year of dating Brendan, because of all we’ve been through, I knew he was ‘the one’. The idea of marriage had been brought up as a possibility, however, because of complicated situations, I assumed it would come with many challenges and a lot of stress. Planning a ‘big wedding’ was something I had no interest in, and neither did Brendan.

Okay, so I searched ‘Wedding GIFs’ and this came up. Is that supposed to be Bride and Groom flamingos?

Ten months ago, on March 11th 2020, I married the person I love, have been through the most with, and am confident is my other half. On the beach of the RIU Republica in Punta Cana, Brendan and I had a beautiful ceremony, and spent the entire day, just the two of us. With only one month to plan, we decided to elope on our trip which we booked on February 8th, 2020.

This is Part 5 of what I plan to be a series of blogs describing the different parts of the planning, lead up to, ceremony and celebrations, and returning home to a world which COVID-19 changed forever. In this blog, I will discuss on our wedding meetings ‘Upon Arrival’.

You can read the first post here.

According to Wedding Wire, the average couple is engaged for 13 months, allowing enough time to ‘reveal your engagement’ and then have a year to plan for the most [typically] expensive day of your life.

Depending on exactly what you feel is necessary for your wedding, you will have to schedule dozens of meetings, sometimes multiple times, with all sorts of vendors, such as:

Reception venue
Wedding planner (if you have one)
Hotel
Photographer
Florist
Entertainment
Caterers
Cake baker
Hair stylish/make up
And if you’re the bride, all the dress shopping and fittings- you can read my simple dress shopping story here

Wedding Wire recommends starting your vendor meetings at least 12 months in advance. The average couple hires 13 vendors, after meeting with at least three from each category. You can see their complete meeting timeline here.

I have no idea how most brides convince their finances to go to all these tedious meetings. You couldn’t convince me to go to more than three, and I was the bride.

So, upon arrival at our resort, prior to our wedding day, Brendan and I had one meeting with Yessica, our Wedding Planner, and one quick meeting with Nico, the lead Photographer at WBA Studios.

Fun fact from Wedding Wire’s Newlywed Report: 1 in 3, or 30% of couples hire a Wedding Planner. The rest decide to take on the challenge of planning everything themselves, using nowadays, a variety of apps and websites and doing their own research.

In an article on brides.com, they list reasons why you should hire a professional wedding planner

Help fight with budget constraints
Fight for your vision
Keep things on track
Get you vendor discounts
Handle ceremony-to-reception flipping
Coordinate the entire wedding day

To me, it seems like a no-brainer to have someone else deal with the headache of this significantly important day. I guess some couples find it fun…

We were scheduled to arrive late on the evening of Friday March 6th, to our hotel, RIU Republica. Before departure, we had scheduled to meet with the wedding planner the next day in the early afternoon. After receiving the confirmation of our wedding by the RIU on February 14th (yes, Valentine’s Day, how romantic), I was contacted by our assigned wedding planner, Yessica. She and I had exchanged only about a dozen emails between February 17th and and our departure date; there really hadn’t been a whole lot to plan.

Yessica was surprised by just how simple we wanted our special day. She had our Wedding Resume printed out in front of her, and went through our options. “Wow. Easiest couple ever,” or something like that, I recall her saying. Now that it’s been months since couples have been able to coordinate their destination weddings, I wonder if Yessica thinks to herself how easy our simple elopement was as one of the last weddings she hosted.

Originally, our ceremony was scheduled to be on Wednesday March 11th at 2pm on the beach. When we met with Yessica, she had a second thought about the time, as 2pm would be the hottest time to be out under the Caribbean sun. I just pictured Brendan standing there, pouring sweat uncomfortably, as I recited my heart-felt, long-winded vows. Fortunately, with a quick call to the Minister and Photographer, she was able to reschedule our ceremony to 4pm.

Yessica walked us across the resort, to the beach where our archway would be set up on our big day. She suggested that as the bride and groom, we arrive separately, as do most traditional couples. As we were the only two guests, we said we’d plan to come together.

We’d expected to meet with the Photographer at the same time as Yessica, but I guess sometimes things get lost in translation, especially over email and on such short notice to plan a wedding. No big deal though, we met with Nico Monday afternoon at his studio space in the RIU Republica’s gift shop.

With our two meetings out of the way, the rest of our time could be spent enjoying our vacation. I can’t imagine being a bride who comes on vacation and has to spend a majority of it meeting with various vendors, stressing about coordinating dinners, and meeting up with guests up until the wedding day. I was happy to have the week to enjoy just myself and my future husband.

Look for the next blog in the Elopement series, ‘The Proposal and Rings’

In the days leading up to our wedding, I used my Spanish skills to tell several of the resort staff members about our wedding happening on Wednesday. We made friends with the bartender by the beach who would be working and give us our champagne toast after the ceremony. I also scheduled our ‘Wedding Car’ to pick us up to drive me in my heeled shoes to the beach for the ceremony.

Coming soon, will be a series of sub-blogs which go into detail of the planning, ceremony, and reception:

The proposal & rings
Our wedding day
The ceremony
The reception dinner
After the wedding
Honeymoon on quarantine

To wrap it up in as few words as possible, our wedding day went PERFECT. Despite having rain on-and-off throughout the week, our special day, Wednesday March 11th, was sunny with a few clouds, and no rain. We spent the entire day together, a beautiful wedding at 4pm on the beach, and had a reception dinner with a delicious cake.

Yessica was an amazing planner and ensured we had our dream wedding. We were the only two guests at our wedding, and we wouldn’t have done it any other way.