This week, Sunny dishes on everything that happens on your first call with your Sandals and Beaches Wedding Planner.

Hey there, Sunny here – 100% ready to dive into sharing every detail of planning my very own Sandals Wedding at Sandals Emerald Bay. Of course no planning can even begin without that first, crucial meeting with your pre-travel Beaches or Sandals wedding planner. I call it crucial because this meeting pretty much sets the tone for what to expect throughout the rest of your planning journey, whether you’re 3-6 months out from your big day or a year or two.

Expect to Meet Your Planner (obviously!)

There are generally two ways you can go about getting connected with a pre-travel wedding planner. The first is to go ahead and book your room or honeymoon Love Nest suite online and indicate that you’re planning a wedding. This is ideal if you know exactly which days you want to honeymoon and which day you want to get married. Once you book and enter in your information, one of our ‘Aisle to Isle’ wedding concierge agents will either email you or phone you to introduce you to your pre-travel wedding planner. The second way you can go about meeting a pre-travel planner is to call the Sandals or Beaches hotline, where you will be connected with a wedding concierge who can help you look for dates of availability, help you book your room and set up your wedding date. They will then email you a recap of all of the details you talked about and have the introduction made to your pre-travel wedding planner. Either way, the wedding concierge is your first point of contact when getting started with wedding planning at Sandals and Beaches Resorts. The wedding concierge agent will also send you the WeddingMoons planning guide, a list of the documentation you will need to get married on whichever island you choose and the time that your consultation will take place. Then, you’re all set for your first call! 

Expect It To Be A Bit Informal

Don’t worry about having every single detail hammered out on your first consultation with your pre-travel planner. I certainly didn’t have all my details down! Even if you have no idea what time of day you want your ceremony to happen, on this first call your planner can help you weigh the pros and cons. The initial call is really just a welcome to the journey. You’ll talk about you and your fiancé’s personal style, what inspires your wedding goals, what type of wedding you’re dreaming about, etc. You don’t need any paperwork just yet or an overview of everything you want. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to jam all of that into one call even if you could. You’re going to change your mind at least twice during this process (yep – I said I was sure I wanted an early afternoon wedding until I talked to my planner and saw all those gorgeous sunset wedding photos!). Your pre-travel planner will go over the details you arranged with your concierge and talk about any changes you may want to make like to your time of day or the actual date.

Expect to Be Informed

On this call, your pre-travel planner will talk about all the ins and outs of what you will need to get married on whichever island you choose, the government fees and skim the light details of the types of weddings you can do with our new Aisle to Isle weddings. If you have a question about the $500 Wedding Credit when you customize your own wedding or the difference bell and whistles we offer when you bring a group, your pre-travel planner will be happy to explain all of this to you. All of those questions you had while you skimmed the Sandals Weddings website, keep them handy for your first call. Most importantly, your pre-travel planner will also send you the Wedding Information and Marriage License Processing Form for your island, which you and your bride/groom will need to fill out and fax or scan back to the wedding office.  Be forewarned, this is when it will really hit you, “Oh My Gosh, we’re actually having a destination wedding!”

Expect to Set The Standard

This is another really important part of your first meeting with your pre-travel planner. He or she will ask you how often you want to be in contact to begin planning your wedding. If you’re a type A bride, you’ll be tempted to say every day. Trust me, you don’t need everyday. Of course, set your calls as frequently or infrequently as you need but also trust that your pre-travel planner has helped planned countless weddings and is a pro. If you’re a year or two out from your wedding, once a month may be fine for you to speak to your planner. If you’re down to months, you may want to set a call every two weeks or so. My planner, Nina (who has been a dream!) and I spoke every month in the beginning with calls a little closer now that we’re getting down to the wire. Don’t forget, you can drop your planner a line anytime you want to add details, get an update or make changes to what you’ve planned already.

Oh! And yes, you should definitely have your fiancé present for your first call. Whether he or she is big on wedding planning or not, it’s good to have them there to answer those initial questions and for you both to be on the same page of what’s needed to get married at Sandals or Beaches. Plus, it’s exciting putting those long looked at plans into action together, plus bonding and all that!

Happy Planning!

Now it’s your turn to help me! I’ve designed four destination weddings I really love but can’t choose from. Help plan the WeddingMoon of my dreams by voting on your favorite element of all my wedding elements and you could WIN a romantic getaway to Sandals Resorts, plus some other awesome prizes. Vote here now! From the UK? You can vote here. 

This giveaway has now ended!