Decisions, decisions

You're probably wondering how I decided when to get married and why a destination wedding. Despite what some people think, a lot of thought was put into my decision of getting married in St. Thomas on March 15, 2008.

When I picked the date, I wanted to make sure Brian's family could all make it. My family it really doesn't matter when I choose. If it's not local, many of them will not come. That's not a bad thing mind you. I have a big family. Brian's extended family equals my immediate family.

I, also, wanted a date that would give me an excuse to take a winter vacation every year. That pretty much cancels out the traditional months of May - August. September is back to school time. Too hectic for families with kids.. October - December is holiday rush season. January would have been nice but it is peak travel season and everyone would be broke from the holidays. That knocks out February as well. March and April looked good. April, though, was a little close to nice spring and summer weather plus everyone would be rushing to get their taxes done. I didn't want to compete with tax season. Plus, Brian's friend Naomi would be celebrating her 1st anniversay in April. I didn't want to overshadow that. I firmly believe that any date that a close friend or family member is married on is unusable for at least one year. So that left us with March.

I decided on the month, so now it was time to decide on the date. Brian is back in school for a fourth degree. He likes collecting degrees like some people collect stamps. I looked at Harvard Extension School's schedule. They don't have 2008's schedule up but they're pretty reliable on having spring break on the last week of March. I would like Brian's Aunt Florence to be able to make it as well. I pulled up Oswego's schedule. Spring break starts March 22 in 2008. This is leading to somewhere nice. It looked like Brian's spring break and Aunt Florence's spring break were actually going to overlap. This was too good to be true I had a date. March 22. Wait this is too easy. There must be something wrong. I found a calendar with holidays listed. March 23rd is Easter next year. As my Dad said, "that's God's day. You can't take God's day." He does have a point. I don't want to upset the big guy upstairs. So, I decided to move it up a week and hope people can make it. Our wedding date will be March 15. I just wanted a date and now I have one.

How did I decide to do a destination wedding? Actually, that's a funny story. I wanted to elope. The idea of organizing any kind of big event frightens the bejeevers out of me. Brian wanted to have his family and close friends share in our big day. I started picturing the large guest list and everyone saying you need to invite this one and that one. I started having nightmares. I was looking online at elopement options when I happened upon an article about Destination Weddings. The summary of the article was that a destination wedding is an elopement with only the people who truly want to share your day with you. I loved that idea. I came home to tell Brian. (Mind you this is long before we were even engaged.) He liked the idea, too. From that day on, we both decided that when we got married, we would do a destination wedding.

We decided to do something in the Caribbean. I started scouting out locations and going to tripadvisor.com. I was driving myself crazy to tell you the truth. Should we do it in the Bahamas? If so, do we do it in one of the out islands or how about the Atlantis. Or Puerto Rico, or one of the Virgin Islands, or, or .....you get the picture. I finally asked Brian to narrow it down for me. He suggested either Puerto Rico or St. Thomas since they are both US territories which means, no passport requirement. I started looking at Puerto Rico (PR) and St. Thomas (ST). PR definitely had a lot more all-inclusive options but it was also a lot more urban. So that narrowed it down to St. Thomas. There's only one all-inclusive on St. Thomas and that's the Wyndham. Everyone who's been speaks very highly about it. The pictures are lovely and I could get married overlooking St. John. So that's how I came to make what I consider the most important decisions. Now it's on to the guest list. Yeah!