There seems to be some confusion as to who you should contact when you want a destination wedding. Do you need a wedding planner or a travel agent?
Wedding Planners
While a wedding planner may successfully help you plan your dream wedding, they’ll have to outsource the services of a travel agent. This means two companies to deal with and pay, increasing your time and financial investment into your destination wedding.
Even worse, they may charge you extra and attempt to make the travel and hotel arrangements for your group on their own. Unfortunately, most wedding planners are not registered with a travel industry regulator (in Ontario, this is TICO) and lack the necessary experience to create your destination wedding without issues.
Travel Agents
Many travel agents also wish to help brides and grooms with their destination wedding. Their intentions may be genuine but most travel agents only deal with individual bookings rather than group bookings. Your destination wedding may even be their first!
And since they are not certified by a wedding planning industry authority, your wedding may be less than what you had dreamed.
What could go wrong?
These wedding planners and travel agents may mean well but unfortunately, they have gaps within their experience and knowledge of destination weddings. Any number of details can go wrong with a wedding in your own country, but when you’re marrying in a foreign country, these potential problems double!
By an inexperienced hand, here are just some of the destination wedding nightmares we’ve heard:
- Imagine getting married in Mexico, coming home and finding out that you’re not actually married because you filled out the wrong marriage requirements!
- There’s a language barrier between the beachside bride and the island wedding coordinator. The décor clashes with the wedding colours and they serve beef instead of the requested fresh seafood.
- Because of overbooking, half the guests are at the bride and groom’s hotel and the others were placed in various hotels miles away. Many of them miss out on group activities and several end up arriving late for the wedding.
- The bride and groom end up covering the cost of a hidden hotel clause that translates into thousands of extra dollars they did not expect to pay.
Destination Wedding Specialists
If you want the perfect destination wedding, it is best to place your trust in someone who combines the two professions (wedding planner and travel agent) into one specialized career: a destination wedding specialist. This professional will have the necessary experience and know-how to trouble-shoot foreseeable circumstances like those described above.
There are differences between destination wedding specialists, as well. For instance, some charge a fee for their services, others do not. Others still sell wedding dresses and accessories, becoming more generalized rather than specialized. And home-based agents make it difficult to meet in a professional setting.
Many destination wedding specialists suggest destinations and hotels that they have not personally visited. But think about it… Would you buy a car from someone who doesn’t drive?
With the integrity and experience of Weddings By Oceans, you can rest assured that you’ll have the beach wedding of your dreams. Our services are free-of-charge and as an added bonus, we speak fluent Spanish and French so that we can help you organize your wedding with the on-site coordinator and “crack the whip” on island time, if needed.
We are also recognized by both the Travel Industry Council of Ontario (TICO) and by The Wedding Planners Institute of Canada. For more reasons to hire a Weddings By Oceans destination wedding specialist, please click here and here.
If you want to vow your love to the sound of the lapping ocean and a warm island breeze blowing through your hair, contact Weddings By Oceans today and get your very own Cyber Maid of Honour!
Have any questions about the differences between these areas of expertise? Please type them in the comment section below and we’ll have an answer for you in no time.
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