Want to have a wonderful wedding away from home? Destination Weddings For Dummies is your all-in-one guide to getting married out of town, giving you savvy tips on everything from making travel arrangements to hiring vendors to dressing the wedding party. Fron Vegas to the Vatican, this hands-on, practical resource helps you arrange a unique, unforgettable wedding anywhere in the world. Focusing on the various ways you can use the Internet in your planning, Destination Weddings For Dummies is filled with Web tips, shortcuts, and URLs, as well as instructions for creating your own digital wedding planner. You’ll see how to establish a realistic wedding budget and get your friends and family on board. Then, you’ll choose the perfect location; from Europe to the tropics to the open sea, we’ve done the scouting for you! You’ll also discover how to: Get married legally around the world Know who, when, and how to invite Create your own destination wedding Web site and blog Fit all the basics into your budget— from flowers and catering to the rings, photography, and music Hire wedding pros from a distance Decide on your ceremony’s style Dress the bride, groom, and the wedding party Communicate your plans to invited guests Compare wedding packages Save money on travel arrangements Test-drive your destination wedding site Organize fun wedding activities Handle various wedding emergencies If money is no object, you'll also see how to host a blowout wedding and make a splash when you splurge. Whether it’s a small, intimate ceremony in a Hawaiian garden or a large gathering on a yacht in the Mediterranean, Destination Weddings For Dummies is all you need to get married anywhere you choose with ease and in style!

This unique guide is the first book to: identify everything you need to know about destination weddings, marriage renewals, and honeymoon packages offered by more than 135 elegant hotels and cruise ships in the Caribbean, Mexico, Hawaii and US; tell you which resorts will marry you or renew your vows FOR FREE if you stay there; reveal what hundreds of people really thought about the resorts after staying there. The resorts chosen for this book will put everything together for your wedding (or renewal). All offer a ceremony with an official. Many also include a beautifully decorated wedding site, flowers, cake, photographers, and special touches, like free romantic dinners, or breakfast in bed after the ceremony. And in many places -- and only this book tells you where -- they will even provide all of this for free! You will also learn the low-down that you won't find in any other guidebooks. The secrets and details your travel agent doesn't even know. Vital information that will help you decide which resort you want to choose.

The biggest trend to hit weddings in the past decade is the destination wedding. Whether on a Caribbean beach or in the Italian countryside, more and more couples throw their weddings far from home. The idea is an exciting one, but planning long distance can be complicated. In The Knot Guide to Destination Weddings, Carley Roney and JoAnn Gregoli break down the unique process of planning from afar—from deciding on your destination to whether or not you should fly in your officiant—and all the legal and practical considerations in between. Armed with a variety of experts on the subject, tips, and lessons from couples who have been through the experience, this book is jam-packed with checklists and practical, insightful advice from wedding people in-the-know. With so many intricacies to take care of, couples “wedding away” need a clear game plan. The Knot Guide to Destination Weddings ensures no detail, big or small, will fall through the cracks. The authors tackle: •picking out and booking the perfect location •listings of the top wedding spots worldwide •establishing the wedding budgets •hiring planners and/or vendors from a distance •the etiquette of destination weddings •countless ways to make your wedding unique •legal marriage requirements for foreign locales •planning a full weekend of events, including the reception, rehearsal dinner, and guest activities •using the Internet to coordinate the event

Now that you’ve said, “I do” to having a destination wedding, it’s time to make your fairy tale getaway celebration a reality! Whether you’re planning an island wedding, overseas nuptials, or an intimate gathering in a beloved beach house or a charming village close to home, this invaluable guide from go-to wedding expert Sharon Naylor gives you all the information you need to make your magical day meaningful, memorable, and carefree—for you, and for your guests! You’ll discover: *How to choose the right planner—and how to get the most out of your on-site wedding professionals * Up-to-date wedding etiquette and planning tips from celebrity wedding planners and experts * New ways to use social media accounts, blogs and apps for info-gathering and inspiration * Invaluable advice for when it’s a destination wedding for out-of-town guests but not for the couple *How to plan amazing and unforgettable destination wedding weekend outings and events *Great ideas for getaway bachelor or bachelorette parties, as well as arranging a romantic pre-wedding escape for you to reconnect with your beloved before the big day! * Must-have tips and to-dos for your destination wedding scouting trips From navigating travel trends and social media to benefitting from little-known freebies, this comprehensive guide to planning your wedding from afar is brimming with information you won’t easily find anywhere else. Weddings Away has everything you need to keep your happily-ever-after stress-free and smooth sailing! Praise for Sharon Naylor’s It’s My Wedding Too “As delicious, layered and inventively crafted as a Sylvia Weinstock cake.” --Jaqueline deMontravel, author of Escape from Bridezilla

Ten years ago, when Sandy Malone was planning her Caribbean destination wedding, there was no Pinterest, no Instagram, and no Wedding Wire. The Knot and the Wedding Channel were in their infancy. And Malone was planning her wedding from scratch. The tips and advice in How to Plan Your Own Destination Wedding will help brides and grooms navigate the murky waters of destination-wedding planning—and they are murky because most do-it-yourself brides and grooms are looking to do something “different” from what all of their friends have done before them. Unfortunately, the more remote, bizarre, and challenging the destination is, the more attractive it appears to the do-it-yourself couple. That’s where Sandy Malone, star of Wedding Island (TLC), who has been planning weddings for ten years, comes in. She offers advice to brides and grooms on how NOT to spend money on things they don’t need to invest in, and where they DO need to spend money to make sure the event runs smoothly. She also gives tips on how to negotiate the contract with the venue, the “wetiquette” of invitations for destination weddings, finding and handling vendors abroad, and much more. This book offers the complete guide to destination weddings, by a true expert!

Peering behind the veil to question the meaning of weddings in American popular culture, Ingraham finds nothing less than a wedding industrial complex with annual revenues in excess of 30 billion dollars. 20 photos.

This book examines myths of the Caribbean as paradise. These myths are used as a backdrop to market destination white weddings. The book is interdisciplinary and uses historical and contemporary visual texts to examine the way in which middle class white womanhood assumes a decorative, privileged, and elevated position within contemporary images of destination weddings in the Caribbean. To facilitate the notion of the Caribbean as paradise, the book argues that this production of luxury is highly dependent on the positioning of blackness as servitude. To this end, tourism marketing appropriates the Caribbean’s history of slavery; transforming the region into a site where whiteness can consume black labor as luxury.