As I mentioned before, I have been dreaming about my wedding since I was a little girl. My dream wedding has always been a beach wedding at sunset with candles lighting the pathways and sand in our toes as we dance the night away outside next to a Caribbean ocean. However, having looked into this since the proposal, I have come to realise just how impractical this might be.
Some say weddings can be a lot cheaper when they are destination weddings, but I am starting to wonder if this is truly the case. My family and friends mean an awful lot to me, and so I don't like the idea of cutting the guest list down to 20 or 30 people. Secondly, I don't like the idea of guests paying for their own flights, or even worse, their accommodation. If I have chosen to have a destination wedding, why should my family and friends have to spend a fortune on flights and hotels just to see me get married? I honestly would not have the guts to tell people they had to fork out £600 or so just because I don't want to be a 'normal' bride. It just seems rude to me. So, if we had to pay for 70 ish people to fly out to wherever we had chosen, stay a couple of nights and then fly back, it would leave us with very little money to spend on everything else such as the dress, food, entertainment and photographer.
So it seems as though my dream wedding is pretty much out of the question, since my dream wedding would probably mean us selling our home. Recently we have been thinking about alternatives, such as getting married in our own country for one thing. I have tossed about the idea of dressing up an English venue to have a beach theme, but I think without the sand, sea, sunset and real views that I have always pictured, it just wouldnt be the same and might even turn out tacky. So we swerved our ideas to the opposite end of the year and gone from a hot sunny summer theme to a Christmassy Winter theme. I'm not talking all white with fake snow and ice everywhere. I'm thinking more reds and golds, holly and candles, open fireplaces and mulled wine. England offers some of the best venues in the world for a theme like this with all its stately manors and mansions, so this seems ideal. December is also a much cheaper time of the year to get married, and the cost of decorations will be cut down if we find a church and venue that already has decor up for the holidays.
But... no matter how much I try to picture what would be a truly beautiful Christmas wedding, I just can't get my original beach wedding dream out of my head. I hope it will begin to fade soon, as I really can't see it being a possibility unless we win the lottery or get some massive inheritance from a rich aunt we never knew about.
