A Honeymoon With Friends // Cap Juluca, Anguilla

A charming guest post from a fabulous 2010 bride, Starr:

Though Ross and I grew up in the same hometown and probably ran in the same ‘circles’, we never knew each other except maybe enough to recognize one another. As I’m two years older, Ross continues to disagree with this saying he knew me in high school but I was older and too cool to know him. Either way, I was not only set on not marrying someone from my hometown but also not marrying someone in my same field of work. That’s when “it was meant to be” chimes in. I ran into Ross my second year of medical school when he was interviewing at that same school. It didn’t take long to reconnect and an even shorter amount of time to realize that the talk, dark, and handsome chivalrous seemingly perfect men portrayed in Disney movies might actually exist.

After a year and a half of dating, finally being in the same city, Ross proposed on a small island decked with candles, tiki torches, lanterns, flowers, fireworks, and a secret photographer in the middle of Lake Martin near our hometown. We both love the water, Ross growing up near the lake and my family with frequent trips to the beach. This made our decision for a destination wedding easy. That, plus the fact that if we had it in our hometown it would be 600 people and somehow we’d still make someone feel left out. The island of Anguilla off the coast of St. Martin in the British West Indies was our ideal choice, and we began planning what we’ve come to refer to as our “honeymoon with friends.”

A destination wedding may come with more logistics than a hometown wedding, but with a smaller guest list you can focus on the things you love and find important. A stint in the fashion and design world before medical school gave me an incredible appreciation of photography and video. Those (plus the dress of course!) were the things we focused most on, and it didn’t take us long to fall in love with Elysium’s work. Flowers and beautiful scenery are abundant in the Caribbean, but we needed someone to document our perfect day and all of our incredible friends who traveled so far for us. Even with high expectations and a lot of planning everything blew us away and Elysium continues to make me speechless. Their artistic and modern style was exactly what I wanted but had never seen anyone do, much less do so well. They are by far the best in their field and we never thought they’d be willing to come to our wedding.

My favorite part of having a destination wedding is the details you are able to focus on because of a smaller number of people.