Our Destination Wedding & Honeymoon Plans

After almost a year of planning the day is finally here. Our (multiple) bags are packed and tomorrow morning Justin and I fly back to the country we got engaged in to exchange rings and hand-written vows under an almond tree.

In previous posts I’ve touched upon the fact that getting here has not been that easy. My friends still call me Bridget – as in Jones, the famed, calamity prone singleton  – so basically, wedding planning was never going to come naturally to me.

Probably spent a little too much time playing with the props
Probably spent a little too much time playing with the props

I found the logistics of a destination wedding pretty tricky. Living in Oz, planing a wedding in Thailand and communicating with a bridal party in the UK takes time and patience. We totally let the fact that we were having an overseas wedding lull us into a false sense of laziness. The thing is, unless you’re doing the bare bones type of elopement, you still have to arrange all the same elements for a destination wedding as you would back home. You’ve got to pick flowers, music, menus, table settings, entertainment etc but with the added pressure of having to imagine it all in your head. (Unless you did a reccy to your resort or booked somewhere you had been before – something we wish we had done with hindsight!) Let’s just say I learnt a lot in this process – like how not to buy a wedding dress or glue wedding decorations to your dining room table – and you can expect a few woeful posts on these subjects in due course.

But for now  – we’re off! We’ve put out fires right up to the last minute – like agents forgetting to book transfers for our family and me forgetting to cancel the 2 additional hotel rooms I booked FOR A WEEK and no longer needed – so we feel like we have legitimately earned this time off.

What’s The Plan?

After much research we opted for a wedding in Khao Lak, Thailand. After pretty much pricing up the whole world we settled on Thailand because it’s somewhere we’re familiar with, has a personal meaning and is sort of half way in-between where our families live in Australia and the UK. Finding the right venue took a little time though.

I’ve always pictured having quite a small and intimate wedding and one of the main reasons for this is I feel very nervous at thought of all the attention being on you as one half of the couple getting married. For me, therefore, one of the main priorities in a venue was privacy. It makes me squirm just thinking of random resort guests or passersby gawking at our wedding. A lot of couples opt for a private villa wedding for this reason but we had such a range of ages and budgets to cater for that this wasn’t an option for us. We also had factors like some guests not being good on boats and we needed to cater for children (although none are attending afterall) so certain island resorts were ruled out. In the end we came across Khao Lak, which is accessible by car, 1 hour north of Phuket, as we thought its range of hotels, restaurants and laid back vibe (in comparison to say Phuket or Samui) would be perfect. I remembered receiving press releases from a boutique resort that turned out to be on a remote stretch of sand 20 mins away from central Khao Lak and that’s how we came to book our wedding at The Sarojin.

We worked with an Aussie based wedding planner who helped source recommended suppliers for things like hair and make up and music as well as passed on all our wishes to The Sarojin. After reading pretty much every blog I could find on Thailand weddings looking for photography styles I liked I was delighted to come across Darin from Darin Images who will be coming in from Phuket to shoot our wedding.

We’ll be arriving in style as we cashed in frequent flyer miles to fly in the Singapore Suites and booked ourselves into the multi award-winning Crowne Plaza Hotel Changi Airport for a few winks mid-trip. As our wedding venue is a bit remote we’ve booked a week at The Sands Khao Lak, where most of our family are staying, followed by 3 nights at The Sarojin, during which we’ll have the wedding. After that it’s time for the honeymoon of our dreams in an over-water villa in the Maldives. (Yes, really!!)

What honeymoons were made for. Image thanks to Coco Collection
What honeymoons were made for. Image thanks to Coco Collection

Will You Be Blogging It?

I absolutely will be blogging about all of the above, just not during the trip. Some people have asked if as a travel blogger any parts of my wedding are sponsored and the answer is no. We decided it would be better if I was just the bride for the week and not also the blogger on duty.

Parts of our honeymoon in the Maldives, however, is sponsored. Thanks to an introduction made by the lovely Monica from The Travel Hack I was offered the opportunity to team up with Coco Collection. After reading every review possible of their jaw-droppingly beautiful resort Coco Bodu Hithi and literally salivating at the pictures I concluded it would be a pleasure to create beautiful and useful content from this destination. Justin and I are both incredibly grateful for the opportunity.

So I will be on social media throughout the whole trip. I know I won’t be able to help myself talking about all these cool things and I’m even co-hosting a Twitter chat about Hong Kong on one of the evenings we’re in the Maldives.

Stay up to date on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

I’ve also started dabbling on Snapchat so if you’d like to see some non-glossy behind-the-scenes bits look me up at @jayneytravels.

Whilst We’re Getting Wed…

I’m looking forward to taking a mini-break from blogging though – it has been 6 years since I’ve done so! Whilst we’re away getting wed, if you’re so interested, you could dig into the archives of this blog and revisit some of my favourite old posts instead. Here’s a few of my picks:

There’s a lot of talk about Cuba at the moment. Here are my thoughts on this incredible place from the time I went there for my sister’s wedding in 2013.

One of the most read posts on my site EVER is this. The second most read is this.

I hated Vietnam on my first visit but felt a little different after giving it a second chance.

The children of the Gambia left a lasting impression.

I recently ran away to Bali. Here’s what I got up to.

The disastrous trip that inspired my very first blog post.

How travel blogging went from my hobby to my career.

Thanks so much for reading. I’ll be back with more posts when I’m a Mrs.

J x

Get more posts like this:

Follow *Featured image thanks to The Sarojin

About the author

I’m Jayne, a travel blogger, content creator and mum to a 4-year-old son. I’ve been blogging since 2010, travelled to 65 countries and share travel guides and tips to help you plan stylish, stress-free trips.

10 thoughts on “Our Destination Wedding & Honeymoon Plans”

  1. Have the most wonderful, wonderful wedding! I know what it’s like to have to deal with wedding planning AND visa issues, so now you can relax and enjoy it all 🙂 Can’t wait to read all about it! x

    Reply
  2. Congratulations! Sounds like it will be a beautiful wedding and honeymoon. I can’t wait to hear all about it! Also, enjoy the a little blogging hiatus. You deserve it.

    Reply

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.