The second post from our bride guest blogger "Cerveza por Favor" as she plans her beach wedding in Mexico: 

After finally deciding to take the leap and work with destinationweddings.com, our experience has been nothing but exceptional.  Sam Camp, our wedding specialist has been great to work with and my guests think so as well.  Having as many people as possible be able to attend our wedding affordably was very important to us, so Sam helped us to narrow down locations that would be cost affective.  We ultimately decided on Riviera Maya, Mexico, but because of long engagement (We got engaged in August '07), we were unable to book a resort right away as we had to wait until the 2009 pricing became available.  This posed a problem, however.  The resort we had chosen originally kept putting off when they were going to announce their '09 rates.   After waiting almost 9 months to make our plans, I initially thought "what's another week or so"?  But then it became several weeks and I got annoyed.  With all our friends and family constantly hounding us for the information on the trip, we just couldn't wait any longer!  For our own sanity, Ron and I worked with Sam to choose a different resort and we haven't looked back.  As for all of our friends and relatives who were hounding us for the information - Only 16 of them have booked so far and it's been four months!  Talk about hurry up and wait!

Here are the biggest lessons I have learned so far when it comes to planning a destination wedding:

1. Advanced notice given to your guests so they can start saving does not mean they are actually going to save!
2. At least 1/3 of the people who assured you they were definitely coming will not end up going.
3. The most vocal of people wanting the details of your trip will drag their feet before they book it.
4. You have to let go and trust that no matter who is there that it is going to be fantastic.

More to come next time!

Thank you to all the couples that particpated in our first "Best Destination Wedding Video" contest.  It is really fulfilling for us here at DestinationWeddings.com to be able to see the great weddings that we had the honor of being a part of. 

When I tell you that juding was tough, I am not kidding.  We received so many great videos, and all of us here had our favorites.  But, at the end of the day we had to make a decision.  And here they are, the top three Destination Wedding videos from our first contest:

***For all you couples planning your wedding with us, or for those that have already done so, if you would like to participate in a future video contest, please e-mail me at quent@destinationweddings.com***

Third Place: Anne and Darryl, Jamaica

Second Place: Jasmine and Joseph, Riviera Maya Mexico

And the winner... 

First Place: Lori and Adam, Riviera Maya Mexico

Please join us in welcoming our second bride guest blogger.  Given her chosen blog name of "Cerveza Por Favor" I am sure you will enjoy reading about her adventures as she plans her Mexico Wedding!

Hello!  My name is Annmarie and I am officially a bride to be in Buffalo, NY.  My fiancé Ron and I got engaged in August of '07 on a golf course in Western NY at a family function.  He actually proposed to me unannounced with my entire family front and center.  Lucky for him he had every reason to be overconfident - after about a minute of stone cold shock, I managed to squeak out a yes before I started to cry.  After 6 years of dating, two apartments, our first home, and a crazy dog, we are finally making it official. :)

Our planning began slowly, as we decided to have a long engagement and tie the knot in May of '09 - now just 8 months away!  One of the line items we agreed upon immediately was that we wanted to get married on a beach somewhere gorgeous.  I threw the idea out to my giant family to get an idea of how they felt about our non-traditional idea, and we received overwhelming support (with a few exceptions).  That is when we started tossing around the idea of a destination wedding.  I began to call some travel agents and do a little research online - both of which were overwhelming.  There are just so many avenues you can take!  Not long after my initial frustration, my new boss at work mentioned Destinationweddings.com.  He and his wife went through the site and got married in the Dominican Republic a few years ago and had nothing but GREAT things to say about their experience.  I knew when I went home that night that my first stop online would be destinationweddings.com...

Meet our first Destination Wedding bride guest blogger Jacqueline.  She will be taking you through the planning of her Mexico wedding. 

My name is Jacquelyn and I am very excited to be planning a Destination Wedding. It began a little over fours ago. My finance and I started dating on the night that a bunch of us went for my birthday.  But honestly it started a long time ago.  My finance and I went to the same elementary school together and we were in the same second grade class.  Yes he was my first crush.  My sister and I had to walk to CCD every Tuesday and I would make her walk the long way there so that we could go by his house. But you know how second grade crushes go not far.  It's you like them for a little while and then forget about it.  Also he ended up moving to a new house in town which meant that he switched schools too.  But that was not the last of it.

We ended up going to the same Jr. High School too.  But being as shy as I was I never talked to him.  Then during college we dated for awhile but the timing wasn't right,  but we stayed friends.  And then one day we finally got together.  It was like a dream come true.  So we dated for four years and then last year on Mother's day he asked me to marry him. 

He got up early that day and went to get breakfast for us and when he came home he had the boys give me a dozen red roses and a big heart balloon that said Happy Mother's Day, and then he told me that there was something for me in the kitchen, so I went in to find a small box wrapped in gold paper with a big ribbon.  I was so excited I could hardly breathe.  I took the box to the other room and opened it, as I was about to open the box he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.  He was shaking so bad and he was sweating.  I said you shouldn't have been nervous because you knew that I would say yes.  He then went on to tell me that if I wasn't so picky on what type of ring I wanted that I would have gotten it much sooner. 

See I wanted a ring that was totally different from everyone else's and that's just what my ring is. I am glad he waited. He also said that if my dad wasn't such a hard person to track down he would have asked me sooner too.  He made sure to ask everyone close to me if he could marry me.  My mom was the first person he asked.  It was hard for my family to keep such a big secret.  But they did great.  I was very surprised and very excited.  So now we are in the process of planning our destination wedding.

Jacquelyn