Happy Sunday everyone, we are on to our second blog. This will be news to those that do not know us personally. We got married on December 12th, 2020 in Tulum, Mexico. We will be talking about planning a destination wedding, our wedding, as well as how incredible of a place Tulum is to visit. After getting engaged in December of 2019 we knew we did not want a large wedding that is very common in Oklahoma. It was just not for us.
We had already done the easy part, choosing our destination. That is something we had talked about for a while leading up to our engagement. Now that it was actually going to happen the difficult part of planning a wedding from almost 2,000 miles away began. We first needed to visit the place that we planned on having our wedding as we had only seen pictures and researched online. Obviously, to us, the first step was booking plane tickets for a week of exploring Tulum with a few breaks to pick venues, food, and other wedding necessities. In Tulum it is difficult to find a hotel that is not beautiful and a restaurant that is not delicious. We were instantly hooked on the boho feel of Tulum and the small, boutique hotels. Deciding is really all about your budget, tastes and group size.
Fortunately on our week-long trip that seemed to be over in a few hours, we were able to pin down our hotel/venue. We chose Amansala Chica, a hotel that is part of the Amansala Hotels family. It was small enough to stay intimate for our small group of guests and had the resources to provide the food for our wedding. We were able to try some of the food for lunch one day which was nothing less than incredible. Other great bonuses were that our guests received a room discount at two of the Amansala locations, free breakfast, discounts on the daily yoga classes, and most importantly Amansala has a wedding planner on staff which we would 100% recommend when planning a destination wedding.
We planned the rest of our wedding from New York City and Tulsa. Choosing a florist, photographer, baker and several other things from abroad. With the help of our wedding planner and a lot of stressful nights we got everything sorted out. A year later from our planning trip, we flew back to get married with our closest friends and family.
Back on the beach again, we were ready to unite and become our own family. First, we had several days to celebrate our upcoming nuptials with everyone that joined us. We flew in 3 days early to give us time to relax as well as a cushion for any last minute planning we needed to do. We chatted about the good ole days over breakfast, listened to music on the beach and stayed up well into the night. The day got closer and we all got a little bit more sun burned. The day before the wedding we held our rehearsal dinner at an Italian eatery called Bacaro. We had stumbled upon it randomly on our first trip to Tulum and decided it would be perfect for rehearsal dinner. Our family and friends shared wine, pasta and pizza as the sun went down. We closed the night with a toast and headed back to Amansala to prepare for the big day.
The day of, we decided to do a first look and shared our own vows just the two of us, and I cried. After I cleaned myself up the fun was ready to begin. We had our ceremony on the beach and could not have had a more beautiful backdrop. Tierney walked down the aisle of beautiful pampas grass and flowers while a violinist played. With our closest friends looking on, we said "I Do" and poured our two separate vases of sand into one to signify us becoming a union. After more pictures on the beach, we joined our party on the roof. Welcomed as the Alexanders with mariachi music, and a spicy margarita we were officially married. After hors d'oeuvres and a few more cocktails we headed over to the official reception. We ate incredible food, danced until we sweated through our suit jackets and listened to our closest friends and family give toasts.
A life of incredible experiences is better when its shared with your best friend. Our biggest piece of advice in this blog is not get married in Tulum, it is find that person and never stop moving, seeing and experiencing all that this beautiful ever-changing world has to offer.