Our Jamaican Wedding

Shawn and I knew that we wanted to have a destination wedding from the very beginning. We looked into many different locations, but as soon as we came across Tensing Pen we knew that was the place. After a year of planning, Shawn and I were married on May 2, 2009. It was the time of my life!

The details...
From the moment that we started to plan our wedding, we made the decision to make sure that the wedding was about us. We did not want to get caught up in all of the "must haves". I made sure to do my research and to cut costs where I could. The destination wedding board on TheKnot was helpful in so many ways. Through the "knotties" I was able to find my photographer, hairpiece, flowers, and location. We decided to keep the look for the wedding clean and simple. I was inspired by these blue lanterns and mosaic candleholders that I found at Target and everything else just fell into place.

**All images were taken by Sungold Photography**

I didn't want a photoframe guest book and thought about doing a signature plate, but at the last minute decided to go with signature river rocks. I love how it turned out.

Because of the Jamaican sun I wanted to make sure that we had fans for our guests. I had a monogram made up and tied that to the fans and also had pew cards for the chairs. The designs were created by Bree who I found on Etsy. She also did our wedding invitations-which were perfect-and I highly recommend her.

shoes, flowers, getting ready and more...

The Ceremony...


It wasn't raining, but the cottage where I was getting ready was right next to the ceremony site, so my girls were blocking me from his view.

I was so excited and happy!

This is one of my favorite pictures. I love how I can see my maid of honors giving each other knuckles in the background!




Getting ready to sign the marriage certificate.






Some of my favorite pictures...



The Reception

I have so many pictures of us from the reception that I could share, but no one wants to see all of them ;0) I figure I will show what the knotties like to see!

For our wedding cake we decided to do a giant cupcake. My matron of honor, Shannon, volunteered to make our giant cupcake for us along with the mini cupcakes. I LOVE how everything turned out. She was upset because the heat made the icing melt, but to me it was perfect! We also wanted to have a little piece of our english bulldog in the wedding so I ordered the bulldog topper (they were too heavy to put on top so we put them on the side).

This was truly that happiest time of my life. Although the majority of the planning was hectic, I have no regrets planning a destination wedding or choosing Tensing Pen. I know that there are brides who are currently planning their weddings there and future brides who will be planning there, all I can say is that it will be completely worth it in the end!