Hello, Reader!
My name is Sarah and I'm an event planner based in Dallas. Our company, Keestone Events, has been in business for over seven years.
While we have planned for corporate functions, birthday parties and galas, the majority of our events are weddings. The highlight for me is when our couples decide to do a destination wedding and are trusting us to help guide the way.
While it sounds fun in theory, in reality, it is easily three times the amount of work. For that reason alone, we take on a very limited number of destination clients each year to ensure that we can really deliver on quality and efficiency.
We have done weddings in locations like Cabo and Bali to name a few and here are a few things that have happened behind-the-scenes. Two months before one of our weddings in Cabo, Hurricane Odile hit Baja California and a state of emergency was declared in Cabo. It devastated much of the area, destroying structures, bringing in floods and leveling trees and power lines. People were simply focused on surviving. There was no electricity or drinking water, and people were warned to stay indoors due to looters. Tourists had to be airlifted home as the airports were damaged.
It was horrible to watch the news and see the devastation that struck. The first thing I did was to make sure all our vendors were safe (once I could get through the phone lines!), and try and figure out the extent of the damage at the boutique hotel the wedding was to be held at. Turns out Odille had blown out all the windows, taken out all the vegetation around, destroyed furniture, cabinets, the list goes on.
It was built by a husband-wife team and when I say boutique, I mean it! Your reputation is everything, especially when you are a small business and man, did these owners ever step up and do all in their power to ensure that whatever damage was repaired. The owners were indispensable in ensuring the venue was back to its original glory and two days before the wedding was to occur, they officially opened the doors of their boutique hotel again. You would have never guessed that just a few weeks before, it was a place where a hurricane had struck.
On the couple's end, it would have been easy for them to scrap their original plans there and have a local wedding instead. But because they have been to the area a few times and truly love the place, they decided to wait it out to see what would happen in two months as they wanted to be able to support the community when they needed help the most.
The guest count for the wedding dropped and after reaching out to the caterer to confirm once more that everything was good to go, I was told that it “wasn’t worth” their time anymore with a smaller guest count and they would drop out. Thankfully, my original choice of caterer was down for the ride and stepped in to save the day.
It was unbelievably rewarding when the actual wedding day came. The bride did yoga in the morning with friends while the groom went surfing. The ceremony took place in the most stunning location, with the mountains on one side and the ocean on the other. I loved that this was a smaller wedding since it was even more intimate. The bride surprised the groom with a mariachi band during the reception, and guests sent (eco-friendly) wish lanterns off into the sky. The night ended with everyone being brought to the beach in front of a bonfire to hang out and continue good conversation with those closest to them.
There is a reason why we take on a very limited number of destination events, as so much work goes into each. We were scouting out venues in Bali when the volcano there started spewing out ash for instance! Should anything come up, we funnel through all the crazy and present solutions so you will never know…unless you ask us to tell you later!