My Holiday Expert

Both myself and my husband had always dreamt of getting married on a beach at sunset, before I became a travel agent, I would have thought that it would cost me the earth and it would be a hard task to pull off.

However, after helping other clients get ready for their beach weddings whilst working in a high street travel agency, I soon became to realise, that as long as you are organised, sorting out a wedding abroad is probably easier than organising a wedding in the UK.

So after convincing my partner that it would be a good time to propose to me, I set to work on finding the perfect destination for our dream wedding.

There are so many places out there to choose from, whether it be Italy, Caribbean, aboard a cruise ship or the an island in the Indian Ocean. However as we have quite a big family with lots of young children, all of whom we wanted to invite to our wedding, so we decided on Cyprus.

With only a 4 and a half hour flight away from our local airport of Exeter, it couldn’t get more ideal for us.

The next stage was choosing a tour operator that I was confident would get us everything that we wanted in our wedding, after a long search Planet Holidays were more than fabulous, and this is what we booked….

We stayed at the Ledra Beach, Paphos, on an All Inclusive basis, arriving on the 3rd May 2006, as you have to be in the country for at least 5 days before your wedding, we decided to book the wedding date for the 9th May, which coincidentally fell on my mums  50th Birthday.

As neither myself or my husband had been married before, the only paperwork that we needed to take with us on our holiday were passports and birth certificates. (Although this varies from country to country).

When booking your wedding with your holiday you get the chance to pre book hairdressers, flowers, cakes, wine etc… However with the package that we chose you had to pay and plan the wedding breakfast in resort with the hotels manager.

So on the 3rd May, we flew from Exeter to Cyprus…..

On arrival we had a letter from our wedding coordinator (included in the price) telling us that she would meet us the next day and take us off the the town hall to ensure that we collect our wedding license and get the appropriate stamps.

We had regular contact from our wedding coordinator, always there for advice and help before the big day. Putting us in touch with the hotel manager to ensure they knew just what we needed for our wedding breakfast and how we wanted our room decorated for the wedding ceremony.

Everything was going so smoothly until my bridesmaid missed her plane……but phew…in the nick of time she arrived!

As we had decided to get married in the afternoon the whole wedding party had plenty of time to get ready, have time on the beach (although please do not do as I did and spend too much time on the beach as I ended up with a sunburnt arm in my wedding photo!) and calm any pre wedding nerves.

Then the moment arrived…..we got married in a room set a side in the hotel for Weddings with the Mayor of Paphos marrying us          in front of our family and friends. This was followed by photos, courtesy of our lovely Cypriot photographer, drinks then onto a blessing on the beach, performed by mother in law, who also happens to be a Methodist Minister.

Then onto our reception next to the beach.

As we had booked 2 weeks away, we then had the last week of our holiday to have our honeymoon, returning to the UK as Mr and Mrs after a stress free wedding and without feeling like we had blown our bank balances on the big day.

I hope this has given those of you interested in getting married abroad an idea of what it really is like, and if you need any advise or costings, then please do not hesitate to get in touch!

Sue Arscott