son of a beach...

well... really sons and daughters of the beach. dave and i. though we had no idea where we wanted the ceremony, we were both sure there had to be sand, water and trees. ideally an outdoor ceremony. through our travels we've discovered we are both drawn to the waves and serenity that is the beach. we can spend hours wandering, exploring and just enjoying the scenerey. we frequently pass up popular tourist sites to just visit the local beaches while travelling. so, we figured this had to be the setting.

our dream beach - tofino BC

our favourite spot in canada, so far. schooner cove, tofino

dave happily searching for crabs 

fun at the beach

sadly, these beach spots are on the other side of Canada, and often involve a kilometre long hike to reach. not really realistic for a wedding setting. 

we also love the idea of the ceremony being at my parents property on the muskoka river. we had visions of lanterns through the trails and down on the dock, cheesy canoe photos, and local wildflowers everywhere. my parents air stream trailor would be the perfect back drop for some cheesy wedding shots. we then realized, one outhouse, though it is the fanciest outhouse we've seen, would not be sufficient for our guests.

 

while one outhouse might be fixable, we started looking at the logistics of getting everyone up to bracebridge and it became obvious this was not something we could pull off at this time.

not wanting to wait another 10 years until we could afford this dream muskoka ceremony, we set our sites on a destination wedding. we figured the caribbean is our best choice to keep it somewhat economical for everyone- my dream of a trip to tahiti will have to wait. however - white sand, crystal blue water. hot sun. a beach lovers dream. a visit to punta cana a few years ago proved to us, we are definitely beach babies.

having been to dominican, we wanted to visit a new country. cuba was not an option, as we do have US resident family members. dave's been to mexico -  so, we've decided to move forward with planning our wedding in jamaica.we dream of settings like this:

and photo moments like this:

we realize not everyone will be able to join us. but we're hopeful some folks will be up for a sunny vacation, while joining us for a wedding that's been more than 11 years in the making at the same time.