タグ別アーカイブ: Weddings

Sixteen Canadian couples are set to say “I do” at wedding ceremonies taking place simultaneously in the Bahamas later this year.

The spouses-to-be won the prize through an online contest aimed at promoting the Bahamas as a travel destination for weddings and honeymoons.

The simultaneous weddings at locations throughout the Bahamian islands are set for Nov. 16, at 4 p.m., local time.

The couples — seven from Ontario, five from Alberta, two from Manitoba and one each from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick — will receive round-trip airfare and accommodation in the Bahamas, plus a “personal wedding co-ordinator.”

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The Ministry of Tourism in the Bahamas ran the same contest in the U.K. and the U.S in previous years.

Paul Strachan, the senior director at the Bahamas Tourist Office in Canada, said about 350 couples entered the contest.

Lana Newell, 35, and her fiance Mark Voisin, 43, are the winners from Nova Scotia. Their wedding is being planned in Exuma.

Newell and Voisin were working as teachers in New Zealand when they got engaged four years ago. They wanted to make sure their friends and family could be at their wedding, so they waited until they came back to Canada to start planning. When they couldn’t find full-time work right away, they had to put everything on hold.

“We were really dreaming of a beach wedding, but financially a beach wedding wasn’t in the question … you enter contests and still don’t really think you have a chance,” Newell said. “Now, here we are in Canada, we have the friends and family, and we have our wedding. We’re set now.”

The couple, who met on a hike at an outdoor adventure club, are currently making plans for their family to attend the ceremony, especially Newell’s five- and seven-year-old niece and nephew.

“They’ve never been on a plane, have never been to a wedding, have never been on a beach,” Newell said. “They’re our ringbearer and flower girl. They’re thrilled.”

Strachan said more than 150,000 Canadians travelled to the Bahamas last year, and his organization hopes to increase those numbers.

“Given the decline in the Canadian dollar and the fact that by comparison, the Bahamas tends to be a little more expensive because we don’t have the variety of all-inclusive resorts some other destinations do, we wanted people to consider us.”

Travel to the Caribbean country is crucial to its economy: nearly half the population is directly employed in tourism, and it generates 60 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

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Hiking boots, bug spray, long underwear — not your typical packing list for a wedding.

Unless it’s a summer-camp wedding, a hot new twist on the destination wedding. Such nuptials are increasingly popular, wedding planners say, and offer a mix of nostalgia and adventure.

“I was never that girl who grew up dreaming about her wedding dress, about her wedding day,” said Lorelle Binder, who got married last year at Camp Highlander in Horse Shoe, North Carolina.

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Instead of engaging in the quintessential hotel or ballroom revelry, Binder’s guests spent the weekend doing traditional camp activities, including a color war.

“Everyone there was able to relive their childhood, and that was something we could give to our guests,” Binder said.

There are many reasons for the summer-camp wedding, but couples often choose it because they love the outdoors.

“It’s one of the newer trends, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” said Tonia Adleta, a Philadelphia wedding planner.

Destination weddings accounted for 1 out of every 4 nuptial ceremonies, according to a 2014 report from The Knot, which studies industry trends. Summer-camp weddings can capture the same appeal as a far-flung destination, but in a low-key and often low-cost way.

“What happens is that the wedding weekend turns into a family reunion, or it’s a time for the families from both sides to really get to know each other,” said Drew Taylor, who co-owns the 120-acre Kingsley Pines Camp in Raymond, Maine.

Taylor said the camp has hosted about 10 weddings a year in recent years, and the number has been growing.

Extended families typically “come in on Friday and stay all weekend,” she said. “Their meals and activities are provided.”

David Blacker, who got married in 2009 at a camp called Club Getaway in Kent, Connecticut, said he saved money: “The cabin was a fraction of the price a hotel would have been.”

For many couples, a camp wedding simply sounds like fun.

“We weren’t sure people were going to be game for this — showering in a public shower and all,” said Alison Bartolone, who got married at Sheldon Calvary Camp in Conneaut, Ohio, in 2013. But her guests “were enthusiastic and had a lot of fun with it,” she said. One group even broke into the camp’s costume closet one evening.

“It was old-school fun,” Bartolone said.

Mandee and Thor Morgan, who now live in Denver, met while working as counselors at Camp Highlander. They got married at the camp for sentimental reasons, and also because it let them incorporate their outdoorsy lifestyle into the big day.

“The biggest draw for us was that it wouldn’t be a quick night when we wouldn’t get to see anyone for more than a couple seconds,” Thor Morgan said. “It was a long weekend where people could do activities they had never done before and all in an outdoors setting.”

A summer camp also can offer some relief from the typical pre-wedding frenzy.

“What camp allowed us to do was to forget about the little tiny details, such as the table settings, signs, lighting, and focus more on our friends, family and the beauty of Maine,” said Emily Tong, who married Cory Elowe in 2014 at Camp-O-At-Ka in Sebago, Maine.

Of course, camp weddings aren’t for everyone. Bad weather can cast a pall, especially if you insist on wearing stiletto heels through the mud.

“If you’re the type of couple that wants to be at the Ritz or the Four Seasons, a camp wedding is definitely not going to work for you,” said Adleta. “It’s a completely different animal.”

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We all know that the wedding day is all about the bride, but let us not forget that it takes two to tango. A bride is just a girl in a white dress if she does not have a groom. As soon as the proposal is done and the engagement made official, all eyes turn to the future bride.

But what are things like for the groom?

Take a knee

Ladies, have you ever stopped to think about how nerve-wracking it must be to propose to someone? First, you have to find the perfect ring. Then you have to come up with the perfect time. And then there is always a chance that you may not get the answer you were looking for.

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Honestly, if engagements were in the hands of girls, I am not sure we would have a multimillion dollar wedding industry in this country. Grice Hunt, 33, proposed to his bride at his family’s dove field, the first place they met several years before.

“It is definitely a mixture of excitement and nerves,” Hunt says. “There is the pressure of making it a surprise and coordinating families. You assume that she is going to say yes, but it is definitely an adrenaline rush.”

Rolling with the punches is a must when proposing as well. Lance Lanford proposed to his wife, Pamela, during a family trip to Costa Rica.

“My original plan was for her to wake up from our couples’ massage and me already be down on one knee,” he said. “Unfortunately, that morning we got a call that the masseuse was sick and we would have to reschedule. So I ended up doing it late that afternoon by the pool at the house we were staying at. Even though I was confident in my decision, I was still very nervous”.

Let the planning begin

For a bride, as soon as the engagement ring goes on the planning wheels start to spin. With that first call to mom and dad, the question of who is answered — but now it is time to figure out the when and where. Have you ever wondered what happens to the groom once this planning process ignites? Does he have a say or does he get pushed aside until needed?

“Mine was more of a supporting role,” Hunt says. “Caitlin did a great job of narrowing down decisions and then asking my opinion. I would try to bring some practicality to outweigh the emotions of the decisions.”

Says Lanford, “I was involved when needed, but between her family and all her friends they jumped on planning pretty quickly. I still don’t do much of our planning.”

Both grooms said that they were consulted when it came to major decisions — location, food, alcohol and the band. But we were curious about what they thought about some of the smaller details.

“I can see how people get too worried about things like the runners, types of chairs, plates (and) flowers,” Hunt says. “We tried to focus on what we remember from all of the weddings we had been to; no one remembers how many votives were on the table.”

It’s showtime

For the bride, the wedding day is usually packed with activities. There are brunches, hairdressers, champagne, make-up artists, champagne, the ceremonious donning of the gown (unless you are me and donned your gown while shoved in a broom closet with your wedding planner) and of course, more champagne. While the girls are getting fluffed and pampered and very tastefully toasty, the groom is probably having a much more low-key day.

I wondered if the day is filled with the same nervousness as it is for the bride. Hunt says that it was the night of the rehearsal dinner when things really got real for him.

“I just hung out with my groomsmen, watched football, did what we always do,” he says of the wedding day. “It was really laid back; I wasn’t too nervous.”

The Lanford wedding party broke from tradition. The whole wedding party spent the day on the beach before breaking to go and get ready. Before the ceremony they did the first look where the groom sees the bride for the first time.

“That was really nice to be able to see her before the ceremony and spend some time together,” Lanford says.

Of course, the pinnacle of any wedding ceremony is when the bride appears and begins to walk down the aisle. Like a lot of people, my favorite part of a wedding ceremony is to look at the groom’s face the first time he sees his bride. While I always take a peek, I have never actually asked any of the grooms what they were thinking when they saw their brides for the first time. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to ask Hunt what that moment was like for him.

“I remember watching the bridesmaids walk down and hearing my groomsmen cutting up behind me, but as soon as she came around the corner I couldn’t see anything,” he says. “It was total tunnel vision which was really kind of neat.”

While I wipe the tears out of my eyes I turn my attention to the main event.

We all know that a beautiful wedding begins with a beautiful ceremony, but a truly great wedding ends with a truly great reception.

“We knew that people were only going to have as much fun as the bride and groom,” Hunt says. “That’s why focusing on the big picture and not getting caught up in the small things were really important to us. The whole thing was so much fun and went by so quickly. I felt like as soon as I got there they were telling me that it was time to leave.”

Says Lanford, “I just really wanted our guests to have a good time. After several days of soaking up the sun and various cocktails on the beach having a major party was the only way we knew to cap off the weekend.”

This is not the first time I have traveled into the male psyche for the sake of a story and I must say that I am almost always pleasantly surprised by what I find. This journey taught me something very important about weddings: While the Big Day is certainly all about the bride, it always starts with a really great groom.

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