Oh hi there! When we decided to get hitched, we didn’t really know where to start. Being on the other side of things now, I wanted to share a little about our experience having a destination wedding in Santa Fe, New Mexico because it truly was the perfect experience for our little family. We are still buzzing about it nearly two months later.
I have a lot to share, so I decided to break it up a bit. This is part of a series that I’ll be posting with resources and reviews based on our experience.
We’re engaged…now what?
If you’re like us, the second we announced our engagement, the questions started about wedding details.
Dude, we didn’t know. We literally just got engaged…slow your roll. 😂
But we knew we needed to get in gear and start planning before our friends and family took the wheel for us. Here is what we knew about what we wanted in a wedding:
Neither of us enjoys being the center of attention. No big wedding here.
We didn’t want our wedding day to be stressful.
We didn’t want to coordinate schedules or have a lot of moving pieces.
We didn’t want a lot of set-up or clean-up work, so decorations needed to be minimal.
It was important that it felt intentional and representative of our relationship.
We wanted it to be a moment in time we’d remember - special, intimate, and romantic.
We would need to throw a big ole reception afterward to celebrate with our family and friends.
Based on all of that, we quickly started talking about doing a destination wedding. It would give us the chance to choose a location and setting that felt special and romantic It would allow us to keep the ceremony small, and true to our vision, without hurting a lot of feelings.
Where to wed
Once that decision was tentatively made, we started talking about where we should go. We read a bunch of blogs and sites about destination weddings to get ideas. We wanted to stay within the US because our wedding date was during a busy period for us so we didn’t want to lose too much time away on traveling. We considered a beach wedding but that didn’t really feel like us — especially since my gingerness allows me to get burnt to a crisp even when I’m in the shade. 😂
Our kiddo actually threw out the idea of getting married in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We had been there last fall as a family on vacation and the entire experience was magic. We all loved our time there. When Santa Fe came up, it just clicked and felt right. It’s a city that’s important to our story as a family and a place we’ll visit frequently.
Decision made
That was the hard part, right? Right?
Spoiler alert: it was not.
Once we decided on a location, we knew we’d need help planning the big day. Since we live about 10 hours away from Santa Fe, we couldn’t just pop over for the day, tour locations, meet vendors and plan the big day . Although we did make a couple trips out specifically for wedding planning, it still left us with a lot of anxiety when we were stuck making decisions remotely about one of the biggest days of our lives.
More to come
To avoid this becoming a monster of a post, I’m going to break it up into a few parts:
Beginning of series: Introduction (you are here)
Getting your wedding license in Santa Fe County, New Mexico
Vendors we used and loved
Our experience
For the record, we used the following vendors and would recommend them without hesitation. More detailed reviews are coming but I wanted to share their info in case you’re looking to wed soon.
Our wedding would not have been possible without Jenn (and Dillen) from Wildcoast Photography. Full stop. I’ll go into more detail soon but I can’t recommend Jenn and Dillen strongly enough. We adore them.
Esther was the real deal. We knew what we didn’t want in a ceremony and Esther helped guide us to what we did want with grace. She wrote a ceremony that was intimate and poignant and very us. We adore her. You will too.
Cybele and Leda were an absolute delight to work with. We didn’t go crazy with flowers, so this was a smaller job for them. But they made us feel important and supported. Their flower arrangements were stunning.
We got hitched early in the morning on top of a mountain. By the time we had the ceremony and did pictures with the fam, we were starved. Mila’s Mesa sent a private chef and team to our AirBNB and, by the time we made it back to the house, had delicious food pouring out of the kitchen. The team decorated the tables beautifully, waited on us, kept the meal moving, and added so much to our big day. The highlight of the meal for me: our biscochito wedding cake made by MM’s pastry chef.
Located a block from all of the shops and restaurants on Canyon Road, this special house was the perfect landing zone for our family during our wedding trip. It is beautifully appointed, well-maintained, and comfortable for a group to share.
You might notice a theme with the vendors we chose: they are all small businesses owned by women. That wasn’t our intention when we started on this journey, but it definitely felt like a way to honor my mother-in-law, who we lost in 2020. She was a boss and a force of nature and so were all of the incredible humans we mentioned above.
Stay tuned! I’ll be back soon with part 2 of this series shortly.
