Photo by Katie Knotts
Let me be clear from the get-go about Rachel and Lane’s wedding at Sandals South Coast: it wasn’t the wedding Rachel had always envisioned. It wasn’t neat, it wasn’t processed, and it wasn’t neat in the traditional sense. Rachel wasn’t wearing a $5,000 dress, and her shoes were so comfortable, it felt like walking barefoot to the altar with the gentle ocean breeze blowing on her.
“I think I’m one of the few brides who can truly say that my wedding was so much better than I ever imagined it would be,” Rachel said, checking off her “so much better” list.
“Beauty. Energy. People. Comfort. Location. Cost.”
Wait, did she say “cost”? She and Lane got married in a Caribbean paradise. Weddings there are bound to be expensive… right?
“I got everything I wanted without spending a penny,” Lane admits to his wife.
No, this wasn’t the wedding Rachel dreamed of as a little girl. In fact, it wasn’t even her idea. Lane didn’t even suggest it. The first person to mention a beach wedding at Sandals was the person they least expected to mention it.
“My dad,” Rachel said, as if revealing the identity of her secret hero.
Photo by Katie Knotts
Rachel and Lane’s wedding planning didn’t start out so beautifully at first.Soon after getting engaged, Rachel and Lane expected to get married near their San Antonio home, perhaps in a fancy church followed by a lavish reception complete with cake tiers as centerpieces. But the moment they started looking for venues and vendors, the couple felt their joyful anticipation turn to pressure and stress increase. They experienced firsthand what so many couples experience: the most basic traditional weddings are met with non-traditional and prohibitive costs. Rachel and Lane heard stories of couples and their parents maxing out their credit cards for modest weddings and receptions.
“We considered having a cruise wedding, but realized a crowded ship would be too unstable,” Rachel says.
Then, out of the blue, Rachel’s dad gave her some advice.
Would you like to have your wedding abroad?
“I couldn’t believe what my dad was telling me,” Rachel explains, “so I said, ‘Dad, are you sure?’ He’s always been careful about money, and he knows I am too. He told me to look into having our wedding at Sandals so no one would go into debt for a one-day wedding.”
Rachel and Lane began listing items for their celebration at Sandals South Coast, and the list was short.
“You just pay for the room and airfare,” Lane said. “And that’s pretty much it. You pay the bill and you just have to enjoy it.”
When it came to their international Sandals wedding, Rachel and Lane still had one big question: Would their family and close friends be willing to travel to the Caribbean for the ceremony?
“We were a little hesitant to ask,” says Rachel, “but we got response after response of, ‘Of course, we’ll go.’ Our family and friends saw it as more than just a wedding invitation; they saw it as an excuse to take an amazing vacation. Hearing their reactions, the stress melted away and the excitement returned. We were going to do something we never thought possible: get married in Jamaica.”
Photo by Katie Knotts
Photo by Katie Knotts
To be clear, Rachel and Lane will not be having their wedding at Sandals, but rather spending their wedding week there.
“We stayed longer than three nights, which saved us money,” Lane says, “but who gets married at Sandals and doesn’t stay longer than three nights? Plus, we had some perks because we had so many guests at Sandals.”
A total of 26 guests came, to be exact. Not too many, not too few.
“For us, it was the perfect number to keep everything intimate and fun, with no worries about anything,” says Rachel.
While the Sandals team prepared for the ceremony and reception throughout the week, Rachel and Lane’s wedding guests were free to enjoy breakfast, lunch and dinner at any of Sandals South Coast’s nine restaurants. When the mood took them, they could stroll two miles of perfect, sandy private beach or relax in one of the resort’s four pools. They also enjoyed snorkeling in the vibrant aquarium known as the Caribbean Sea and a field trip to the spectacular waterfalls and Rick’s Cafe, perched atop Negril’s famous cliffs.
“Aside from being in Jamaica, what do you think made our wedding week the most unique?” says Rachel, “We got to spend so much time with friends and family. My friends tell me they would spend five or ten minutes going around the tables with guests who had traveled from out of town for their wedding, and then be exhausted as soon as it was over.”
Rachel and Lane were exhausted as well.
“But we weren’t tired from running around and making sure everything was perfect,” Lane says. “We were tired from having fun. And then the wedding day came.”
Photo by Katie Knotts
“It was an out-of-body experience,” is how Lane describes the actual wedding day. “We were getting married in a place we never thought we’d be able to go to. All we had to do was show up.”
Rachel arrived at Sandals in a $300 dress that didn’t mind getting covered in sand during the beach photoshoot, and she looked like a fairytale princess in it as friends from Sandals carried her to the wedding church, down a palm-lined aisle, and past well-wishers and staff to the seaside venue.
“The venue,” Rachel said, taking a deep breath as she thought of the floating chapel where she and Lane privately exchanged vows, “we didn’t have to do anything special to make the venue beautiful. We just let the venue speak for itself.”
The message was also conveyed by her tanned, smiling face as she looked out at her and Lane at the venue: “I’ve never been more content and relaxed. Thank you for inviting me.”
“Knowing how happy everyone was made the happiest day of our lives even happier,” says Rachel.
The process-focused wedding she once envisioned became a celebration of possibility. A tropical island. The Caribbean. Jamaican hospitality. Pure love. Rachel planned it in less than 10 hours, but for her and Lane, it turned into more than 100 hours of everlasting moments.
“When we talk about our wedding, we can’t believe we can say, ‘We got married across the ocean in Jamaica.’ We always thought that kind of wedding was something only people with big budgets did – elopements or big budgets. We never imagined it was possible for us until we did it. And now we have an incredible wedding story to tell for the rest of our lives.”
Photo by Katie Knotts
