When my husband David proposed, we had our hearts set on a traditional wedding. We looked at Carberry Tower, which is a beautiful castle in Scotland, and instantly booked the venue after falling in love with it. Little did we know a few months later, we would be upending all our plans to have our dream wedding abroad.
After booking Carberry Tower, we set the date and threw ourselves into planning. I chose what decor and colours I wanted, who we were inviting, how many would attend on the day and table planning. After taking everything into account, it was going to set us back around £30,000. Luckily, we'd been saving for a while.
One day, I was browsing online to get some wedding ideas and inspiration. Suddenly, my screen was filled with all these pictures of weddings abroad and beach weddings. I was blown away by how stunning it all looked. It had always been a dream of ours to have a beach wedding somewhere in the sun. But we'd always thought it would stay that way - as a dream. So we dismissed it, telling ourselves it would be too expensive, and lots of hassle to fly our family and friends out.
But as time went on, I couldn't shake the picture of my fiancé and I tying the knot in a beautiful, sunny beach setting. We found a venue in Cyprus that looked perfect. In that moment, we both went: 'let's do it’. Life is short, and we knew if we didn't, we'd regret it. We were already a couple of months into planning the wedding back home but we had to just take the plunge and cancel everything to have our dream wedding abroad.
We were initially nervous to tell our guests they'd be jetting off abroad, but they were all thrilled for us. None of them had any hesitation about getting on the plane.
We booked with The Wedding Travel Company, who work with wedding coordinators in Cyprus. This made the process a lot easier, and helped us plan everything down to the very last detail. We managed to make some savings, thanks to the fact it was a smaller wedding with less guests attending. It meant we could put some of our savings towards a longer holiday while out there in Cyprus.
The sun shone the whole day, and getting married with a beach view and the sea in the background was astonishing. Our highlight was going on the wedding bus after saying our vows and getting our photos taken, where we had a tour of Protaras whilst sipping on a glass of champagne as newlyweds.
It didn't end up being as expensive as we'd anticipated, and cost around the same as our Scottish wedding would have done. We did lose £5000 after cancelling Carberry Tower, but to be honest that didn't matter - we were still getting the wedding we always wanted, the one we thought we would never be able to have. It was like a dream come true for us, and we had a perfect day. We had absolutely no regrets and were so glad we followed our hearts.
There was one downfall, though. David’s father fell ill a couple of days before the wedding and wasn’t able to attend on the day, which was heartbreaking for us both. However, we knew he was on the road to recovery which helped us get through it. During the wedding and ceremony. David's stepmother FaceTimed his dad whilst in hospital so he could still watch the entire wedding and feel a part of it. Even though he couldn't be there in person, it felt special that he still got to see us get married - even if we were hundreds of miles over the ocean.