The Wedding Venue is Booked…In Dubai!

As always, it has been a busy month for our real bride contributor, Anna Lucas. However, her hard work is beginning to pay off, because despite a dislocated shoulder getting in the way (ouch!), Anna and her fiancé have now chosen and booked their wedding venue!

As you may recall, Anna previously planned on having her big day in St. Tropez, and told us all about her venue hunting efforts there. But where has she chosen to get married? We’ll leave it to Anna to tell you, but all we can say is we’re thrilled that she’s found somewhere that she’s happy with, and really excited to see how the plans for her 2017 wedding will now develop. Read on for the big reveal!

321 days to go. Not that I’m counting or anything, but the website I’ve built keeps reminding me every solitary day, which is handy but surely unnecessary.

Despite dislocating my shoulder last week and having to do everything one armed and in a sling, today is the day we officially finalised the venue, signed, sealed and parted with the first of many, over the top, way too steep, painful amounts of hard earned cash. “Memories,” everyone keeps telling me. Hmmmm…..

So, we decided on Al Qasr, after vetoing our hometown in Wales, travelling all the way to St Tropez, and then dabbling with the idea of South Africa. All of this only to find that ‘the one’ was sitting right on our doorstep. We visited several different sites here in Dubai, but for us Al Qasr outshone the rest, by FAR.

The great thing about getting married around the corner from your apartment is that you can pop there and visit for lunch or dinner and dream about how your day will look, whenever you feel like it! This was something that I was struggling with when we were thinking of having our wedding in Europe.

So now that the venue has been selected, comes the real wedding planning. I have already started You Tubing and emailing contacts for entertainment for the day. From what I’m experiencing, there aren’t too many options here in Dubai, and everything is SUPER DUPER expensive. But I will plough on and hustle until I get what we need, hopefully Bride Club ME’s vendor club directory will offer me a helping hand!

Living and nuptuling abroad means that save the dates are an essential part of the wedding stationery list, allowing our dearly beloveds to get planning, booking and saving ahead of time! Handwriting 150 of them plus the same again in actual invites isn’t on my to-do list, nor is also having to somehow smuggle them to the UK through a travelling friend or relative and get them dished out as and when. So, we’ve decided that since we live aboard, plus my one-arm situation and the fact that we are in 2016 and fully emerged in the techy era, we are going 100% digital and have created a website, with an RSVP link, to send to all our nearest and dearest. This shall be going out to the top 100 guests the second that the deposit has cleared, and then followed shortly by those on the bench. Joking – we are inviting in stages so that we can ensure we don’t go over our target number.

The next step after that is a spot of solo wedding dress shopping at a place here in Dubai which everyone’s been raving about, and then a trip to the souq for wedding bands. We figured that if we spread the actions out over the year instead of doing it all at once, it will firstly make it a million times easier, and secondly will feel like we’re spending less money…right?!?!?!

I’ve also realised that you go through a range of emotions. From total panic attack (this is too scary and stressful), to SOOOOO excited to have your favourite humans all in one city for the week of a lifetime. Calmness and ticking jobs off the list is the key to getting this done with as few breakdowns as possible.

xX Anna Xx

Don’t forget to log on next month to see Anna’s latest bridal diary post!