Hawaii you are now much further away :-(

In a few days will mark my wife and I's 3rd wedding anniversary. My hope was by that time I would have roughly 75% of the travel (airfare + lodging) saved up for our return to Hawaii trip to renew our vowels in 2015. As life always does, it presents you with a challenge and we have to adjust, adapt and prioritize. Without going into too much detail, I come to the realization that we normally forget the cost of maintaining our cars as an expense we need to account for each and every pay check, especially we you have 3 cars and three drivers. When I initially started saving, I was somewhat keeping up with the expenses for only one car. With each of the cars needing semi-major repairs (tune ups, exhaust work, tires, ect.), I had to do into my saving for the trip to cover the cost of the repairs because I did not want to max out the credit card we are attempting to pay off. Instead of being 75% saved by the target date of 06/22/2013, I am pretty much starting from scratch. At this point I will be attempting to be frugal when necessary and attempt to double my saving efforts between now and the end of 2014 to get back to the funds needed to make it. I know it will be really tough, but I think I can still make it happen. I'm planning for the best.

June 22 2015 - The plan begins

Next month will officially mark the 2 year countdown to the planned return to the Hawaiian island(s) for my wife and I five year renewal celebration. At this point I have estimated that if each person has $2000, it should cover travel and lodging and potentially other incidentals. Here is what I would like to ask people who would like to make the trip with us:

1. Would anyone like to do one travel agent/planner to book the flight and hotel? This way we can get a bulk discount on the arrangements. The downside is that you will locked into flight, length of stay and possibly lodging. If people are interested in this, I will coordinate through an agent so that no money and plans are mismanaged.
2. Any one has ideas on the main island to stay? When Gail and I married in 2010, we stayed at the Waikiki Marriott directly across from the Waikiki Beach. This is a high tourist area so if we did that again, having access to a car will increase your budget because of the daily price of parking. If we did one of the other islands, we may be able to get more immenities but a second flight from Oahu is requires. Please let me know your thoughts.
3. Lastly the time frame. Our planned ceremony will be on June 22, 2015 which is a Monday. We are planning for mid afternoon event. If you want to go but wanted to make your own arrangements, you can plan around that day.

Thanks for reading. Let me know if you are interested.


New addition:
There are some resorts on the Hawaiian islands that offer some inclusion of meals with the price of lodging. I did a quick Google search and found some resorts that may be options. At this point, I am open to suggestions. If someone has a particular experience they would like to share, please do.

Making plans for Vow renewal in 2015

So after checking my vacation banking account, I'm approximately 10% of my estimated funds for me and my wife to go back to Hawaii and do a 5 year renewal ceremony. Our current plan is to save for the next two years. After that 24 month period, the final 11-12 months I will be planning, partly saving and making arrangements for our trip in June of 2015. Anyone who would like to come, please send us an email @ willyoumarrysyd@gmail.com. We will probably will find a nice house to rent and do our renewal through http://www.myhawaiiwedding.com.

Hope to see you there.
Gail and Syd

Helpful tips if you are planning to elope

After posting the blogs about the getting the finances for the trip in line and planning the wedding in Hawaii, I figured I would write a short blog or "how-to" guide on what to do if you plan on going away to get married. I will break it down in steps.

Step 1:
Eloping does not mean cheap, and inexpensive does not mean less elegant. We all know that standard wedding ceremonies (including a wedding party, reception, ceremony) can get expensive really quickly. If you want a small ceremony or would like to get away to get married and save some money on the honeymoon, the first thing I would suggest is to do a simple search on wedding and a location. For example, if you would like to have your honeymoon in Jamaica and would love the idea of a nice beach wedding, you can search 'beach weddings in Jamaica' and the results should lead you to many sites and hotels/resorts that can put those into a single package for you. Also many cruise lines will let you add a wedding package to your cruise. In the inclusive packages, they will most times allow for your personal customization of their standard packages to better suit your needs. Usually these ceremonies are well done and will have a romantic and elegant feel to them. As far as the price goes, depending on the resort/hotel or cruise line, you could get a great deal or spend as much as a typical wedding, so do some looking around before deciding on the first few options you find.

Step 2:
Making sure you have a budget just like planning an elaborate wedding. Even if you found an easy solution that is relatively inexpensive (i.e. 3 day honeymoon in the Poconos resort and the Champagne Wedding Package), you should still make sure that your budget includes additional travel expenditures (i.e. car rental, gas, souvenirs, etc) , additional recreation expenses (i.e. site seeing, dining out if not included in your package, night life, etc) and emergency funds (just in case something happens you didn't expect). Remember that a good budget and planning is the key to smooth wedding/honeymoon.

Step 3:
Make sure you make your wedding budget reasonable. In the previous step I mentioned budgeting, but that is mainly related to travel and the inclusive wedding package depending on the destination. However, there are things that may be additional add on to the wedding package. Usually things like photography, video, wedding accouterments, etc. you should plan on pricing these things out with the wedding coordinator or through local shops. These things can very expensive so be reasonable if you are trying to limit the amount of your budget. Remember
nice does not have to be overly elaborate.

Step 4:
The location should dictate the wedding attire. For beach weddings, the groom can be formal (tux or suit) or casual. Check out these pictures at My Hawaii Wedding. The bride can go with traditional white dress or be casual as well, it's all up to you and how you want to do your beach wedding if you decide that. If you are doing a cruise line wedding or a Garden Scene wedding, I would suggest doing the traditional wedding wear. You can however talk to the cruise wedding coordinator (or coordinator of where ever you are planning your get away wedding) about attire and feel of the wedding.

Step 5 (Optional):
Plan your event during the off season. If you use a travel agent they can inform you want times of year is best for traveling to certain locations and when you can get the best rates, but still enjoy great weather. A great example of this is to travel to warm locations during the warm months or during the low tourist seasons. Usually flight and hotel stay will be much cheaper during these times. Resorts and hotels will offer specials online if you check their webpage closer to the off season. Also, many major resorts and hotel chains will have a social networking page (myspace, facebook or twitter) that you can keep posted on the current information and specials that may be going on.

I hope some of this information is helpful to anyone who is looking to get away and elope, but have a nice wedding and honeymoon. When we have completed our wedding/honeymoon, I will give all the details on how we got everything set up for us. Check back for photos, videos and much more as the day draws closer.

1 down 7 to go!

After writing the blog entry about the cost of the wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii, the next hurdle was how to pay for it and how to plan it out. After speaking with our travel agent (Doneson Crown Travel), we are able to put a deposit down and pay the trip down however we like until June 21st, 2010. For the deposit, I put enough down so I could break the rest of the travel expenses up into 8 easy payments of about $250 ($248.38 to be exact). This past pay day, I put down my first payment. With the holidays coming up and some major upgrades going on at work, I will be working a lot of overtime over the next four months. I figure I can save an additional $1400 apart from my normal saving. I figure by the time Valentine's Day comes around, the travel should be all paid up.

Once we get the trip paid, we have to put our focus on getting the rings, booking the beach ceremony (My Hawaii Wedding), wedding dress, bridal accessories (shoes, jewelry and head wear) and my suit/tux. Since we know the price of the wedding ceremony is about $1000, with the money I normal save up each check, I can take care of that by the end of May or possibly before depending on if I get some additional OT before then. The final two months before we leave I should be able to save some money for spending and pay for my suit/tux.

Gail has committed to working massive amounts of overtime during the holiday period as well as anytime it becomes available. So I think we should be able to handle our wedding and honeymoon expenses without too much of a worry. We have placed the thought of what we want to do for the send off and reception/gathering after we get back to the back burner because I think we currently have bigger fish to fry. We are however, gathering information, so that we can send formal invitations to all who would like to send us off and celebrate our wedding after we return. To make sure you are invited, please email your information for willyoumarrysyd@gmail.com.

Thanks again,
Syd

We are getting in shape for life, not just for our wedding

So some people have been noticing that Gail and I are trying to keep up with our daily exercising and eating healthy. A few times people have commented that wow, you are trying to look good for your wedding, which is true, but we are trying to do so much more. A few months back, Gail was feeling a little tired and was experiencing some pain and swelling in her legs. She was wondering what it could be so she made an appointment with her doctor. The doctor basically told her to watch what she eats and get into better shape because it could lead to other medical conditions. My doctor has told me the same thing many times before, so we decided together that we would get healthy and in shape together. So when you see us working out hard, or trying to eat well, it's not just for our wedding, it's for us.

Hawaii Cost a bunch, but Damn it, We are giving it a go

So I emailed our travel agent (http://www.travelleaders.com/southfieldmi/index.htm) and asked about the cost of traveling to Waikiki for our wedding and honeymoon and packages that we could take around the time of our wedding. He found a package at hotel we liked (Waikiki Beach Resort & Spa/Marriott) With flight, hotel stay and tax included the package would be $2980. Now the agent also gave me an option for a cruise through Norwegian Cruise Line that would last 7 days porting in all major Hawaiian ports and can include the wedding. The cruise itself would cost $2400 for the inside cabin, $2816 for an ocean view cabin, $1800 for the airfare, $2150(plus 5% sales tax) for a port wedding in Maui and $2650(plus 5% sales tax) for a beach wedding in Maui. At minimum the cruise option would be $6456 including the wedding and $4200 without the wedding. Now I did look at beach weddings through the hotel and the off that option through a private company (My Hawaii Wedding) and we are looking at a package that would cost $485 for a simple elegant wedding including a photographer, photo cd with a minimum of 50 shots and framed wedding certificate. We would add the DVD video (assuming that is not just a video of the pictures with music in the background) for $445 bring the total cost of the hotel, airfare and beach wedding option to $3910

With all that said, it I think we can do the trip if we choose the flight and hotel stay without too much trouble, it's all the little things we may want to add that may make this tough to do.

Anyone have any thoughts?