Featured Weddings

There is a reason that Michele and her group have named their company "AWESOME Caribbean Weddings"! Our wedding and reception was truly a dream come true for Jorge and I.  From the moment we were engaged we knew that a destination wedding was going to be in our future. The question was when and where?  After countless hours of research and debating we came across Michele's website.  Neither of us had ever been to Saint Lucia but have close friends who had.  So we took a gamble and requested a quote from Michele at Awesome Caribbean Weddings.  Low and behold that very same day I received a full 3 page dream description with photos of what our wedding could be!  I was so impressed with the quick response and the ability to take my imagination to the sandy shores of Saint Lucia.

Michele and her team are true professionals. In all weddings organization, flexibility, creativity and patience are of the upmost importance.  We cannot express enough how much Michele embodies all of these characteristics!  Michele sent us timely updates of our programs selections and price.  She has the patience of a saint, while I changed my mind on things a million times!  Michele would always reply in the most cheerful voice "that's okay Alauna you're the bride and you are entitled to change your mind as much as you like!  That is what I am here for". So if you ever once have a fear of another person planning your wedding from another country....DON'T because Michele was absolutely PERFECT!  She left no stone unturned.

About our wedding ceremony

Jorge and I decided to have our wedding ceremony  on Pigeon Island .  I had always dreamed of a beach front wedding with miles of blue water in sight.  Of what we thought was going to be a small and quaint occasion for a few turned into a bash for about 74 people! The decorations were just beautiful and more then I could have ever hoped for.  We decided to have the wedding canopy, wooden white chairs (nice extra touch) and a beautiful bougainvillea rope to line the aisle!  The colors were perfect!   And after the ceremony Michele had 2 tents (one for shade) and the other for our platters of fruits and veggies for our guests to snack on and for the champagne and Pitons! The only one thing that we would change for next time would be to have our guest hang out on the "cliff side" of Pigeon Island after the ceremony.  This is where we took most of our amazing photos and it's more comfortable (temperature, breeze and shade) on that side.  All of our guests stayed at the Bay Gardens Beach Resort and Michele arranged for all transportation throughout our wedding day.  All of our guest were picked up in front of the resort and then returned at the end of the evening! The transportation was seamless and Augustin is not only always on time but also a true pleasure and delight to work with.  He has a wealth of St Lucia Island history and will keep you and all the guests entertained!

Reception

Jorge and I had our cocktail hour at the Cotton Bay Village pool and our dinner reception at the 1461 beach restaurant.  Again Michele made all the arrangements with the fantastic manager Frederic.  One thing we can say for sure is how flexible and eager to please Frederic and his staff are. 

So here is a little summary of our events.  After photos at Pigeon Island all of our guests were transferred over to the Cotton Bay Village pool for a "pink and white" cocktail hour!  Please do not fret as this was only 10 minutes away MAX! Here we had a fantastic steel drum band playing, a signature pink cocktail for each guest as they arrived, passed and plated appetizers, and a   tiki bar to serve any drink your hearts desire!!!  After the cocktail hour guests were ushered down a beautiful lit wooden path to the 1461 open air beach restaurant!  Wow was this place the perfect location for a reception!  1461 had completed the covered deck extension from the original restaurant where the band played and the guests danced the night away.  Attached to the decking was yet another fabulous tiki bar where those who preferred a cold beverage and bellying up to the bar were able to still keep an eye on the antics and "coming attractions" on at the dance floor and dining area at the same time! 

Food

The food at 1461 was to die for!  Our guests still rave about the meal which Frederic was able to provide for the cocktail hour and the dinner reception.  It usually began and ended with..."best food on the island and best food of all the weddings I have ever been too".  Some signature dishes to be sure not to miss are the famous tomato tart, lobster ceviche, blackened mahi mahi and of course the filet mignon! 

We really wanted to have what we called a "free flowing" reception.  So as soon as we made our entrance and began our dance the family style appetizer plates were served and the bar opened for all to enjoy. 

Now on to the wedding cake !  Jorge and I decided on a 3 tier cake to include ginger, chocolate, and red velvet (my personal favorite)!  Being that it was the first time the baker was to make a red velvet cake we decided to make it the smallest tier.  Wow was this a BIG mistake, we should have done the entire thing in red velvet!!!  All three flavors were fantastic but if I have to suggest any I would go for the red velvet any day!  I believe that Frederic and Michele were both quite impressed to see that we ate all the cake!!!  Does anyone ever eat all the cake at weddings???? Well in all my past experiences that cake usually stays on the plate.  Well not in this scenario, we ate it all!  It could be that we were a group of drunken, obnoxious and hungry New Yorkers (yes true)...but I am going to have to go with the full truth.  The baker is amazing and she can do anything!  Have faith!

The Band "Spectacle"

In all honesty this was the decision that did give us a bit of angina.  I stuck my poor husband in front of the computer with his i Tunes collection downloading a wedding mix "just in case" the band was a bust.  Most prefer to go and hear a band live before booking but in this case we really didn't have that option.  Michele did send over some camera video recordings which the quality was okay, but really didn't have us convinced that we had made the right decision. 

While on the island for our first visit we asked around to many of the locals.  The name "Spectacle" came up over and over again.  After speaking with Michele she tracked them down!  Michele went to watch them perform a few times before we officially booked them.  She could not have been happier with their performances every time, but we were still nervous.  So we went with our gut, and trusted Michele as she had not ever steered us wrong.  Man, were they FANTASTIC!  The lead singer has the voice of an angel and they kept our guests dancing all night!  I will always remember my husband's aunts comment "I haven't danced this much in 25years!  Man that girl has a beautiful voice".  So if you and your guests like to put on your dancing shoes and prefer no breaks, Spectacle is your band!

Photos/Video

I am not sure where to start in regards to the AMAZING photos that Mikael took for us!  We had Mikael for our ceremony, cocktail hour, and 1 hour at the reception!  He took nearly 1000 images for us.  The only problem is that they were all so BEAUTIFUL we had such a difficult time picking through them all.  So of course we did what every "realistic" couple would do and purchased the rights to all of them :)  Mikael is a true professional who is not intrusive at all.  I honestly had forgotten that he was there taking photos at the cocktail hour and reception all together until the end when we said our "thank you" and "goodbyes".  Within a week of our wedding our photos were posted on a website for us to view, and then 2 weeks later we had a CD full of memories that will last us the rest of our life!  Mikael THANK YOU for making our memories so beautiful!

We LOVED the video!  We really enjoyed the fact that we could hear our vows and it enabled us a chance to relive the wedding moments again.  Jorge and I were loving our marriage officer, he was so perfect for our personalities!  The video messages were such a wonderful surprise as well!  We laughed through the entire things.  It really took us back to our wedding day.  I cried and OF COURSE kept my face to the side so Jorge wouldn't make fun of me.  He enjoyed it too though really.  We popped champagne and watched it together!  A little bubbly never hurt anyone!  We also thought that he did a fantastic job putting in the music at the appropriate times and to the right moments.  Job well done TREVOR we enjoyed it tremendously!

So in all honesty, at the end of the day our wedding was a dream come true.  We could not have been happier with the way things turned out!  Michele and her team at Awesome Caribbean Weddings do a wonderful job and we will be forever thankful to them.

We Love you Michele!!!

Alauna & Jorge

Jason & Stacie Sloan

If you're newly engaged and nervous about the wedding plans process, your options, and how it could possibly be pulled together the way you want it - read on. Hopefully our story will lift some concerns and allow you to have fun with it.

From the day we got engaged we were, as most newly engaged couples are, completely overwhelmed with wedding plans. We knew we wanted to get married on an island and that was about as far as we could go. We started weeks of research on many islands of the Caribbean contacting agencies and wedding coordinators to get more information on our options. We fell in love with St. Lucia almost instantly, however honestly, it was Awesome Caribbean Weddings (ACW) that sealed the deal for us.

Unlike any of the agencies/wedding coordinators we had interviewed up to this point here in the States and all over the Caribbean, ACW was the only one to consistently respond to us within 24 hours. For those of you that consider service is important, this experience with ACW was amazing. Right from the start, Michele offered advice and sent tons of information on the island, as well as the wedding event. We shortly picked a date and signed on with ACW - if only they knew what they were in for.

Here's the kicker - our wedding included 62 people, much larger than we had anticipated. The group ranged in ages from grandparents in their 70s to kids under 5 yrs. Planning the wedding itself became only a piece of the puzzle as we started planning activities throughout the week for guests. ACW took the reigns and coordinated activities for everyone including a zipline tour in Dennery, spa appointments throughout the week, a deep sea fishing trip for the guys, a Sunset Cruise on the night before the wedding, and pointed guests in the right direction for diving expeditions, horseback riding, day sails, etc. It was great to be able to spend time with friends and family during the week before the big day. Michele and ACW did a fantastic job coordinating whatever our guests asked for - a feat to be proud of!

The wedding.our vision was simple and elegant with Caribbean flair. We wanted an experience, not just a quick wedding on the beach. ACW delivered, the wedding day was more than we could have hoped for. ACW took our vision and made it real. They were great to work with and have been some of the most genuine people I've met. Hopefully our story can give you some ideas or inspire your big day.

We chose a private beach wedding on Pigeon Island in late afternoon. As guests arrived at the site, they were welcomed by a steel pan band and a bar serving sparkling wine, mimosas, Piton beer, and water for refreshment during the ceremony. It was the perfect set-up for a hot afternoon Caribbean wedding. ACW did a great job with decorations at the beach. The flowers were the most beautiful I've ever seen, more vibrant than what I expected.

After the ceremony, our guests enjoyed the steel pan band music and the bar while the groomand I took sunset pictures. Mikael and Chris, the photographer and videographer, did a fantastic job at capturing the moment, the environment, and the spirit of the event. Our advice is not to skimp on the pictures and video -- we couldn't have been more happy with them.

From the beach, we headed to Cotton Bay Resort with our guests for a cocktail hour next to the pool. The resort pool created a stunning setting as our guests snacked on canapés and cocktails. It was a great transition between beach and dinner.

Great food was one of our priorities and dinner for 62 is always difficult for even the best restaurants to pull off. Beach Club Fourteen Sixtyone, a restaurant at Cotton Bay Resort situated on the water, created the romantic atmosphere that we had hoped for. With the menu offering choices including filet mignon, red snapper, and rack of lamb, not one of our high-maintenance guests had a complaint on the food. The taste was fresh and the dishes were well presented. The night was rounded off at Beach Club Fourteen Sixtyone with a live band until shuttles escorted our guests back to the Windjammer.

All in all, I couldn't have been more impressed with the impeccable service and professionalism of ACW. We had a large group with many requests and ACW handled them beautifully. Their first-hand knowledge of the island, the activities it can offer, and the relationships to make it happen was what we needed to make our wedding what we wanted it to be. Thank you to Michele, Kayt, Mikael, Chris, and all those who made the vision real for us.

Stacey and Frank Febbraro

On our special day our wedding fantasies became a reality thanks to Michele, Kayt and team from Awesome Caribbean Weddings. St. Lucia was the perfect setting for us and our guests, specifically Pigeon Island which we found by looking through many photos that ACW sent to us. We had always wanted a "custom" beach wedding and reception with our closest family and friends and ACW made it possible by acting on our ideas and perfectly orchestrating the event.

My fiancé and I had an entirely different wedding planned when we started year 2006 off. And four months before we were set to be married in Washington DC we decided to cancel the formal winter wedding and started researching the lovely island of St. Lucia where we were already locked into our honeymoon! I had started the quest by calling resorts and hotels to get the ball rolling for a new wedding plan, but to my despair I wasn't getting the responses or customer service I had hoped for and my dreams were slowly starting to slip away. I thought I was going to have to settle for something that I didn't necessarily want since we already decided to officially cancel the nuptials in DC.

Just as I was about to give up, one evening I came across the ACW Web site and found a glimmer of hope. I studied all the beautiful photos and read every single page on the Web site and was starting to feel good about things again, so I took another chance and filled out the contact form not really expecting to hear back. To my surprise, the very next morning I had a 4 page email from ACW describing all of the places to choose from for a custom wedding as well as sample packages. After going back and forth in numerous emails that week and crunching numbers quickly we signed on with ACW and knew that things were finally going to be taken care of with precision and tact.

Then it came time to plan the custom details once since we had the place and time set, I wanted to be able to plan a wedding that would fit right in with the "Martha Stewart" weddings (yet funkier) and wasn't quite sure how I was going to pull that off being thousands of miles away. Right off the bat Michele told me that they loved it when brides brought new ideas to the table and said her team was game for anything, which excited me. My ideas were not revolutionary but I wanted it to feel special and have details that reminded the guests of Frank and me. Michele went to great lengths for us over the 3.5 months we had to plan, she scoured the local markets for us on the weekends for baskets and wooden chairs. She was constantly going to the post office to pick up one of the 12 large boxes of goods we shipped over to the island. They found a vendor that would provide us with sparklers for guests to light (since you can't ship flammable goods). She also constantly challenged her vendors to see if they could do things that were out of the ordinary such as actually having the florist create/meld together bamboo flower displays, placing fairy lights throughout the trees, luminaries lining the beach/reception site on pigeon island, finding red bull and our favorite liquor to serve to our guests, and even having the caterer serve our 40 people "family style" rather than buffet style. The event was a success because Michele stayed in constant contact with us and always helped us pull off the unthinkable.

Some of the items we shipped to the island were table clothes, vases, candles, candleholders, luminaries bags, favors for the guests, pillows for our nieces and nephews to sit on in the front row of the reception, seating cards, signs for the bar and reception tables, flower petal bags and fans for the guests at the reception. When they arrived at ACW headquarters they took great care of them and quickly notified us of the contents that had arrived.

Michele was wonderful she worked with us day and night and when we arrived on the island we were so thrilled to finally meet her. She came the first day with all the legal paper work and the finishing touches in terms of schedule of events, etc. Michele even went to the trouble of taking us to the florist so that we could make sure we were getting exactly what I had been describing over email. Frank and I didn't have to worry about a thing once we arrived. We trusted that Michele had it all together and she really ran with it. She helped us coordinate everything even a last minute rehearsal in our rooms the night before which was very helpful! The flowers, transportation, food, set up crew, videographer, rentals, cake, dance floor, steel drum band, priest, fire dancers, wait and bar staff were all extraordinary and well orchestrated and planned by ACW. There wasn't a thing that I wished was done differently. The next day our guests didn't stop talking about how unique and memorable our wedding was and alas we had pulled off the destination wedding that I had been dreaming of for years. Oh and how could I forget to mention the other big hit - The Cake - our guests couldn't stop talking about the delicious ginger, chocolate and vanilla goodness! We even had our guests over the next night for the leftovers and the cake was devoured.

We did have some rain that blessed our reception but it was a non issue thanks to the tents and quick thinking of Michele. Our guests didn't even let a little rain damper their spirits as they danced on and truly enjoyed themselves. Most of all - ACW made it so that Frank and I could enjoy every minute of our trip. This was very important because we were stress free the entire day because we knew they had it under control. Thanks Awesome Caribbean Weddings!

The Vision: Funky and Colorful

The Colors: Light Pink, Fuscia, Lime Green and Orange

The Ceremony: A romantic and intimate setting on the  ocean side of Pigeon Island. Our guests were seated facing the ocean and we were facing our guests. The flower displays helped to give structure to the beach and outlined the aisles eloquently, really made it feel like a grand entrance. We had our nieces and nephews on pillows in the front row so that they could feel as if they were all a part of the ceremony and reserved seating for our family and Bridesmaids/Best Man/Speakers on the front two rows. We had two vases set up at the entrances on tables where our guests contributed sand and later we used this as our unity ceremony and poured the sand into one jar. We had the DJ set up early so that we could have a sound system out on the beach and Michele helped us play music from our iPod. The priest was excellent and made us feel at ease the entire time. The videographer was hard at work as well and really did a great job of capturing the moment without us even knowing he was there.

The Cocktail Hour: Immediately following the reception, our guests headed over to the cliff side of Pigeon Island for cocktails, hors d’oeuvre and a steel drum band. We took family photos with our photographer that we brought over from the states on the cliff side and then Frank and I headed over for some photos by the beach for sunset. Our guests really enjoyed the relaxing nature of the cocktail hour with the steel drum band the wonderful rum punch and most of all they loved the Red Bull that

Michele was able to track down (I guess the island sun had made some of the guests a little tired)!

The Reception: While cocktail hour was taking place Michele and team were busy resetting the beach with all of the reception details. They were also busy lighting around 100 luminaries in the perimeter of the beach, setting up the round tables with the pink linens and green vases with white orchids and lighting the frosted candleholders on the tables. They reset all the floral displays to the front of the tents for the DJ and the bar and it looked beautiful. The dance floor was made of plywood and worked out very well. There were two entrance tables set up with the seating cards and a guest book for people to drop us a line. When the guests made their way to the tables frank and I were announced and entered by doing our first dance. Then the festivities kicked off and we enjoyed a night full of fun festivities. We played music off of our iPod which my husband diligently worked on for the two weeks leading up to St. Lucia.

One of our favorite things was the sweetheart table that was positioned off to the side under a romantic tree. This allowed us to enjoy every bite of the delicious food that was served. We had speeches during our first course and passed the microphone around for good stories and laughs. Then after the main course was cake cutting time and dessert was served. The big surprise for all of our guests were the fire eaters/limbo dancers. They came out and got the crowd moving again! Once their routine was over the rest of the night was ours to enjoy by spending quality time with our friends and family on the dance floor. When it was time to head out, our guests lined the pathway to the car and lit sparklers to send us on our way. And the second our car left the gate there was a torrential down pour and everyone ran to the vehicles. ACW had to break down the entire event in the rain but they still wore smiles when I spoke to them the next day – what troopers they are! I think we were all quite impressed with what we had just pulled off :)

Stacey and Frank Febbraro

Virginia, USA

Photo credit

Brad and Nicole Wolf of SOTA Dzine Inc. www.sotadzine.com 703-6450900