All posts tagged: reception

Melia Varadero, Cuba: Art Gallery Destination Wedding Reception Venue Report

Over the last six months I’ve received a handful of requests from brides-to-be, asking to describe Melia Varadero’s art gallery. As I’ve mentioned before, a lack of Internet access presents all sorts of obstacles for foreign couples trying to plan their Cuba wedding. I didn’t find Melia Varadero’s wedding coordinators to be especially interested in my wedding – until I arrived in destination. Now that I have been working in travel media for a few years – on both the leisure and trade (agent) side – I know that there are teams of people who work for travel brands (like Melia) whose jobs are solely to help advisors sell their product. These people are called brand development managers, or BDMs for short and they are incredibly resourceful. I find it difficult to believe that Melia is willfully neglectful of their bridal clients so I’m going to chalk it up to that pesky Cuban embargo and unreliable Internet. However, all this means I get to connect with brides who are planning their Melia Varadero weddings which …

My Melia Varadero Destination Wedding: the good, the bad & the ugly

Photos by Wild Whim Photography + Design by Wade Carr Where are all the Cuban wedding blogs? One of the greatest challenges of planning my destination wedding was a lack of real wedding blog posts. I scoured the internet and bridal websites like TheKnot.com for more resources. To my initial surprise, there were few-to-no personal stories. Presumably, this is because most wedding blog posts are voraciously penned by American brides…American brides who can’t travel to Cuba. A second challenge was Cuba’s web presence, or lack there of.  It was, and to some degree still is, offline. Official statistics indicate less than 5% of Cubans have access to open (non-state controlled) internet. Lest I conclude, Cuban vendors (venues, photographers, florists, etc) are not creating promotional web content for prospective brides. This even applied to the resort we eventually selected. There were few wedding photos apart from a small white gazebo and pictures of a dated, pink satin-draped reception. TripAdvisor had some user-contributed images but nothing which really inspired romance, wanderlust or a dreamy (modern) wedding. This …