Peter and I finally got married on March 14th, 2022 after 2 years of postponing due to the pandemic. Needless to say, it was well worth the wait. We had our destination wedding in tropical Dominical, Costa Rica on the beach surrounded by friends and family.

Now we will share the story of our wedding day along with some tips that we learned from our experience, in the hopes that it may help others planning now. Whether you are planning your own destination wedding or are simply interested in hearing about our special day, prepare yourself for all the juicy details (i.e. the ramblings of a former OCD bride).

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We are also excited to share the news that we were chosen to be featured on the iconic wedding blog, Green Wedding Shoes!

We are so honored to have our wedding featured on Green Wedding Shoes, which was my top resource for inspiration while planning our own wedding. I hope that our wedding story may provide some insight and inspiration for other couples as Green Wedding Shoes did for me while planning!

Read the feature on Green Wedding Shoes: The Bride Made Her Shimmery, Golden Dress For This Eclipse-Themed Beach Wedding in Costa Rica

*Photo Credit: All of the wedding photos in this blog post are from our photographers,* *Chris & Ruth Photography*!

The story behind the Eclipse Theme

Peter and Linny (aka Pinny!) met through mutual friends while living in Grand Rapids, MI and fell in love over our shared love of travel and adventure. After 6 months of dating I knew Peter was the one and asked him to move across the country with me to California when an opportunity arose through my work. We love to travel, which is why we created Adventures with Pinny!

Every year we try to take at least 2 international trips and as many trips exploring the country as possible in between. Peter proposed to me on the night of the total solar eclipse on July 2nd, 2019 during our trip to Chile.

star photography proposal, proposal astrophotography

This eclipse quickly became the theme for the wedding, with the joining together of the sun and moon representing Peter (the moon) and I (the sun) coming together as one on our wedding day. With tons of celestial and star details to represent Peter’s epic astrophotography proposal capture (my wedding skirt design is actually the star map from this photo!).

Cheesy? Maybe. But I can’t resist a good concept and it was just way too perfect.

Why we decided to have a destination wedding in Costa Rica

We love to travel and wanted to share that with our family and friends, so after much research we decided to have our wedding in Costa Rica. Costa Rica had the perfect balance of wild, tropical beauty, adventure, and laid-back beach vibes that really spoke to us.

When deciding on a villa to rent, our criteria was a place that would be large enough to house our entire immediate families for the week (which was 25 people!) and where we could host the various wedding events.

We ended up renting Villa Mareas in Dominical, Costa Rica. It checked all of the boxes and was beautiful. The villa is tucked into the jungle on a secluded 300-acre property, on the hillside with views of the ocean and a large infinity pool we enjoyed all week. We were immersed in the jungle in our own little slice of paradise. And it was only a 10 minute drive to the beach, which is where we had our wedding ceremony.

If you are planning a destination wedding, hire a wedding planner!

One of the best decisions we made early on in the planning process was hiring a stellar wedding planner, Ana Montesino of Prestige Weddings and Events.

At first we thought that we could plan the wedding ourselves and were immediately overwhelmed – there was no way we could have planned the wedding of our dreams from another country.

Not only because of the distance and not being able to meet with vendors, but also because of the language barrier. There were several vendors that I emailed before hiring Ana that I had trouble communicating with or things would simply get lost in translation. Ana is bilingual and provided a single point of truth to coordinate between all parties and bring my vision to life.

Before we even hired her, Ana warned us about choosing a wedding date based on the local tides if we wanted the ceremony to be on the beach. That seems so obvious to us now but was something we had not thought about at the time and she totally saved us.

She took so much weight off of our shoulders and has such incredible attention to detail that I knew I could fully put my trust in her to execute my vision. Ana brought together an amazing team of vendors that made my dream wedding a reality and coordinated everything seamlessly.

My #1 advice if you are planning a destination wedding: do yourself a favor and hire a wedding planner.

I was especially grateful to have a wedding planner to handle coordinating vendors and logistics because I had given myself a million DIY projects to do…

We did way too many DIY Projects

I am a professional graphic designer and chronic crafter, and can be very particular (some might call it OCD) about the design and look of things that are important to me, such as the materials surrounding my wedding.

wedding invite suite custom map, costa rica custom map, destination wedding map

After teaching myself calligraphy, I designed and letterpressed my own Save the Dates and Wedding Invites. One of my favorite details is a small map of the area I included with the invites.

I also designed our wedding website which included tons of information about travel to help our family and friends plan their trip.

Welcome Bags

At the beginning of the trip during our Welcome Dinner at the incredible Fuego Brewing Company, we gave out welcome tote bags that I designed and Peter helped stencil. We ordered the stencils cut with my designs from Etsy and painted them with fabric paint.

Wedding welcome bag contents — *Thank you Alicia for these photos because I was too busy to ever get a photo of our completed welcome bags!*

Inside the welcome bags were hangover kits, toucan cookies that I commissioned from Etsy, turkish towels, a printed wedding weekend itinerary, and a Costa Rica shirt that I designed to commemorate the trip.

The shirt features a drawing I did of Dominicalito Beach, where we had our wedding ceremony. We ordered the shirts from Custom Ink (Pro tip: make sure to order more than 6 shirts from Custom Ink in order to have them screen printed rather than digitally printed, which is a higher quality technique and will last longer.)

I am actually planning on starting an Etsy store where I can sell shirts and other products featuring designs that I create based on our travels, so keep an eye out for that! There will undoubtedly be a non-Pinny-wedding variation of this Costa Rica design for sale.

Wedding Day Signage

For the wedding day, I designed several signs: a Welcome sign and Unplugged Ceremony sign for the ceremony at the beach, a Polaroid Guestbook sign and Signature Cocktails sign for the reception, and a fun “booty booty” sign for the dance floor!

For each sign I did calligraphy, scanned and vectorized it, and cut the letters out of vinyl using my Cricut. Then we assembled the signs using acrylic sheets I bought from Etsy.

This is one project I would consider buying – Weeding out the vinyl from all of those letters took forever (this was one of the tasks friends and family were helping us with the night before the wedding… I am forever grateful!) But, with that said, they looked exactly the way I wanted them to.

Designing and embroidering my own wedding dress

By far the biggest task I took upon myself was making my own wedding dress.

I did not have $20,000 to spend on the whimsical, barely-there, heavily beaded dresses I wanted by one of the designers I loved (looking at you Paolo Sebastian!). My mother taught me how to sew and embroider from a young age so this was something I felt confident in, but I definitely underestimated how long this process would take.

I did all of the beading and embroidery myself, with help from Peter near the end when the deadline was fast approaching and we knew it was physically impossible for me to finish it alone in the time remaining.

All together the dress took over 300 hours of work to complete. I kept track out of curiosity on a spreadsheet. I started working on it in 2020 and finished it the morning of the wedding in between hair and makeup! It was stressful to say the least.

But with that said, I am extremely happy with how it turned out. I got exactly what I wanted – my dream wedding dress.

The design on the skirt is actually the star map of the night that Peter proposed to me in Chile (see the proposal photo at the beginning of this blog post)! Along the bottom of the skirt are the phases of the eclipse. As I was to represent the sun, I tried to incorporate a lot of gold beading throughout the dress.

To complete the sun look, I wore a stunning crown by AMAROQ that reminded me of the rays of the sun, and earrings by Oscar de la Renta that looked like starbursts.

Peter’s moon look was a little more subtle – wearing an all white linen suit with a golden moon pin on his lapel. Doesn’t he look so cool though?

My advice for brides planning a destination wedding

My advice for brides planning right now would be to not take on too many DIY projects just to save some money. Your time and happiness is worth more than saving a little bit of money (usually not much after the cost of craft supplies!).

The weeks and months leading up to the wedding were full of working on the wedding dress and a myriad of other projects and I didn't get to take the time to enjoy this time in my life.

Even after we had arrived in Costa Rica, I was finishing up last minute projects that had taken longer than expected until the morning of the wedding. It is a fond memory looking back – the night before the wedding our room was filled with family and friends helping us finish up last minute projects – but I would have rather been able to relax and enjoy the wedding trip we had been planning for years.

Some DIY is fine, but don't go overboard and know that sometimes it's better to just buy the thing, even if it isn't 100% "your vision", because on the wedding day it will be the last thing that you care about anyway.

I was so burnt out after the wedding that it has taken me a year to finally blog about it or submit it to Green Wedding Shoes!

A few of our favorite details from the Wedding Day

Our Beach Wedding Ceremony

During the ceremony we had a guitarist, Ricardo Fonseca, play guitar covers of our song choices, which was beautiful and added to the beach setting perfectly.

Ricardo played “Despacito” as Peter and his brother, our officiant, danced their way down the aisle and for our flower man, one of Peter’s youngest brothers, as he sprinkled flower petals from his fanny pack (and threw some at someone’s face).

We are huge Disney fans, so we chose “I See the Light” from Tangled for my entrance song (instant tears) and “Into the Unknown” from Frozen 2 for the recessional. They were especially magically as guitar covers played live at the beach.

The ceremony itself was beautiful and nerve-wracking all at the same time. The pinnacle of the wedding day, the moment we had been building up towards for years, was finally upon us.

Our officiant, Peter’s older brother, did an incredible job of making the ceremony meaningful while throwing in the occasional joke to keep things light-hearted, which is so us. We both cried while reading our vows though, but there is only so much one can do.

beach wedding costa rica, destination beach wedding, celestial wedding

Being surrounded by our closest friends and family in a foreign country, one of the most wildly raw and beautiful places I have yet to visit, and getting married to my best friend and lifelong travel partner – it truly hit me in that moment just how truly blessed we were.

One of my favorite moments of the day was after walking down the aisle hand in hand with Peter after the ceremony, heading straight to the coconut bar and cheersing fresh coconuts.

I don’t think anything ever tasted so refreshing. All of the stressful parts were over, we did it, here we are in Costa Rica and we are finally married. I was flooded with a sense of relief and giddy joy. From here on out we just got to fully immerse and enjoy ourselves.

Couple Photo Session

After the ceremony, we had group photos and then couple photos. It was a race against the clock as the sun began to set. The Costa Rican gods must have been smiling down on us because we had a beautiful sunset. Chis & Ruth knocked it out of the park as usual.

beach wedding at sunset, running down the beach

One fun little story from our couple photo session – the button closure on my wedding dress skirt actually broke in the photo above. Luckily, family was still nearby and Peter’s brother came running to the rescue with my “Oh Shit Kit” which had multiple options for repair (I used a safety pin to finish up the photo session until we returned to the villa and I was able to sew it properly).

I thought that this “worst-case” scenario would have been much more stressful but I was surprisingly zen about the situation. It must have been those coconuts. But really, the wedding ceremony was done and I was stress-free and ready to have fun.

After the sun had set and we had completed the couple photos, we went back to the villa and immediately popped some bottles to celebrate!

The Reception (Party Time)

Cocktail hour had commenced during our couple photo session, and one of my favorite details was the Pura Vida neon sign backdrop for our Polaroid guestbook. I already had a restored vintage Polaroid camera, so it was an obvious choice for our wedding guestbook.

The entire reception was a blast. The event space was just steps from the villa tucked into the lush jungle. It was beautiful, exactly as I had envisioned it with all of the shimmering star lanterns and tables dripping with florals.

I am obsessed with those bohemian wicker chairs we rented from Eventos Artesanos for the sweetheart table. I felt like a queen on her throne during dinner.

The food was incredible. We had all of our favorite things: ceviche, pizza, alfajores, etc. I ate so much that I had to use a button extender for my wedding dress skirt and I regret nothing. Maybe only that I couldn’t eat more. Shout out to The Private Chef for the best food and drinks of my life!

Wedding reception specialty drinks, custom wedding cocktails

Then onto the best part: dancing! We love to dance and luckily our family and friends do too. It was a real party.

Turns out Costa Rica is pretty hot and humid, so of course we had to jump in the pool for a mid-dance party cool down.

We had late night snack donuts, horchata, and a cooler full of Imperial beer waiting for us by the pool where we continued the party until the early hours of the morning. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

It’s your wedding day, do what you want to!

As you can see, we had a very “untraditional” wedding. We kept the wedding traditions that we liked and skipped the traditions that didn’t speak to us. Weddings cost a lot of your time and money, and it is meant to be a day celebrating you and your love, so shouldn’t your wedding represent you? It’s your wedding day, have fun with it! #YOLO

You can get married anywhere in the world that you want to! That was a fun realization. Especially as travel-lovers, it just made sense for us to turn our wedding into a fun trip to a foreign country, where we could force (in a loving way) our dearest friends and family – many of whom had never left the country – to have a taste of one of our greatest passions.

A destination wedding was perfect for us, but if you want to get married close to home, that is perfect too. Do what makes you happy!

You don’t have to invite 200 people to your wedding (unless you want to). We had 35 people total for our wedding and it was intimate and lovely. I hear so many people say how on their wedding day they barely have time to talk to everyone and are exhausted by the end of the night.

We got to spend tons of quality time with our very closest family and friends and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Everything turned out perfectly – and whatever didn’t go perfectly as planned was so small that it didn’t matter and felt insignificant on the wedding day.

The wedding was better than I ever could have imagined or hoped for. It was truly the wedding of my dreams. Sorry if that is super corny to say, but it’s true! When I was a kid I told my mom that I would have pizza (my absolute favorite food) for my wedding dinner and I DID. I got married to my best friend on a beach in a foreign country and felt like a sun goddess.

Hire a good photographer and videographer

One final note to those currently wedding planning: hire a good photographer and videographer. This is just my personal opinion of course, but hear me out. If I had to spend good money on ONE thing for my wedding, it would be for the photography and video.

Obviously, I may be somewhat biased as someone with a creative background who hobbies in photography and video myself, but I think this would be true regardless. Having now been married, I can now concur that your wedding day goes by in a blur just like everyone says it does. It’s shocking really!

After your wedding day is over and in the past, all you will have left to remember those moments that flew by will be the photos and videos.

You’ve seen the stunning photography throughout this blog post by our incredible wedding photographers, Chris + Ruth Photography. They are known for their destination wedding photography and are just as fun and adventurous as they are talented. We cherish these photos daily (the photo above is literally my phone screen background).

We instantly connected with our videographer’s, Sun Beat Films, editing for being fun and upbeat rather than the traditional sappy (almost sad?) wedding video. Their website says “Wedding Films for Party People” and we love that! Not to mention their visually beautiful style.

Watch the 60 second version of our wedding video by Sun Beat Films below! We LOVE how our video turned out. I want our wedding video to play on a loop on my gravestone.

Are you planning a destination wedding?

If you are currently planning your own destination wedding, I hope that our experience and tips may be useful to you. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below and we would be happy to help in any way we can. If you’re already married, do you have any advice you could share to those planning now?

Thank you for stopping by our blog and reading about our wedding story! We plan to slowly work on catching up the Adventures with Pinny blog and will be posting more about our time in Costa Rica – stay tuned.

Another huge thanks to Green Wedding Shoes for choosing our wedding to be featured on your world-famous wedding blog. It is such an honor to see myself on the pages of a blog I have been stalking for years. Make sure to check out the full feature on GWS if you haven’t already by clicking the button below.

Read the feature on Green Wedding Shoes