Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

It was April 2012 when Sue and I decided that we were going to get married. We both had been married before and we agreed that we didn’t want a traditional at home wedding in a catering hall. We wanted to get married “with our toes in the sand” on a beautiful beach but not at the Jersey Shore were we were living.

A few days after we had this conversation good friends of ours mentioned that every September a group of them went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for a week and they asked if we wanted to join them. We said yes that sounds like fun count us in. Later that night we started to talk about the trip and I said “why don’t we turn that trip into our wedding on the beach in Myrtle Beach” and without hesitation Sue agreed.

So, now The Journey Begins ……. What was going to be just a vacation with a few friends turned into a wedding on the beach with a lot of friends which was the start of what is now the JBL Travel Group a full service travel agency that specializes in Destination Weddings, Honeymoons, Family Vacations and Group Travel !

We had no experience planning a vacation let alone a destination wedding and we had 5 months to pull it all together. We both had full time jobs in the corporate world so there was no time to work on all the arrangements during the day so every night we researched what we needed to do and sent out a flurry of emails to get all the information that we needed.

After dozens of emails and phone calls we had all the information that we needed to get started except we found out from the hotel that we were not allowed to get married on the beach. It turns that the beach is not owned by the hotel it was owned by the town and their was an ordinance on the books banning weddings on the beach. Needless to say that we were both bummed out because that was what we wanted to do.

Well …. since I never take “No” for an answer I did some investigating and found a loophole that was my opening to negotiate having our wedding on the beach and on September 23rd 2012 we got married on the beach with 50 of our friends on the beach with us to witness the whole thing. Not only did we get married on the beach but we also had a celebration after the ceremony with a buffet that we arranged through a local caterer and the everybody came back to our suite at the hotel and we partied until the early hours of the morning.

We did it … we made all the arrangements for the transportation, hotel, music, food, drinks, minister, photographer, videographer and of course the after party and we did it all in under 5 months. Everybody had a great time and we all still talk about it today. The memories will last us a lifetime and it is the reason why our slogan for the JBL Travel Group is “Where Your Memories Begin”.

Trust me …. it could have been a disaster especially since we had no experience in planning something like this. I definitely don’t recommend it to couples thinking about a destination wedding. My advice is to contact a good travel agent that specializes in destination weddings because they know all the ins and outs of the various destinations.