"A Three-Day (First) Date for Life" - Navdeep and Dan's Wedding in Costa Mujeres
An online romance that sparkled in person
With a love story that took off with a three-day first date in New York City, these two knew immediately it was meant to be. And when you know, you know! Married in just 10 months after starting to date, these two took every opportunity to maximize their adventures in paradise.
Author - Navdeep Kaur, Bride
How this love got started
We met online in December 2018 and had our first date in NYC. I was living in Boston at the time and he was in SF. For our first date, I drove to NYC and he flew all the way across the country and planned the most amazing first date that lasted three days.
He did put a lot of effort into the first date! We started our date by going to a famous pizza joint called Prince Street Pizza in little Italy. Over the next three days, we went to a lot of pizza spots, but at the end of our three days together we decided that Prince Street Pizza was the best. Now every time we go back to NYC, we always go back there to reminisce about the beginning of our relationship. We also went to the Opera, the Big Apple Circus, the MET museum, watched Aquaman in a theatre, and watched a stand up comedy show at Madison Square Garden.
We also spent a lot of time walking around NYC in the freezing cold and taking subway rides together. During these three days we were able to discover each others' adventurous sides, we were able to figure out each other's likes and dislikes in terms of food and entertainment, and most importantly, we discovered that we share similar values in terms of family, friends, and career. Time appeared to be flying by as we spent almost every waking moment together and never got bored or tired of each other.
After five months of long-distance dating and going on multiple international trips together, we met each others parents. In May 2019 we had our roka and during the ceremony, he put one of his mom's rings on my finger...sort of like an engagement. Because both our families lived on opposite coasts, we decided to do the formal engagement ceremony the night before the first wedding ceremony in November 2019 in Boston. In total, we dated for about ten months before we got married!
Let's start planning
We knew we were going to have a Sikh wedding in Boston in November 2019 and a Hindu wedding in Cancun in February or March of 2020. Soon after our roka in May 2019, we started searching for venues for both weddings.
We chose destination wedding in Cancun because we love Cancun and we love all-inclusive resorts. We wanted our families to experience something new and make a vacation out of our wedding. We also wanted to pick a location that was somewhat in the middle of Boston and San Francisco, and also not too hard to get to. We chose Grand Palladium Costa Mujeres primarily because their wedding team was the easiest to communicate with and they had done many Indian weddings before us, so they had a reasonable understanding of Indian wedding traditions. Additionally, TRS Costa Mujeres was a fairly new resort with many restaurant options, the beach here was cleaner than Moon Palace, it was not too crowded, and it was close to the airport.
You’re hired!
We first visited TRS in July 2019 while we were resort shopping. The wedding coordinator we met with recommended that we get in touch with Shaadi Destinations and spoke very highly about the team. I beleive we were able to get better deals on rooms and airport transfers by going through Shaadi Destinations vs going directly through the resort or the transfer company.
Shaadi Destination made the room booking and airport transfer processes very convenient for us and our guests. As a result, we were able to focus our attention on the actual wedding instead of trying to resolve logistical problems related to our guests' rooms and airport transfers.
Once we got there in person, it was clear as day
Our first tip for future destination wedding couples is to give yourself a year to plan (ideally) and try to make time for a site inspection.
Being able to see the event spaces in person helped us visualize what our wedding events would look like so that was the most helpful part for us. It's hard to say if we would have chosen the right resort had we not done the site inspection, but I believe we chose Grand Palladium because we had done the site inspection. We only looked at Moon Palace and Grand Palladium, and out of the two we liked Grand Palladium better.
It's possible that if we had done site inspections at other resorts, we may have picked a different one for our wedding. However, if we had not done the site inspection, we most likely would still have chosen Grand Palladium/TRS because they had great reviews online, they were wonderful about answering our questions in a timely manner right from the beginning, and we had seen pictures of other Indian Shaadi Destinations weddings before us so we knew they would be able to accommodate our needs. We knew we would be inviting a lot of people and it would cost our guests a lot of time and money to come to Cancun, so we wanted to make sure it would be worth their efforts, which includes satisfaction with the room, ambience, food, service, entertainment, etc.
Keeping it straightforward
Our second tip is to take advantage of the wedding package the resort offers, otherwise you will spend a lot more time and money picking individual vendors and decor items. We went with TRS's wedding package (Shaadi Royal Bliss), which involved very little decision making on our part. The savings that resulted from this allowed us to spend more on entertainment like water drums, fire dancing, mariachi, florescent dancing, etc.
And of course, our third and final tip is to go with Shaadi Destinations!
Memories for a lifetime
Being able to feel like we are on vacation with so many of our friends and family was our favorite part. We played holi on the beach which was quite amazing and a lot of fun. We hung out at the rooftop bars, the pool, the on-site Zentropia Spa, and the coffee bar regularly, which was also very memorable.
The holi probably takes the cake for being most memorable amongst our family and friends (other than the wedding events). We also did sparklers at our sangeet event, which our guests really enjoyed. Lastly, the dancers we had at our events, especially the fire dancers, were greatly appreciated.
The photoshoots outside of the resort was our photographer, Pervez Taufiq's idea. He also picked the places himself. The town we visited was Valladolid.
Daniel and I upgraded to a loft which was super helpful because we had a lot of guests who came to our room during the wedding. Having the extra space in the loft helped us accommodate all of them.
We wanted our guests to have an authentic Mexican experience. The band definitely lived up to the expectations, we could not think of a better way to greet our guests for the welcome dinner.
A funny and personal twist on the morning of
The note inside his shows was classic Daniel humor. He came up with this idea on his own because he knew that my cousins will try to steal his shoes.
Shout outs!
Zuniga (decor), Drums in Paradise (entertainment), Patravali (food), Pervez Taufiq and team (photography), and Chris Barraca (DJ - Daniel's friend from Cali) We would hire all of them again and again.
For Patravali, what we liked most was that the food was not only delicious but also authentically desi, and the restaurant folks did a great job with refilling the trays quickly. We really liked the desserts from Patravali. The guests loved the food.
For Zuniga, we liked that they had all the Indian wedding ornaments and decor that we wanted.
What made these vendors special was the fact that we only had to tell them what we wanted and they took care of execution on their own and did a great job.
Our planner was Eunice Bravo from the resort, she was great at communication - very punctual and thorough with her responses.
Our list of vendors:
Destination Wedding Agency - Shaadi Destinations (Website - Instagram - Email)
Photographer - PTaufiq Photography (Website - Instagram - Email)
Our honeymoon to come
We were supposed to honeymoon in Thailand in April 2020, but those plans got cancelled because of COVID. We hope to try again for Thailand in March 2021. The complimentary honeymoon with the Shaadi Destination perks at this resort was also helpful as it gave us the opportunity to recently get away back to paradise in Mexico for a bit!
Special thanks to P Taufiq Photography for these fabulous pictures! Contact Pervez for your destination photography needs.
Shaadi Destinations is the premier, award winning, modern-day destination wedding travel agency for South Asian couples seeking a streamlined process, incredible experiences, and a party friends and family will never forget! We save our couples thousands of dollars while throwing them the wedding festivities dreams are made of.
We live and breathe destination weddings - with just one consultation, you will be light years ahead in your destination wedding planning process. In less than one week, Shaadi Destinations will find you the most perfect resort that meets your needs, your budget, and your desires. With our vendor relationships and pre-negotiated exclusive perks at resorts across Mexico and the Caribbean, we are confident we can find exactly what you are looking for. You'll find we have the best rates, best incentives, and best booking experience.
