Going Off To Get Married

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Many couples opt for locations that not only are congenial to a ceremony but also offer opportunities to golf, fish, indulge in a spa treatment or explore another culture. Avid scuba divers Stephanie Dowling, 29, and Chad Eschmeyer, 28, of Scottsdale, Ariz., plan for their May 2004 wedding in the Virgin Islands to include a day of snorkeling and diving. They originally anticipated 15 guests. Now 50 guests, many of them fellow divers, are scheduled to stay in a resort the couple selected over the Internet for a week of activities, including celebrations of Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican festival the two celebrate in their native Southwest. "Surprisingly, many of my friends have never been to a destination wedding," says Dowling, who was inspired by another friend's wedding in Turks and Caicos, in the Caribbean. "They think it's so unique, they wouldn't miss it for the world."

The selection of the place and the activities gives couples the chance to express their uniqueness and create their own world. Brooklyn-based artists Amy Madden, 29, and Christopher Quirk, 41, who met as students in Rome, got married privately in New York City in September 2002, and six weeks later they staged a wedding that reflected their artistic interests at the Castello di Montegufoni, a castle in the Tuscan countryside. Sixty guests stayed in the castle for a week, during which friends and family joined the couple in reciting poetry and enacting scenes from The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio's 14th century collection of fables, in the castle's theater. On the wedding day, Quirk's brother, a drummer, led the processional through the grounds while guests banged along on pots and pans. When they reached a hilltop olive grove, the guests formed a circle around the couple as one friend sang Ave Maria and another acted as "officiant." Afterward, everyone danced into the night to CDs the couple had created for the occasion.

But the locale need not be so exotic. Last September, Tera Davenport, 25, a nanny, and Eric Donahoo, 30, a construction worker, traveled from Santa Clara, Calif., to Arizona to marry at Rainbow Bridge National Monument on Lake Powell. Thirty-eight guests joined them for a two-hour boat trip and a 20-minute hike to the site, where the bride changed from shorts and a T shirt into her wedding dress. The ship's captain performed the ceremony, after which the couple released butterflies, a local Native American tradition. The following day, Tera and Eric rented a houseboat with nine friends for a group honeymoon. "Not only did we first meet on Lake Powell, we own a boat and love the outdoors," says Tera. "Our destination wedding fit us perfectly."