Stephan and Diana 's Wedding in Vieques, Puerto Rico

Our wedding week took place over the course of a few days. On Thursday night, we hosted a welcome pool “float” party, following a group kayaking trip to the Bioluminescent Bay, at the hacienda La Finca with inflatable Flamingo floats and ice cream floats.

Friday afternoon there was the beach party to start off the official festivities with a coconut shucker for authentic coconut rum drinks, a number of flamingo inner tubes, and about 100 of our closest family and friends, followed by a rehearsal dinner pig roast at the Tin Box with a local band playing Puerto Rican tunes.

The weekend culminated with the standing room only ceremony on the rooftop of El Blok overlooking the sea.

We love music – in fact the first night we hung out was at a concert – so music was very important to us. The wedding party processed to Good Vibrations and Don’t Worry Baby, and the bride to God Only Knows, all by the Beach Boys.

After our officiant, who happened to be our good friend, neighbor, and the groom’s 7th grade basketball coach, declared us husband and wife, we kissed and then went straight to the rum tasting bar to the tune of Marvin Gaye’s Got To Give It Up. That officially kicked off the main event, which started with live Puerto Rican music and cocktails on the stunning El Blok rooftop at sunset. The team at E.P. Anderson Photography even had a drone to capture video of the party from above.We eventually moved downstairs to the open-air restaurant, where our first dance was set to This Must Be The Place by Talking Heads

In addition to the scenery and attitude of the island, we chose Vieques and El Blok because of something that is really important to us: the people. Everyone on the island from the man who helped shuck coconuts to our event coordinator at El Blok made us feel so special and welcome. Having El Blok team working closely with us throughout the process, it was like having our friends (who happened to be serving us amazing snacks and drinks) beside us on our wedding day.

Simple Sunshine Events, who oversaw everything, managed to even custom hand dye our table linen and napkins. Natalie Soud, our stationer/calligrapher, wrote on the backs of dominos (our favorite game) – with the front indicating the table number assignment with the number of dots. Tropical flowers from Stem Events decorated the tables and the main bar.

At the end of the evening, the guests processed down the malecon to a beach bar for our after party – sparklers in-hand – to continue the party.