Some weddings stay in your memory because everything went perfectly. Others stay because something almost went wrong — and didn’t. Simona and Tautvydas flew to the Dominican Republic from Lithuania to get married on November 11th, 2023. They had planned for months. They had a vision. They had everything ready.
What they didn’t have, when they landed, was their luggage.
Inside that luggage: the wedding dress. The suit. The rings. Everything that makes a wedding feel like theirs.
I got the message that evening. “The bags didn’t arrive.”
I want to be honest about this part. When you’ve been planning a wedding for a year — across time zones, across languages, across an ocean — and something like this happens, there’s a moment where your stomach drops. Not because of the logistics. Because of what it means for the couple.
So I did what I always do. I stopped panicking and started calling.
That night I didn’t really sleep. I was on the phone with the airline. With the airport. With contacts I’ve built up over 5 years of working in the Dominican Republic. I was writing emails in Spanish and English. This is the part of wedding planning that nobody sees on Instagram. There’s no aesthetic photo of a planner at 2 AM on hold with baggage services.
By midnight we found the missing luggage at Punta Cana airport. By 1 am it was on its way to Las Terrenas. By the time the ceremony started, Simona was in her dress, Tautvydas was in his suit, and the rings were exactly where they needed to be.
In her own words:
“I can’t say that Anni helped us plan our wedding — she did it for us. I had no idea that planning a wedding across the whole world could be so smooth and worry-less. Anni went above and beyond, not only planning the wedding celebration itself, but also arranging covid tests and literally saving our wedding when the luggage with our wedding attire didn’t arrive with us, staying up into the middle of the night and communicating with everyone possible to ensure its arrival. All in all, planning this wedding was as easy as planning any family trip, and that’s all thanks to Anni.”
— Simona & Tautvydas, Lithuania
I’m not telling this story to make myself look good. I’m telling it because most couples — especially European couples planning a wedding in the Caribbean — only think about what should happen.
They don’t think about what to do when it doesn’t.
A wedding planner isn’t there for the perfect days. The perfect days run themselves. A wedding planner is there for the moment the luggage doesn’t arrive. The moment the florist calls in sick. The moment the rain starts thirty minutes before the ceremony.
That’s the moment you stop thinking about whether a planner was worth it.
Simona and Tautvydas are back home. Every now and then I get a message from them — a photo, a memory, a “can you believe it’s already been so lomg ago?”
That’s the part of this job I love most. The wedding day ends. The relationship doesn’t.
If you’re planning a destination wedding in the Dominican Republic and want clarity before committing to a resort package (Click here) , working with a local planner early can change the entire experience.
You don’t need more options.
You need the right structure.
Contact us for more information: hello@anniroth.com
See other interesting Blogposts:
The Quiet Panic Moment. It almost never happens at the beginning. At the beginning, couples are excited. Confident. Motivated. They’ve got Pinterest boards. Google Docs. A shared Notes app called “Wedding Stuff.”
They think:
“We’re organized.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“Do we really need a planner?”
And then… there’s a moment. ….
“Don’t worry — we have a wedding coordinator.”
And in that moment, it feels like one big thing is checked off the list. But here’s the part that usually comes later — often after weeks of emails, restrictions, and rising costs: a resort wedding coordinator and a wedding planner are not the same thing. And then ….
For years, the question was always the same: how do we fit everyone in?
Lately, I’m hearing the opposite. Couples come to me and say: we want it small. Really small. Twenty people, maybe fewer.
A Caribbean wedding at Melody Village, Puerto Plata. Stefanie and Cody were nervous at the start. By the end, they said they’d do it all over again.
It always begins with a vision, something effortless, beautiful, and deeply intentional. Maybe it’s a beachfront ceremony in Punta Cana, a stylish villa weekend in Las Terrenas, a cultural celebration in Santo Domingo, or something more intimate, like the mountains of Jarabacoa or the untouched beaches of Las Galeras.
It always begins with a vision, something effortless, beautiful, and deeply intentional. Maybe it’s a beachfront ceremony in Punta Cana, a stylish villa weekend in Las Terrenas, a cultural celebration in Santo Domingo, or something more intimate, like the mountains of Jarabacoa or the untouched beaches of Las Galeras.
There’s a moment at almost every destination wedding when everything becomes very clear. It’s not during the ceremony. Not during the first dance. Not even when the sun sets perfectly over the ocean in Punta Cana or Las Terrenas. It’s usually later—when guests are sitting together, barefoot in the sand, a drink in hand, laughing with people they met just two days ago.
Planning a simple beach wedding in Punta Cana, Las Terrenas, or Cabarete? Discover the hidden costs couples often overlook—and how to plan it right.
