"My husband and I decided that we wanted a destination wedding for two reasons.  First, we love to travel and wanted to have our wedding in a new and exotic locale that we had never visited.  Second, we wanted to avoid the hefty expenditures and headaches associated with traditional weddings held at home.  When we got engaged, my husband bought me a Destination Weddings magazine.  After seeing the beautiful pictures and scenery in the magazine, we were sold.  Shelli Nornes was our rep and was fantastic!  She guided us through the process of selecting a location and resort that would meet all of our requirements.  We wanted to make sure we found a location and resort that could accommodate a large group of people, that wasn’t too far from home (Fiji was out of the question – we did want to have guests show up!) and was affordable and beautiful.  We ultimately decided on the Riu Palace Punta Cana resort in the Dominican Republic.  Shelli did a wonderful job of coordinating the travel for our 80 guests.  Our group had a lot of questions and Shelli was very patient with us and always responded to e-mails and phone calls quickly with the information that was requested."