Having a destination was no easy task, especially for two detail-oriented, mega-planners! But with some hard work, we were able to pull everything together! We both knew we didn’t want a big wedding, and wanted it to be something that was a total reflection of us. One big party – haha kidding, sort of. We had a week long celebration at the beach with our friends and family, finished off with our wedding! With a long engagement planned, we knew we had plenty of time to find the perfect set of vendors, but we wanted to make sure we had found the perfect ones for us. Figuring out how to find the best destination wedding vendors was no easy task!

We’re sharing our complete list of vendors, how we managed to find the best wedding vendors in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Alabama and of course, some of our gorgeous wedding photos!

Social media has become one of the quickest ways to find just about anything, and wedding vendors are no stranger to that.

Instagram

Instagram is one of the best ways to find destination wedding vendors. We swear by hashtag and location searches on Instagram. We found both our photographer and videographer by using different hashtags. And found our rehearsal dinner spot by doing a location search!

Hashtag searches are a lot like searching for something on google, but instead of “best wedding photographer in Gulf Shores” it’d be something like “#GulfShoresPhotographer” “#AlabamaWeddingPhotographer.” This was incredibly helpful because we weren’t finding any videographers within our price range, so after expanding our hashtag research from #GulfShoresVideographer to #AlabamaVideographer we found a whole new list of videographers. We ended up choosing Wilt Productions as our videographer for our destination wedding even though they were located a few hours away from where our wedding was going to be.

Facebook

This one is a little hard to explain, but try to stay with me because it’s a really good way to find people – especially small businesses.

You’ll do a normal search on Facebook like you would for anything, but type in what you’re looking for photographer/videographer/cake/flowers and where dallas/austin/houston – whatever. (I typed in cake Gulf Shores Alabama) Once you hit enter or search, a new page will open up. From there, tons of options will begin to fill the page, scroll through and you’ll see tons of small and large businesses, just waiting to hear from you!

Remember – Facebook Messenger is kinda wonky. If you don’t hear back form someone within a day or so, i’d recommend commenting on their page and letting them know you sent a message, just to be sure.

Word of mouth

We had an amazing wedding coordinator who helped us with so many aspects. Having someone who was on the ground and could connect us with vendors for our destination wedding was one of the best things. Carol and her team deal with vendors in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Alabama all the time, and she knew who tell point us towards and who to steer us away from!

Take your time

Finding a great vendor is like finding an oyster with a pearl in it. Okay, maybe not that hard. But seriously. Don’t try to rush it. Don’t try to rush any of the wedding planning process. Give yourself enough time to really sort through the masses of vendors that you come across. Heck, so many of them will take days (yes, days!) to get back to you, there’s no reason to rush through the process.

Even though we’re planners, we still had a few details left till the very end. We really wanted to host our rehearsal dinner at Bill’s by the Beach, but they were not very good about getting back to me and that left us stressing, in a major way. It ended up leading us to the most amazing rehearsal dinner spot in Gulf Shores – Sunset Cork Room. My mom and I were lucky enough to be able to stop in for dinner when we were in town for my bridal portraits two months before the wedding and we knew instantly it’s where we had to have our rehearsal dinner. If we wouldn’t have had the issue with our initial place, we probably never would have found Sunset Cork Room.

Cross-check popular wedding review sites

I mean this with the utmost respect, but y’all, if you’re so naive to think people can’t pay for their reviews or pay to be on the first page of the popular wedding review sites, you’re wrong. There are some great, incredibly descriptive reviews on sites like Wedding Wire and The Knot, but just like everything, you have to cross-check. Google, social media, other sites, they are all your friend when it comes to making sure a company or service hasn’t spent their marketing dollars trying to overdo it on one of those sites. This is going to take a little time, but it is SO worth it.

Our vendor list

Venue: Young’s Suncoast Rentals – Hangin’ 10 Beach House (We rented a big beach house for our family and friends for the week and got married on the beach in front of the house)

Wedding coordinator & officiant: Orange Beach Weddings

Photographer: Southern Shores Photography

Videographer: Wilt Productions 

Hair & makeup: Christian Burchfield Hair

Caterer: Culinary Productions

DJ: D’Jones Entertainment

Flowers: Coastal Flowers and Design

Rentals: Gulf Coast Events & Rentals 

Cake: Sugar House – Custom Cakes

Weddings are no joke (duh, right?) and the planning process is the most time consuming thing. Don’t rush through any aspect of it, take it all in and enjoy it.

We’ll have more wedding stuff up soon, but if you’re curious about our honeymoon, you can read all about our honeymoon in Antigua! And if you’re new around here, you can take a look at our engagement story, our unique Dallas engagement photos and our engagement story in DMagazine!

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions on how to find the best destination wedding vendors, especially if you’re looking for ones in Gulf Shores or Orange Beach, Alabama!