About Weddings In Vieques
Why choose Weddings in Vieques to plan your special celebration?
Weddings in Vieques is owned and operated by Sandy Malone, a veteran event planner from Washington, DC, with years of experience planning large and small media, corporate and political events.
Sandy was married on Vieques Island on Labor Day weekend of 2004, after falling in love with the secret paradise while she was doing media relations for the government of Puerto Rico's battle to oust the Navy from the shores of Vieques.
Despite all her own event planning experience, Sandy set out to find a wedding planner to help her coordinate all the little details of inviting 50 guests to share her wedding day on a tiny island located just off another island in the Caribbean. After all, helping 50 guests arrange plane tickets, rental cars, and hotel accommodations from areas as widely spread as Washington, DC, Seattle, Washington, and Chicago, is a full-time job for any bride.
Unfortunately, Sandy was woefully disappointed by her wedding planner. Initially, she hired a coordinator recommended by an innkeeper on the island. There was no wedding planner on Vieques—this one came from San Juan. Within minutes of their initial meeting on Vieques when Sandy, her then-fiancé, and her mother traveled down for a weekend, it was obvious that Sandy knew more about planning an event on the island than the consultant she'd hired.
A month later, when the coordinator had missed all the deposit deadlines for the vendors and Sandy started getting calls from her florist, hairdresser, bandleader, and reception venue, all wanting to know if the wedding was still on, she took matters into her own hands. She fired the wedding planner and buckled down to clean up the mess the disastrous wedding planner had left behind.
The results were fabulous! Forty guests attended the nuptials. They got discounts on their airfare and special rates at the hotel. They were greeted with goody bags containing information on the island, snacks, and Puerto Rican rum! While her ceremony and reception were absolutely breathtaking, most of her guests still talk about the private tour of the bioluminescent bay before the rehearsal dinner, and the Sangria at the Caribbean-style barbecue on Red Beach the day before the wedding. It wasn't just a destination wedding on Vieques—it was a memorable experience that every one of her guests will remember for the rest of their lives.
Shortly after their wedding, Sandy and her husband Bill purchased their own home on Vieques Island, and their relationships with the people and the business owners on the island grew. Sandy started out in the wedding planning business by helping friends, and friend of friends, with small arrangements and advice as they struggled to organize their own Caribbean destination weddings. She helped friends plan enormous, big-budget weddings in Washington, DC, and gained valuable experience dealing with vendors, large wedding parties, and hysterical family members.
Sandy made the decision to launch Weddings in Vieques at the beginning of 2007. Encouraged by the continued popularity of destination weddings and the increasing popularity of Vieques Island with brides and grooms, Sandy decided to commit all of her energy to planning weddings in Vieques, Culebra and Old San Juan.
Prior to the inception of Weddings in Vieques, Sandy was Vice President of Public Affairs for a publicly-traded marketing company. She worked for two well-known public relations agencies in Washington, DC before going into corporate work, representing a wide variety of clients including the government of Puerto Rico. She began her career in political journalism, as managing editor of Campaigns & Elections magazine and then as a staff writer for the Wall Street Journal online.
Sandy Malone and her husband Bill run Weddings in Vieques together. They live on Vieques with their dog, Houdini.
