Alice's brother has been doing a bit of looking for flights into Dubrovnik in the last week or so and he's starting to find it difficult to get flights.
For those of you still sitting and looking at flights, I'd strongly encourage starting to look more actively at getting tickets. The problem isn't so much if it's possible to get a trip all the way, it's a question of whether you want to have huge layovers or pay vastly more money.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Accomodation Overview
I promised to post something today to give people an idea of accommodation options. I had initially planned a single posting on this. Hopefully no one is upset that this ends up being much longer and multiple posts. Sorry in advance for being overly verbose :)
Our initial hope was that it would be reasonable to book larger group locations. However, due to the fact that it seems improbable that we'd be able to get everyone to arrive and depart on the exact times we'd prefer, we had to revisit our initial thinking. Complicating this is the fact that our own requirements are somewhat unique due to this being our wedding.
With all of that said, I'll start things off by covering a few basic items to be aware of and by describing our own requirements. So, here goes...
Things to be aware of:
Our accommodation requirements are as follows:
As of now, our current plan is to stay here. It's just north of the city walls and offers quick access to the places we need to get to. It's a nice cozy bachelor apartment:
For other people, a whole variety of options are available depending on what their specific requirements are. Over the next few days, I'll post some details on the various areas in the city and I'll try to present some avenues for research for folks to get their accommodations sorted out. Please provide me some feedback with your requirements - I'll try and work that into the postings so that we can make sure that everyone gets taken care of!
Our initial hope was that it would be reasonable to book larger group locations. However, due to the fact that it seems improbable that we'd be able to get everyone to arrive and depart on the exact times we'd prefer, we had to revisit our initial thinking. Complicating this is the fact that our own requirements are somewhat unique due to this being our wedding.
With all of that said, I'll start things off by covering a few basic items to be aware of and by describing our own requirements. So, here goes...
Things to be aware of:
- Croatia has a pretty steep VAT (22%) that gets added to pretty much everything. Some sites will advertise units with VAT added, some without, some will do both. Read the fine print
- Stairs are fairly common (eg: one apartment we looked into has 298 (!!) steps up) - if you don't like stairs, make sure you double check this
- Cars are not allowed to drive into the old city. As a result, transportation within is all on foot
- Prices range anywhere from about 25€ to 300€ a night
- Accommodations cover a whole range of options - this includes hostels, resorts, fancy hotels, villas, and apartments (and probably some other options I'm forgetting about)
- Butteryfly Services - recommended by our wedding planner, rentals are done through them, slightly more expensive
- Dubrovnik Apartment Source - another good looking option that has a slightly better electronic setup for booking than Butterfly does
- Dubrovnik Apartments - slightly cheaper option
Our accommodation requirements are as follows:
- relatively close to Sponza Palace to keep travel to the ceremony fairly simple as Alice will be in a wedding dress and heels
- not a huge number of steps to avoid having to go up and down in a dress and heels
- a relatively 'nice' unit - this is after all our wedding :)
- simple to arrange (take deposit via credit card, taxes already included, deal with a management company)
- an upper bound on cost of around 100 euro per night
As of now, our current plan is to stay here. It's just north of the city walls and offers quick access to the places we need to get to. It's a nice cozy bachelor apartment:
For other people, a whole variety of options are available depending on what their specific requirements are. Over the next few days, I'll post some details on the various areas in the city and I'll try to present some avenues for research for folks to get their accommodations sorted out. Please provide me some feedback with your requirements - I'll try and work that into the postings so that we can make sure that everyone gets taken care of!
Engagement Photos
We're still alive! Really! :)
Realizing that it's been quite a while since our last posting, we figured it's time for an update. More should be forthcoming over the next few days. In the meantime, I figured that I would post some details from our recent engagement photos.
In short, Alice was highly interested in getting some engagement photos done. Personally, not being the sort of person who feels himself to be terribly photogenic, and not being inclined to enjoy having photos taken of myself, a was a little bit unclear as to what the big deal was. In her attempts to convince me that this was a good thing, we'd looked at numerous examples of engagement, pre-engagement, pre-wedding, and other sorts of photos, but I just wasn't feeling it, until one day Alice discovered the idea of 'life style photos' (I realize, this sounds a bit on the pretentious side). The initial option we looked at was unfortunately a bit overpriced and underwhelming ($200 before we even get photos?!). So, what to do?
Here, the story takes a bit of an amusing turn. For those of you who are regular Facebook users, Facebook uses contextual advertising similar to what Google provides. Presumably, some of the ads that are selected for you are dependent on the various data in your Facebook user profile. What this means is that when your relationship status according to Facebook goes from 'in a relationship' to 'engaged', Facebook starts schleping all kinds of wedding related ads. Alice noticed a particular ad for wedding photographers coming up repeatedly, so she decided to check it out. From there, we met Josie and Ian (aka Pure Souls Photography). Fast forward a few weeks later and we found ourselves shooting photos in the snow and mild 'precipitation' on Mount Seymour.
Initially, given the conditions, we were very worried about the outcome. Happy to say, after seeing the end result, we're quite happy with the end product. Here's a few samples for your perusal.
For anyone interested in seeing a few more of the photos, you can go here
Realizing that it's been quite a while since our last posting, we figured it's time for an update. More should be forthcoming over the next few days. In the meantime, I figured that I would post some details from our recent engagement photos.
In short, Alice was highly interested in getting some engagement photos done. Personally, not being the sort of person who feels himself to be terribly photogenic, and not being inclined to enjoy having photos taken of myself, a was a little bit unclear as to what the big deal was. In her attempts to convince me that this was a good thing, we'd looked at numerous examples of engagement, pre-engagement, pre-wedding, and other sorts of photos, but I just wasn't feeling it, until one day Alice discovered the idea of 'life style photos' (I realize, this sounds a bit on the pretentious side). The initial option we looked at was unfortunately a bit overpriced and underwhelming ($200 before we even get photos?!). So, what to do?
Here, the story takes a bit of an amusing turn. For those of you who are regular Facebook users, Facebook uses contextual advertising similar to what Google provides. Presumably, some of the ads that are selected for you are dependent on the various data in your Facebook user profile. What this means is that when your relationship status according to Facebook goes from 'in a relationship' to 'engaged', Facebook starts schleping all kinds of wedding related ads. Alice noticed a particular ad for wedding photographers coming up repeatedly, so she decided to check it out. From there, we met Josie and Ian (aka Pure Souls Photography). Fast forward a few weeks later and we found ourselves shooting photos in the snow and mild 'precipitation' on Mount Seymour.
Initially, given the conditions, we were very worried about the outcome. Happy to say, after seeing the end result, we're quite happy with the end product. Here's a few samples for your perusal.
For anyone interested in seeing a few more of the photos, you can go here
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