Guest Report

[Simone Kist]

My new husband and I decided to get married in Tobago. Everthing we had researches suggested that Tobago might be the island paradise we imagined to be the perfect setting for our big day. With its lush rainforest and picturesque sandy bays, it did not disappoint, indeed it was more beautiful than we expected, with lovely people to give it the right vibe too.

We didn't actually stay at the Cuffie River but having decided to get married right on the beach, I had picked out Cuffie River Retreat for our reception dinner. After checking their website and seeing that they host and arrange weddings, I decided to have Regina, the lovely owner and host, take care of all the planning of our wedding. It turned out to be a great decision and the result was a wonderful day that ran smoothly and without a hitch.

A few days after arriving in Tobago, Regina arranged for one of her drivers/staff, Hethzell (I hope I'm spelling it correctly!) to pick us up from our hotel in the south of the island and take us around to do all the formalities. We went to the registrar's to get our licence and then over to meet the wedding officiant. I should mention that we had our two friends and all of our luggage with us too, as Hethzell was dropping us off in Castara after we had done our running around. She was absolutley great to do this, even stopping in Scarborough to pick up some groceries to take to Castara.

The day of our wedding was truly dreamy, my bouquet arrived with the minister, it was perfect with anthirium flowers, sea shells and ribbons to match my dress. Although Regina had never met me or even seen my dress, she had somehow picked the perfect arrangement for the bouquet--many compliments to the flower arranger too!

The service was lovely, the minister was very nice and we stood in a circle on Heavenly Bay beach just before sunset.

After the sunset we emabrked on the comfortable bus that Regina had arranged to go for the dinner at the Retreat, about 30 minutes away from Castara. The bus driver was very nice and my mother enjoyed some good conversation with him.

Arriving at Cuffie River we really felt like we were in the middle of forest, though the sun had gone down you could hear all the wonderfully strange noises of the forest all around.

We had the dinner in the main restaurant area. There were 15 in our group and we all sat at one table.The food was fabulous, I had requested seafood so we had shrimp, salmon and a really large variety of tasty vegetarian dishes (also my request), including eggplant parmesian, callalou soup, cheese stuffed potatoes and many more... The wedding cake was a rich rum cake which was decorated with sea shell motifs. We had opted to include drinks for our guests and a 'help yourself' bar had been set up and generously stocked beside the dinner table.

After dinner we were bused back to Castara where we continued the party on our own into the wee hours of the next morning.