The Difference Between the Illusion of Online Planning and Working With Me

As I sat down to map out my vision for 2026, one question kept coming up.

How do I explain, clearly and honestly, why my service is different?

The answer came to me visually. Two apples sitting side by side. At first glance, they both look beautiful. Polished. Tempting. But only one of them is real.

And that, in many ways, is the truth about destination wedding planning.

The destination wedding industry has layers. Most couples don’t realize this when they first begin, because everything online is presented as if it lives on the same level. It doesn’t.

The illusion begins online.

At the base layer, couples do it themselves. The online wedding world is beautiful. The imagery is stunning. The inspiration is endless. What you are shown is carefully curated, and intentionally incomplete. Packages are clean, but vague. Pricing is simple, but generic. Everything is designed to give you just enough to say yes.

Couples research on Instagram, Pinterest, Google, and wedding blogs. They follow their own timing and base decisions on what vendors choose to show publicly online. This approach can work, but it requires a lot of time, emotional bandwidth, and trial and error.

More often than not, it leaves couples feeling more confused than when they started.

At that point, many couples turn to travel professionals who present themselves as wedding planners but are, in reality, travel agents offering their services for free. Of course this is appealing. But the reality is that most of these professionals have never planned a true custom wedding. They have not navigated creative decision-making, personalization, family dynamics, or complex logistics. Instead, they rely heavily on hotel staff for guidance and simply relay that information back to the couple.

Most do not speak Spanish. If they travel to Mexico, they rarely venture beyond the hotel property. They say they know Mexico, but have never driven a car there, negotiated locally, or experienced the country outside a controlled environment.

Then there is the option of hiring a wedding planner in Mexico. These planners understand weddings deeply, but they often work within a single destination. There can also be cultural differences, language barriers, and physical distance that make it harder to fully translate the experience American couples are envisioning.

And then there is my work.

During my las site inspection in Unico Puerto Vallarta

I don’t sit in one lane of this industry. I stand at the intersection of all of them.

What I offer is not one of these layers. It is all of them combined into a fully custom approach.

With me, you are not choosing between guidance and flexibility. You receive the highest level of professional insight while still having the most options to work with. My service brings together cultural fluency, industry training, on-the-ground knowledge, emotional intelligence, budget literacy, and the ability to anticipate problems before they arise.

I was professionally trained seventeen years ago creating high-end corporate incentive trips in Mexico. My foundation was built working at the highest level of hospitality and execution.

I have spent more than fifteen years planning custom destination weddings, navigating real couples, real emotions, real families, and real budgets, including my own. As a Mexican bride marrying an American groom, I learned firsthand the emotional stressors, cultural differences, guest experience considerations, and logistical layers involved, many of which I had never considered before my own wedding.

My wedding in Playa Del Carmen in 2014

I am both Mexican and American. I live in Chicago, and I travel to Mexico constantly.

Most recently, I spent two full weeks traveling coast to coast, from Cancun and Riviera Maya to Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, scouting, inspecting, asking questions, building relationships, and staying immersed in what is actually happening on the ground right now.

This is not theory. This is my lived experience.

This is where the apple analogy matters.

Working with me is like taking a bite of the real apple. Not the glossy one dipped in gold and polished for display, but the one with substance. Layers. Juice. Texture. The full experience.

When we explore hotels together, you are not choosing based on looks alone. You understand each option, its strengths, its compromises, and its reality. We taste a few apples, until you find the one that truly fits.

This is why hiring a travel agent alone is not enough. And why hiring a local planner alone is not enough. And why relying solely on a hotel package is not enough.

Yes, my services are not free. Working with me requires an investment.

But what you are investing in is my experience, my knowledge, and, if you enjoy my personality, as I hope you do, you are investing in me. My goal is to give you a planning experience that feels like working with your best friend, if your best friend happened to be an expert wedding planner who speaks the language, understands the culture, and knows how to navigate every layer of this process.

Right now, my MEXpert Package is still available with a $500 savings, which makes this an ideal time to begin, especially if you are planning a site visit to Mexico this winter.

If you are ready to bite into the real apple, I would love to work together.