Mexico beach nuptials derailed by disease

By Pete Pichaske
ppichaske@patuxent.com

Jaymi Kim and Ben Sterling were sure they had the perfect wedding planned: a ceremony at a luxurious Mexican resort in Cancun followed by a reception on the beach for 53 of their nearest and dearest.

Then came the swine flu, and 14 months of planning washed away in a flood of anxiety and apprehension.

The Long Reach couple — Kim grew up in Kings Contrivance and graduated from Hammond High School in 1998; Sterling grew up in Leonardtown, in St. Mary’s County — met through mutual friends and became engaged early last year.

“I always wanted to have a kind of beach wedding,” said Kim, 28, a prosecutor in the Frederick County State’s Attorney’s Office. “After we got engaged … we both thought a destination wedding would be nice.”

After some research, the couple settled on the Dreams Cancun Resort and Spa. After a lot more research and planning, they set the date for Friday, May 22, and made all the arrangements, and 53 family members and friends had signed up to fly to Mexico to attend.

Then the swine flu hit Mexico, claiming dozens of lives, shutting down restaurants and movie theaters and prompting a mountain of negative news stories.

“We were at Ben’s parents’ house in Leonardtown (in late April) when his family asked about it,” Kim recalled. “It was the first we’d heard of it.”

But not the last.

Over several days, the stories of Mexico’s swine flu problems multiplied, including a front-page story in The Washington Post about how tourists were staying away from Mexican resorts in droves.

The Post story had a Cancun dateline.

The couple decided to come up with a Plan B.

‘Not an atmosphere we wanted’“The problem for us is we had a couple of young kids who were coming” to the wedding, said Sterling, 25, a sales engineer for Johnson Controls, an engineering firm in Capitol Heights. He explained that Kim’s 3-year-old cousin was to be the flower girl and her younger sister was flying to Cancun as well. “We realized we’d just be worried the whole time about the kids getting sick, about everyone getting sick.

 “We heard stories about hotel staff people carrying hand sanitizers around,” Sterling said. “It was just not an atmosphere we wanted to get married in. It was exactly the opposite of the type of atmosphere we wanted.”

On the morning of April 30, 22 days before their planned wedding, Kim sent an e-mail to the 53 guests, warning that the Cancun wedding might be canceled and asking for their opinions.

Most of the guests, Kim said, responded with support for whatever decision the couple made; some said they were nervous but would go to Mexico anyway; others said they would not go, even if it meant they couldn’t get refunds on any of the money already spent.

In the end, through what Kim calls a “miscommunication,” their travel agent wound up telling the wedding guests the Cancun nuptial was off. Although the miffed couple had not made the decision, they realized it was where they were headed, especially after learning everyone could get full refunds (at least for the hotel reservations and the wedding; depending on the airline, the guests are being offered refunds or vouchers for future flights).

And so it was on to Plan B, which turned out to be an extension of Plan A.

Cancun to LeonardtownThe Cancun wedding was always meant to be a ceremonial event. The couple was to be legally married in St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, in Leonardtown, May 15, a week before their Mexican ceremony. The Leonardtown wedding was to be a small affair, with only immediate families as guests, followed by a small, informal party at Kim’s parents’ waterfront house in Annapolis.

 With the Cancun wedding off, the couple decided to make the Leonardtown wedding the main event.

They switched the ceremony to Saturday, May 16, so more people could attend, and made sure the priest could accommodate a larger crowd (he could). They quickly notified those invited to Cancun.

In a flurry of ongoing activity, they started arranging for flowers, ordering a wedding cake, setting up hair styling appointments, planning a much larger reception, arranging hotel accommodations for guests — in short, putting together almost from scratch a traditional, medium-sized wedding in about a dozen days.

“It’s been a struggle,” Sterling said. “In the end, it’ll be a nice wedding, and it’ll be in Maryland.
 
“But we were looking forward to this destination wedding in Cancun … a relaxed time. And it’s been the opposite.”

One part of their spoiled plans the couple has not even addressed is the honeymoon. They had planned to spend the week after their wedding in Cancun. Now, although they haven’t had even a moment to come up with an alternative, Sterling said they probably will postpone their honeymoon until later this year, even next year.

Dreams die hard, but Kim and Sterling are keeping a healthy perspective.

“We’re disappointed, of course,” Kim said. “But we’re kind of happy we can put together this wedding here, and everybody’s been really good about it.

“At the end of the day, we’ll have a good time,” she added. “As cheesy as it sounds, we’ll be married to each other.”