Joe Ranzenbach and Jennifer Choi were one of those couples who had their destination wedding vision set within hours of Joe’s April 2022 proposal, which took place on a catamaran in the Adriatic Sea. “We had no idea we wanted a destination wedding until we got engaged in Santorini. We just fell in love with the place,” says Jen, who also spent childhood trips going to Greece. Basking in the glow of their betrothal—and those postcard-famous sunsets—the couple wanted their friends to experience the island, too, and had decided before the trip was over that they’d return there for their nuptials. Jen and her family have a special connection to the Mediterranean nation: The bride’s late grandfather had once been the South Korean ambassador to Greece, so her mother had spent years there.
The decisiveness served the pair—who are based in Atlanta—well throughout the planning process for their May 2023 celebration. “One of the first things that I truly admired about Jen was how decisive she is. She knows who she is and what she stands for and she's put in work that 99 percent of people will never do,” says the groom. “Our venue was booked less than a month later. We selected our first-dance song within five minutes. It was pretty efficient wedding planning.”
Read on for some of the lessons the couple learned while plotting their Santorini destination wedding, from narrowing down the location honoring the bride’s Korean heritage.
Joe Ranzenbach and Jennifer Choi married at Canaves Oia in May of 2023.
The two were engaged on the island in 2022.
After their engagement stint in Santorini, the couple’s next stop on that 2022 trip was to the nearby island of Paros. They loved it, and wondered if they should marry there instead. “Where Santorini is all white, very upscale, with luxury resorts, Paros was a little bit more rustic, more local. You barely heard any English,” Jen says. But once they got home and started the real planning process, the couple realized that the more low-key, less touristic nature of Paros meant it would be more difficult to host a destination wedding there—and to plan it from thousands of miles (and a language barrier) away.
The venues of Santorini were more accustomed to planning destination weddings remotely, and would be easier for guests to get to, so the couple ultimately stuck with their first instinct. They did eventually find a way to integrate Paros in their wedding week as a day trip.
Jennifer grew up visiting the area because her mother had lived in Greece as a child.
The bride's late grandfather had been South Korea's ambassador to Greece.
Early on, the couple also decided they wanted a multi-day affair where they could experience the island alongside their guests, like a big
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