St Croix, in the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean has been a stylish honeymoon location for newly wed couples for decades, because the weather there is bright all year round and you can enjoy any number of magnificent holiday activities together.

Things to do include hiking, exploring, taking tours, horse riding, water sports like diving or sailing or just and lying in the sun. However, in the past few years, it has also become very popular to travel to St Croix for the actual wedding ceremony itself, not just for the honeymoon. However, there are both advantages and disadvantages to getting married abroad.

First, you have to think about who you want to have present at your wedding. St Croix is governed by American law, so you will be obliged to have a certain number of witnesses. You can use local volunteers but you may not be able to envisage your wedding without your family or your best friends being in attendance.

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If you enjoy travelling and seeing new destinations, I advocate a cruise. I have cruised the Mediterranean and the Baltic and my next cruise will be a Caribbean cruise. I am genuinely looking forward to it. If you have never been on a cruise, start saving up now, because it is luxury like you have never imagined before.

Never having been on a Caribbean cruise before, I do not know how much the different Caribbean islands differ from one another, so I do not know how varied that cruise would be. However, I have cruised the Med and the Baltic and woken up to a different country every day and in both of those seas and every country is very different from its neighbours.

On our Baltic cruise we left from Southampton and cruised to Gothenburg in Sweden. From there we went to Helsinki and Leningrad (in those days). On the way back, we called into Copenhagen and the Tivoli Gardens. None of those countries was in any way similar to another or even Britain.

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There are plenty of destinations for people interested in sailing and if you are tired of the Virgin Islands then move on over to the rest of the Caribbean.

The Caribbean islands are part of an island chain covering 2,500 miles. Given the enormous distance, it is no surprise that tourists spend weeks out there in order to enjoy the splendour that it has to offer.

Just like in the Virgin Islands, there are loads of charter companies you can try for a range of hobbies. These firms come in different sizes, but perhaps the best is the yacht charter.

When you charter a yacht, apart from the yacht, the other elements and benefits that come with it are meals, separate guest rooms, a galley, toilet and shower.

Since you are the paying guest aboard the boat, you can customize the menu by telling the cook before the trip what you want to eat. You can help out by buying the provisions yourself, having someone from the crew do it for an additional fee or select a set menu from one of their pre-composed packages.

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If you are holding a large wedding, that is one with a lot of guests, the cost of wedding favours can be quite significant, if you do not set a strict budget. One immediate method you could employ to cut the cost of your wedding favours is to give one to each couple or single, rather than one to everybody who attends. The first judgment to take is how much can you afford in total and then divide that by the number of guests in total and then divide it by the number of couples and singles.

This method will make it easier for you to decide what you are going to do: buy for everybody; buy for couples and singles and keep the rest for something else or give to couples and singles but buy more elaborate gifts. If you still find that there is not a lot of money to go around, you will need to look for lower-priced wedding favours. I will give you a few thoughts below to get you going.

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In January 1848, James Marshall was inspecting the building of a saw mill for his boss, when he noticed an unusual rock glinting in the upturned soil.

He was not certain whether it was gold or not and did not want to get people’s aspirations up. So Marshall tried to break the yellow rock with a hammer. It did not split, but it did dent. just like gold would. The woman who was cooking meals for the saw mill construction crew, tried another test by boiling the rock in lye.

They boiled it all day, but it did not change colour. So, they passed the rock over to the mill’s owner, Mr. John Sutter, who also conducted a few tests. Eventually, everyone agreed that this rock was indeed gold.

It seems that the Sierra Nevada Mountains held huge hordes of gold, but that over tens of thousands of years, erosion had loosened up gold nuggets and the mountain streams flushed them down to the bottom of the mountains. Sutter’s property was situated between two rivers and so was likely to generate great wealth.

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