5 tips for planning a destination wedding

– A blog post written by one of my beautiful brides

Up on the blog today is a guest post from one of my lovely brides, Harriett. She recently got married in Italy and I had the absolute pleasure of photographing Harriett & Kev’s destination wedding. Harriett has kindly put together some advice from a personal point of view and her top 5 tips for planning a destination wedding. Thank you so much for writing this helpful post out Harriett! 🙂

Onto Harriett’s post…

Planning a wedding abroad is very exciting and daunting! Last year we booked the accommodation, wedding reception and the abbey where the ceremony was being held without actually seeing it all, which people may think is a little crazy, but everything was more then perfect!

We were very lucky as we had a lovely lady (who owned the accommodation/wedding reception) who helped us plan. Gini was great at responding to emails and was brilliant at answering any questions. I’m not sure we could have done it without her, so I do think having someone local helping you is a massive bonus!

Once It was all booked we did fly out to Italy for two nights just to see the venue etc, which I do recommend doing as you get a feel of everything. Especially if you plan on taking and doing your own decorations for the day, which is what we did. My amazing parents drove all the way to Italy to take all our table decorations, my dress, suits etc. I know this isn’t possible for every country but it was a massive help for us as it saved us some money and made everything more personal.

We were so glad we found Lucy from Lucylou Photography to photograph our wedding, she made us feel very comfortable which I think is very important and she was brilliant from start to finish!

We had a small wedding with only 21 people there, which made it really intimate having just the people that really mean a lot to us.

We loved every second of the day and would not have changed anything, Italy was an amazing place to have our wedding and we would recommend it to anyone!

Our top 5 tips for planning a destination wedding

Wedding planner
Having someone help plan your wedding who is local to the area and can speak the language is very helpful. We were very lucky as Gini was lovely and a massive help especially for the legal bits and bobs!
Visit the wedding venue before the day
This way you can get a feel of everything. We were able to suss everything out and take a look at where the ceremony was being held. This is an opportunity to have food tasting for the wedding meal, something we weren’t able to do as we went on a bank holiday weekend and our caterers were not working.
Location
Make sure the accommodation where your guests will be staying is not far from the wedding reception. Look into how much taxis are if your guests have to get them at the end of the night. We were in the middle of nowhere so a taxi cost about £60 for a 5 minute journey.
Legal papers
Research on all the legal bits and see what you have to do and when you have to do it. Different countries have different rules. Also make sure you find out how many days you need to be in the country of your chosen destination before your wedding day.
Don’t forget your honeymoon!
Just because your getting married abroad doesn’t mean you cant have a honeymoon! Even if you tie it on at the end of your wedding week when all your guests have gone home!

5 tips for planning a destination wedding