Hi there,
I thought I would write this post more for information purposes for anyone getting married in Mallorca. My new wife and I just got married last week at Cap Rocat in Mallorca and planned the whole thing ourselves. Along the way we did not find a single source of information for everything we needed and often spent a long time searching the internet for suppliers which we didn't mind too much as we started planning the wedding over a year ago, so we had plenty of time. We therefore wanted to share our experience with everyone and the suppliers we used in hope that it might help others out there.
We looked at many venues across the South of England but just could not find one that we both agreed was the one and was also within our price range. We must have looked at about 20 to 30 venues and found flaws in each. Most of them the price but often it was that they were run down in places or their food options were just not wow enough (we are both foodies). Just to give you an idea of places we looked at, we looked at Goodwood House, Blenheim Palace, Farbridge, West Dean House, Grittenham Barn, South Lodge, Buxted Park, Clandon Park (before the fire) and many more. We figured that if we invited everyone we wanted there along with everyone you need to invite we would have around 100 people for the dinner and a further 50 for drinks in the evening.
As I say, after a year of looking we decided that we weren't going to find a place in the UK any time soon as we just could not find what we were looking for. We therefore decided to start looking abroad. We knew that if we were to get married abroad that a lot less people would come and we would end up with just the people we wanted there who also wanted to be there. So at the start of 2014 we started to look for a country that we would get married in. We instantly ruled out anything that was long distance as we knew that would come with a hefty price tag for all our guests and would therefore put off some of the people we wanted there. As it is we both have close relatives with children in school whom we wanted there and therefore we knew that we would have to have the wedding during the school holidays which would make it that bit more expensive for our guests (something to bear in mind if you are planing a wedding abroad), so we figured the closer to home the better for everyone and also we wanted somewhere with plenty of accommodation options to suit everyone's budget. This therefore narrowed it down to three places that we liked the look of, Mallorca, Cyprus and Santorini. We used the following websites to start look at some venues:
www.perfectweddingsabroad.co.uk
www.seemallorca.com
From these sites we found a number of venues we liked in each location. We narrowed Santorini down to one, Cyprus down to three and Mallorca down to four. As Mallorca had the most venues we liked and was only about 2 hours away, we decided we would try there first and then if we couldn't find anywhere they we would look at Cyprus. The venues we chose in Mallorca were:
Hotel Cap Rocat
Hotel Hospes Maricel
Belmond La Residencia
Son Julia Country House Hotel
Now before I go on for anyone who thinks that Mallorca is Magaluf and that is what the island as a whole is like, you are very wrong. There are more multi million pound yachts in Mallorca than Monaco by a long shot and the island has some of the most expensive houses in Spain and Europe. It is an absolutely beautiful island. I thought i would state this now as some of our guests had concerns which they soon changed their minds about when they arrived.
We based ourselves in Palma for 5 days at a nice little hotel that we would definitely recommend called the BQ Augusta and we hired a car and went to each of the hotels to see if we could find our venue. The first venue we went to was Cap Rocat and we immediately fell in love with it. It is an old military fort that has been transformed into a high end hotel with 29 rooms (although only 25 when we viewed it) and is ultra tranquil with unbelievable views across the bay of Palma. Next was Son Julia. This too was very nice and looked a bit like the sort of uber villa you would find by Lake Garda. It had 25 rooms but the main issue for us was the power lines that ran straight through the grounds of the hotel at the back and ruined the view that our guests would have had for the meal. Next stop was La Residencia. This use to be owned by Richard Branson and was part of the Virgin Luxury collection until he sold it on a few years ago. It is very much in the traditional Mallorcan finca architectural style and was also very nice. It's key feature though is that it sits in the middle of the valley in Valldemossa which is an absolutely beautiful part of Mallorca. However the downsides were that the ceremony for the wedding would take place on the lawn which was next to the main road that comes through he centre of Valldemossa. I do not mean a serious main road but there were cars regularly going up and down it whilst we were stood there which really ruined the tranquility. Also it is the hotel that Michael Douglas stayed in regularly before he bought his place there and as a result this seems to be a good enough reason to charge an extortionate amount of money for a room to stay in that to be honest was very average. Our final stop was the hospes Maricel. This was a nice hotel and i believe it has been recently used in a Stella Artois advert. It sits in a small bay overlooking turquoise waters, but what you don't see from the advert is that the bay is rather built up and whilst the hotel itself is nice the tower block that sits a few doors along and obscures the view is not so nice.
In the end we decided upon Cap Rocat, the first venue we went and saw. It was just perfect in every way. We didn't go for exclusive use as that would have meant hiring all the rooms which would have been extortionate, but the place is so quiet you hardly ever see another person anyway. Despite that it still wasn't going to be cheap as it was the second most expensive of the four we looked at (second to the La Residencia), but it surpassed the other venues in every way possible. The biggest downside to Cap Rocat was that it didn't include any of the supplies for the wedding outside of the venue, food and drink, which meant we had to decorate it including the chairs for the ceremony and the dinner. They do have chairs themselves but they are big brown leather chairs which are not really ideal for weddings. We therefore had to make a decision as to whether to get a wedding planner to help us with the planning or whether to do it ourselves. We decided to meet with a wedding planner and see if we felt they would be of use. The lady we met with who seems to be the go to to lady for most people on the island, talked through what she did for her money and we felt that she did not really offer much more than we could have done ourselves given that we were planning to have the wedding in a year. She also didn't once look at my wife to be during the conversation and tried to discuss everything with me which was the real deciding factor. We therefore decided to go it alone using Google and the recommendations of Cap Rocat, along with Skype to actual meet/interview the potential suppliers.
Over the next few months we decided on the following suppliers and their services:
Hair and makeup - Linda Clarin - Linda provided the hair and makeup and for my wife and our bridesmaids. Unfortunately when we went over to Mallorca a few months before the wedding for my wife to have a trial Linda was ill due to morning sickness. As a result we did look at other hair and makeup specialists but Linda was very apologetic and came back with a price that we could not refuse. We arrived in Mallorca a week before the wedding and Linda did the trial a day after we arrived. My wife had already been on email with Linda confirming what she wanted done and linda had said she could do it. On the day my wife looked absolutely amazing and her hair and makeup was perfect in every way.
Evening music - DJ Bono Solera - DJ Bono was recommended to us by Cap Rocat. He has a fairly extensive CV and whilst he wasn't the cheapest nothing seemed impossible with him. I had arranged a comedian for the night as a surprise for my wife and as such we needed a stage erected in the the dining room along with the a PA system and lighting for the comedian and for the speeches which he did at no extra charge. On our invites we asked our guests to select a song a that they would like played at the reception and Bono was more than happy to accommodate this. We therefore sent him the list along with some choices of our own and our first dance song, a couple of weeks before the big day and he ensured they were played. We also asked him to play quite a mixture of music from the 70's up until modern day which he did. His whole setup was very impressive. He also met us at the venue a few days before just to run through everything with us which helped put our minds at ease.
Celebrant - Annie Verrinder - We found Annie after much searching on line. We had to have legal ceremony in the UK which we did very low key with a couple of friends as witnesses as we wanted to make the wedding day in Mallorca our big day. As we are not religious we therefore decided to go with a celebrant. Annie was great. She had loads of different vow options for us as we decided against writing our own and was able to offer all sorts of passages that could be read. She also provided a mock wedding certificate for us to sign in on the day in front of our guests, which was great for photos. She also offers all sorts of extras to make the day that bit more special. We opted for the wine add on where by my wife and I nailed a box shut containing two glasses, a bottle of wine and a letter each we had written to one another all to be opened drunk and read on our 10th wedding anniversary, which was a really nice touch and made the ceremony that little bit different. Annie also provided the PA system for the ceremony for a small extra charge which was handy.
Photographer - Aimee K - Aimee was recommended to us by Annie after we had searched high and low for a reasonably priced good photographer. Mallorca seems to have no end of photographers but many of them charge a ridiculous amount of money. One even quoted £3000 plus the cost of an album on top of that. Aimee was very reasonably priced with a clear pricing structure for different offerings. In the end we had her for 9 hours and we also had a videographer there as well to film the ceremony, speeches and comedian. A friend of ours recommended doing the video as the day flies by and would be a great memory of the day. He was right and we would definitely recommend having a video of the day. We are yet to see the results but we have seen some of AImee's work previously and we are therefore sure the photos will be great.
Transport - ROIG Transport (Sally Woodcock) - We decided to offer transport to Cap Rocat for our guests as an option on the wedding invitations. In the end just under half our guests accepted and the mini coach had 5 pick ups along the way from hotels in Playa DePalma and S'Arenal. We planned the pickups and the timings and provided them to Sally and her team who did a perfect job. Leading up to the wedding my wife and i stayed in a villa in Llucmajor and i left there the day before the wedding with all our luggage and went to stay at another hotel. Then on the day of the wedding I went to Cap Rocat to get ready and my wife got ready with all the bridesmaids who stayed at the villa with her the night before. Sally and her team therefore provided transport from our villa that was very remote and hard to find to the venue for my wife, her bridesmaids and her mum who joined her at the villa on the day. Sally provided two black S Class Mercedes with drivers which were immaculate and on time. We did consider something more vintage but as we were staying at Cap Rocat following the wedding and the reception was there also, no one else would have seen the cars and therefore we opted for something cheaper but still high end, hence the two S Class Mercedes. Had we have wanted vintage we would have gone with Sacha from Event Balear, who we originally contacted before he put us contact with Sally at ROIG. Sacha has a great selection of cars from various eras at his disposal.
Cakes - Sweet Design Cakes Mallorca (Hajni Polotas) - Cakes can obviously be quite expensive especially in the UK. However we found Hajni to be very reasonably priced. She met us earlier in the year when we visited Mallorca to do various bits and have our menu tasting at Cap Rocat and she too provided us with various cakes to taste. She offers so many sponges, fillings and toppings and to make things a bit more difficult my wife is coeliac and therefore she needed a separate cake without gluten which Hajni was more than able to do. In the end we went with cup cakes and cutting cake at the top of the stand. The only observation I would make is that Hajni provided us with a cake stand that we then had to return after the big day. We didn't realise this at the time, but if we had we would have paid extra to just keep the stand and throw it away rather than have to take it back to here.
Furnishing, decorations and flowers - Ars Festum (Nadja and Sara) - Ars Festum were recommended to us by cap Rocat. We did speak to some other suppliers but none them were able to offer everything that Ars Festum were able to offer. They provided chairs for the ceremony and dinner, a carpet for the aisle, flowers for the bride, bridesmaids, groomsmen, ceremony and dinner, easels for the table plans, outdoor furniture and parasols for the pre dinner cocktails and candle decorations for the night club part in the old bunker at Cap Rocat. All in all we spent about £4,000 on this but we could have easily spent more. We did not realise quite how much this piece was going to cost and had not really budgeted for all these extras (except the flowers) as venues normally have a lot of these things already. Nadja and her team were excellent though and everything they did was done to perfection on the day. They were also very patient with us when we were constantly changing our quote with them prior to the day.
String quartet - Flower Quartet (Cuarteto Flor is their official name in Spanish), Beth Super and her team - We decided on a string quartet for the ceremony and found the flower quartet on line after much searching. Beth was great at getting back to us and her pricing options were straight forward. They have a wide range of music available from old to new and they worked well with our celebrant Annie to make sure they played at all the right times.
Comedian - Paul McCaffery (Avalon) - I decided early on that I wanted to give my wife a surprise present on the day of the wedding and that I wanted it to be a memory for her and our guests to enjoy as opposed to a physical item. I therefore decided to have her favourite comedian flown over to perform a 20 minute set at the end of the speeches. i arranged everything though Paul's agent Avalon and they were very easy to deal with. Paul was great and actually ended up doing about 35 minutes and had everyone in hysterics. He also stayed on with the guests until the end of the night which was really cool. If you are a groom looking for something a bit different as a wedding surprise I would definitely recommend a comedian
Get to know you dinner - Nimos - We had 52 people at our wedding and many of them didn't know each other. We have been to a few weddings before and people just tend to stick with the people they know and no one gets to know one another. As a lot of our guests were staying near to each other and were treating the trip as a holiday, we thought we would organise a get to know you dinner so that on the wedding day it made it more enjoyable for everyone. We therefore came across Nimos, a restaurant that specialises in Paella. They ere able to offer a 3 course meal with some wine and soft drinks for 30 euros a head which we had agreed in our invites would be paid for by the guests themselves if they chose to come to the get to know you dinner. 45 of our guests came to it and it was a real success with everyone enjoying themselves and the food was good too. We had our own private room and the staff were very accommodating for various peoples dietary requirements. We would definitely recommend Nimos for large parties and we would definitely recommend doing a get to know you dinner for your guests, especially if you have single people travelling on their own to your wedding who do not know anyone else. Furthermore when I proposed to my wife I did so in private whilst on holiday just the two of us. She therefore never got a grand proposal and we bought the ring together whilst on holiday. The ring over the last couple of years has not been great and discoloured a bit as well. It was meant to be white gold but has slowly turned yellow. That will teach me to buy jewellery in Egypt! Anyway I bought her a new ring and the get to know you dinner gave me the chance to re-propose to her and give her the grand proposal she had always dreamed of, which was really cool. It also gave me the chance to stand in front of everyone and do a mini-speech in preparation for my speech on the wedding day.
Wedding Favours - We used a company called Fantastic to create some personalised fans for our guests and put them in boxes with organza ribbons around them, which the two youngest ushers gave out to our guests on arrival at Cap Rocat. This was a great idea as it was 34 degrees on the day. The fans were quite light and did not take up too much space which meant we could bring them over in our luggage. We also bought some glass jars off the web and some personalised stickers which we stuck to the lids and then filled the jars with jelly beans which we brought over there with us.
The villa - Casa Rana - Owners Direct. Aside from Cap Rocat costing anything from 500 euros a night up to about 1900 euros a night for the Suite Del Mar that we stayed in making it only affordable on top of all the other costs for a short period of time, we also did not want to stay there prior to our wedding night making it just that little bit more special. We therefore decided to stay in a villa for our first 7 nights. We found Casa Rana on owners direct and we have to say it was the most beautiful villa that was more like a home than a villa. We hired for the 2 of us but it can sleep up to 6 (soon to be 8) and is just amazing. We would definitely recommend this villa even just for a lovely holiday but definitely for a lead up to a wedding. It has loads of space and plenty of areas to entertain.
Cap Rocat - The Day - We started the ceremony at 17.15 inside as opposed to out due to the heat. But the room we got married in was beautiful and air conditioned! We then had the cocktail reception on the roof with canapés from 18.50 to 19.45 whilst group photos were being done. 19.45 was the dinner in the barn structure on the roof of Cap Rocat looking out across the bay of Palma. 21.45 was the speeches. 22.15 was the comedian and then at 23.00 we moved down to the bunker for the cutting of the cake, the first dance and the disco until 4am. We had a three course meal for the dinner, more food served in the bunker at about 1am and all the drinks were included on a per person per hour basis from when the guests arrived to when they left which meant we had no surprise bar bills at the end of the night as we have already paid the worse case scenario prior to the day, so we actually got some money back at the end of the wedding which helped pay for our food bill that the two of us racked up over the following 4 days that we were in Cap Rocat following the wedding. Everything just went perfectly and all without a wedding planner. Above all my wife looked so beautiful.
Other suppliers we used, A Suit That Fits for my suit, White Mischief in Sussex for my wife's dress, Proposals in Chichester for the Bridesmaids dresses and a suit direct for the groomsmen's outfits which they bought as opposed to rented given the amount of time we were away for. The groomsmen wore just trousers, a shirt and a waistcoat which was ideal for them given the heat. Chaps, if you are considering a three piece suit for your wedding in Mallorca make sure you aren't getting married there in August when it is 30+ degrees - I learnt this the sweaty hard way!
Also if you are flying to Mallorca pay the extra and go club class with British Airways. It will double the flight costs but you get access to the lounges and you get loads more luggage allowance which will really help with bringing any extras such as wedding favours over. Each person gets 2 x 32kg hold bags and 1 x 23kg hand luggage bag plus a handbag or laptop case. Also they were really good about my suit and let me take that on and hang in the captains wardrobe on the plane. My wife had her dress in her hand luggage bag which the bridal shop had specially folded it into for her so that it did not crease. She too could have put it in the wardrobe but did not want me to see the dress or even the shape of it.
Another thing to bear in mind is that you should make sure that any groomsmen or bridesmaids also put their outfits in their hand luggage bag. That way if their luggage gets lost their outfit doesn't.
Also make sure you send the invites to the wedding out a year in advance to give everyone time to make travel arrangements and get good deals and help them out by giving them as much info on areas to stay in and travel companies to use within your invite.
Finally we would definitely recommend all the suppliers we used and Cap Rocat as a venue and a hotel to stay in was amazing in every way. You will feel like a King and Queen whilst you are there and their food and service is second to none.
Overall or wedding including all our planning cost about £40,000 and we had 52 people, so way more than we had expected/saved (almost double) and more than it would have cost in the UK, but it was amazing and everyone had a holiday at the same time so we got to spend more than just a day with our guests. Also all our guests were people we wanted there as opposed to original 100-150 people many of whom we had to invite and pay for despite being that fussed about them being there. All in all it was a big thing to organise, especially because it was abroad, but it was amazing and well worth it. We wouldn't change a thing. The one bit of advice we would add is don't get hung up over the smaller details because on the day people do not notice. We spent weeks deciding on what sashes to have on the chairs in the ceremony and in the end went with none to save on money. Did anyone notice? Of course not because they were fixated on my wife.
So what now given that we haven't got a massive event to organise any more. Well now we sit back and look forward to our honeymoon!!! (and working for the rest of our lives to pay for the wedding)
I hope this extremely long post helps anyone looking to plan a wedding in Mallorca. If there is anything we can give guidance or advice on please feel free to ask.
Thanks,
