How far in advance?

Hi Amy,

Congratulations!

I got married 3 weeks ago in Santorini, and happy to share my experience planning Greek wedding!

I started contacting wedding planners on the island, as well as doing my own venue research around March of 2019. Late April we have decided on wedding planner that we wish to book and we travelled to Santorini in May 2019 to meet the planners as well as visit the venues that we have shortlisted (about 6 in total). We also wanted to see the island (as we never visited before) just to make sure there are things to see and do, as most of guests will be staying few days and not only coming to the wedding. Our wedding planner picked us up from the hotel and drove us around the island to see all the venues, Santorini is a small island, so that took less than half day. After visiting all the venues we have shortlisted 2 of them and agreed we will decide by the end of the month and get date booked in. So, at the end of May 2019 we booked 4th July 2020, just a little more than year in advance. We have sent save the date year in advance so guests could make all arrangements and take advantage of lower prices, rather than booking last minute. We didn't do much more planning apart from having secured the date and venue, until November 2019. Our planner explained that they usually concentrate on weddings taking place in that year and after the current wedding season is done (in Santorini this is from April till late October) they are starting to plan for next year. So for us around 8 months in advance we started planning things like cake, flowers, order of the day, musicians etc. Most wedding planners will have different packages to choose from depending on what you want on the day and they will book all suppliers including Dj, musicians, photographer, make up artists etc. At about 8 months to go they only thing you will need to focus on is legal paperwork as this may take a while to sort out/legalize/translate.
After most of our wedding planning was done in March 2020 we all now what happened! Long story short we have decided in May 2020 to postpone till 5th July 2021. No more planning took place in 2020 we reassumed in April 2021. We kept most of our planning unchanged from what we did so far and added few more bits before getting married in July 2021!

I hope this explains a bit how wedding planning goes in Greece. I personally think 3 or 4 years in advance is a bit soon. However that shouldn't stop you from choosing wedding planner, venue and date. Most of actual planning will probably take 12-8 months in advance, with quite a bit of things being sorted quite last minute in wedding world of course! (like 4-2 months ahead)
There are couple of reasons for this and things for you to take into account:
- most airlines will only allow you to book flights up to a year in advance
- most hotels in Greek islands, such as Santorini are smaller/boutique hotels and only confirms their prices for new season around 9 months in advance and only then you can book your accommodation
- a lot of suppliers don't actually live on the islands full time, some of them will be coming from mainland only for wedding season or they will choose to go to different island instead therefore they don't always take bookings way in advance. For example our photographer was from Corfu but decided to come to Santorini for 2021 season as it was more busy with weddings, same with make up artist who lived in mainland full time and only decides where to go just before season starts depending on demand
- your budget can change due to... well life !
- same with your guests their circumstances can also change and realistically most of them will only confirm few months in advance if they will be able to travel. For example 2 of my friends had a baby during the lockdown and they were no longer able to come in 2021 despite RSVP in 2020

I hope me sharing my experience helped a bit, hope you will have fun planning your wedding and I can assure that you will not regret your Greek wedding. It will be stunting and you will have lovely photos to look at for the rest of your life

Good luck!