Wedding abroad

Hi Brooke!

I’m getting married in Italy this May 2024! We booked the venue around Feb 2023 so a bit more than a year in advance but if you know you want to get married in Italy I would look as soon as possible. We were surprised how far in advance some venues were already booked which meant that we missed out on some lovely places.

We haven’t used a wedding planner as our venue provides all the food, drinks and accommodation so we thought that covered a lot. We found the band and the photographers ourselves and I’m in the process of finding a florist (I’m finding this the trickiest). We are sort of using a planner but only for support to get legally married there so she is our translator and dealing with the Italian authorities.
We also chose not to use a planner in order to save money (when I made some enquiries I was astounded by the expense!) and we had a friend who got married in Italy in 2023 and he said his planner only created more stress.
That said my wedding is still a few months away so it could end up being a disaster haha
Good luck and let me know if you have any other specific questions!

View quoted message Hi Alexandra,
Thank you so much! Did you fly out to Italy and view venues?

I’m sure your wedding will be lovely 💕 good luck xxx

You’re welcome! And we actually paid the deposit before we flew out to see our venue. In hindsight I wish we had done a trip to look at a few places and enjoyed it more but we felt quite pushed to make a decision quickly as we were finding places were already booked up. But I made lots of enquiries (probably 30 or more), asked a lot of questions and saw a lot of pictures so I felt confident with our choice without having seen it in person first.


In terms of other vendors we hired the photographer in September, the planner for the legal ceremony in October and the band in November. Fortunately with our enquiries for those no one responded that they were already booked so it seems like that’s far enough in advance at least for our date in early May. If you’re wanting to get legally married there it’s best to start the process 6 months before the date.

Hey! So lovely to virtually meet you.

We're also planning Italy for 2026 (around April or May).

We've had really mixed reactions to be honest. Some venues won't provide the information for 2026 until at least the end of this year as a minimum (some are saying not until 12 months before), whereas others are pretty set in the pricing and are happy to start considering weddings in 2+ years time.

I'm not entirely convinced on a wedding planner, as Alexandra above said, a lot of the venues come with packages of some description (I've also heard mixed reactions to planners too, and as someone who works in events for a living, I'm not sure I could cope lol). It really depends on your budget and guest numbers I suppose. We're only planning to have 4 guests, and having a larger reception/do back here in the UK afterwards, so I didn't feel it would have been worth the extra cost for the sake of so few people.

Good luck, and have fun planning!!! x

If you are only having 4 guests a wedding planner might be an expense you could do without. I would recommend (I have a travel business) trying to book everything yourself if you can - contact me if you'd like any tips!