So now that our location had been chosen, I had a pretty daunting task before me: find a castle on a beach in Spain which we could afford to get married in. No problem, right? Riiiight.
Some words of advice on planning a destination wedding halfway around the world, in a country you’ve never seen, in a language you don’t speak, without the help of a wedding planner or a travel agent: 1) Breathe deeply. Keep breathing. This is a very important step. 2) Prepare to become one with the internets. 3) Understand that the time difference between wherever you are and wherever the people you are communicating with are is not the 7 hours (or whatever) you thought it was. It is really 7 hours plus two weeks. REALLY. So remember tip #1? Keep breathing. And add two weeks onto whatever the appropriate response time is. 4) It is ok to scream at your computer. Loudly and often. I promise – it helps. Just try not to throw it at anything; you’re going to need those internets again.
Before I walk you through my own equally exhilarating and infuriating planning process, let me present you with the guide I wish I’d had beforehand:
How To Plan A Destination Wedding (by a Proud yet Haggard Survivor)
Step 1: Pick your location. As in, the country and general vicinity of the wedding. If you already know exactly where you want to get married, that’s great. But all you need to know right now is approximately where, geographically, you will tie the knot.
Step 2: Pick the date(s). The more flexible you can be, the better, because this is going to be the hard part. No matter what date you pick, someone is going to have a conflict. And the more people there are on your “must be present” list, the harder the date part will be. We started with Spain in July-September, with mid-August as the preference.
Step 3: Now comes the tricky part. Make a list of the people who must be at your wedding. The shorter this list is, the easier your planning will be, so choose wisely (or develop the patience of a saint and the organizational skills of a circus stage manager). That cousin you haven’t talked to in two years? Not on the list. Your girlfriend’s best friend from high school that she only hears from once every other Christmas? Not on the list. The list should only be the people you would not emotionally be able to get married without. It’s possible that your list only includes you and your fiancé/e. If so, congratulations! Your planning process is going to be so. much. easier. than mine.
Step 4: Go talk to everyone on that list – figure out if they will be able to come, and then map out which dates in your spectrum of possibility will work for everybody. If any of them cannot come, you have a decision to make: scrap the destination plans, or scrap them from the must-have list. But the more notice you give, the better the odds that everyone can make the trip AND agree on a communally accepted date. (Considering most of our friends are young and fairly broke, and quite a few of them are in grueling time-and-money-consuming grad school programs, we started talking to them about Spain 16 months before the wedding, and sent out unofficial STD’s with budget information one year ahead – waaaaaaaaay earlier than etiquette sites will tell you you’re “supposed” to notify guests.)
Step 5: Once you’ve checked in with your group of must-have’s and agreed on a date range, you’re ready to start figuring out specifics. Before you start sourcing locations, work out a rough budget of what your guests can afford. It’s no fun setting your heart on some amazing, totally remote location, only to realize that no one can come because they can’t afford the rooms, and there aren’t any cheaper alternatives nearby! (Trust me, we did this. No Fun.) When you do end up finding your dream site, make sure there are accommodation options for every price range on your guest budget list. Your family and friends are flying around the world for you; it’s the least you can do to figure out the details for them.
Step 6: If you don’t speak the language of wherever your destination is, find a friend who does. If you don’t know anyone with the requisite language skills, go put an ad in the paper and trade services for a new friend (“will wedding plan for translation skills!”) Or, perhaps more realistically, find an online buddy in a language exchange program who is willing to occasionally translate for you. Google translate works really well for certain languages, and hardly at all for others. If you’re using a wedding planner, you have a built-in support system. (Your w.p. should definitely be experienced in planning weddings in the country/region you’ve chosen. Otherwise you may as well be doing it yourself.) But there are few things as frustrating as sending the same e-mail over and over without getting a clear response, especially as reservation deadlines are whooshing by. It will bring you to tears.
Step 7: Know that even after you’ve carefully confirmed your list of must-have guests, checked and triple-checked all of your plans with them, and performed a fandango to accommodate everyone’s needs, people will still cancel. Some will cancel because of genuine unforeseeable circumstances – the loss of a job, a family emergency, an unavoidable conflict. Others will just flake out – not plan ahead, not purchase tickets in time, forget to save, and then all of a sudden realize they can’t afford to go. (If you managed to plan a destination wedding and not have this happen, I salute you. I am equal parts shocked and jealous.) Our friends and family are pretty wonderful and amazing, as people go, but some will still flake. Just accept it, and let it go. Try not to let their absence affect either the wedding, or your friendship. Chris and I have decided that, at the end of it all, the only two people who really have to be present are her and me. If we have to, we can marry ourselves. Anyone else who is able to come is just an extra blessing.
Next post: Planning a Destination Wedding, Part 2: Virtual Site Visits and the Wonders of Google
Congrats on doing this kind of planning! It’s rough, eh? I’m having similar problems with honeymoon booking but thank god one of my good friends lives in south america and speaks Spanish and Portuguese fluently, so we’ve had some help. But there has still been a lot of ‘reading’ Spanish-only websites and guessing when and where we will want to end up based on very crappy travel forum posts. So I salute your efforts to get all of that together for more than just the two of you and add on the whole actual wedding planning as well. I’m sure it’ll turn out beautifully!