Destination wedding planning: your 3 key team members

Once you’ve settled on a destination wedding, you’ll probably be feeling two things: excitement, and panic.

We got married in Tuscany, Italy. Along with “holy crap, we’re getting married in Italy!”, we were also thinking, “holy crap, how are we going to plan an entire wedding in Italy from our couch in Toronto, Canada????”

And we’ve found the answer to be: find yourself a great team.

It’s stressful planning a wedding. It can be stressful planning for travel. Imagine planning a wedding, where you have to travel. (Be sure to read our pros and cons to having a destination wedding.) No matter how you spin it, planning a destination wedding is not great for Type A people (*shifty eye emoji* here). You are basically making a series of very expensive decisions without really knowing whether it is going to work out. You have much less control of everything that happens, and cannot do it by yourself. Even if you are lucky enough to be able to visit the destination ahead of the wedding, there is bound to be a good portion of the day that needs to be arranged by somebody else in your stead. It requires a good deal of trust, and a sprinkle of luck.

When you find a good team, pulling off a dream destination wedding will seem 100% manageable (if not entirely stress-free, then with significantly less stress), and 100% worth the effort.

Your 3 key destination wedding team members

1. Your wedding photographer

2. Your venue/accommodations manager/owner

3. Your wedding planner

What to look for when hiring your destination wedding team

Someone who has experience with destination weddings

I cannot stress this enough. You want to have an authentic experience, but you also want to capture the highlights of your destination. Your wedding day is also not the time for unexpected surprises! Someone experienced in destination weddings can help your wedding run smoothly. They can also make sure you have taken care of all the details as “a foreigner”.

For example, if you’re getting married in Rome, you might be taking wedding photos in front of the Colosseum. If your wedding is in Florence, your photographer will find ways to sneak the domes of the Duomo into your photos. It might seem touristy, but you do want to showcase where you had your destination wedding! As a caterer, you want your menu to include local specialities and traditions. However, you don’t want the meal to be so extreme that it becomes jarring for your guests. If you’re having a legal wedding, you want to make sure your wedding planner is familiar with all the paperwork and timeline required to push everything through.

Someone who is well connected to the local wedding industry

This is true for a wedding anywhere, but it’s doubly important when you are relying on them to hire the right people and make the right arrangements. For example, your photographer or your planner will be the one arranging for hair and makeup. Your planner may be the one arranging musicians and hiring florists. Is your venue used to catering for weddings?

When browsing their website/portfolio, it’s always a good sign when they acknowledge other vendors. Look for photographers have collaborated with different people in the industry.

Someone who speaks fluent English (or your preferred language)

This might seem counter-intuitive if you are getting married abroad. But you will be communicating with these people via phone or email over the course of an entire year or more. The last thing you want is for the details to get lost in translation. We initially were looking at a villa and church owned by someone who was predominantly Italian speaking. Even though we ultimately chose another property that was a better fit for us, we found it challenging to communicate our plan and what we were looking for.

(And this is also where someone familiar with couples from abroad comes in. Our wedding planner was then able to very explicitly explain that churches in Italy used for blessing that are not Roman Catholic need to be non-consecrated.)

And of course, as with anyone you hire, you want to make sure the people helping plan your wedding are easy (and hopefully fun!) to work with, responsive, and receptive to your ideas.

Don’t be afraid to reach out to a a few different people. It is better to learn early on if someone is not a good fit or not what you are looking for, than later when you have already committed or signed a contract.

Your destination wedding photographer

The first person we hired was our wedding photographer.

This really depends on where you are getting married. (Eg. for a Caribbean beach wedding, you would typically select a resort first, who can then contract out a photographer.) However, if you are getting married at a destination where you need to put together your own wedding, finding a wedding photographer may be the easiest initial decision to make.

For example, the first thing we did when we were planning our wedding was to search “Italian wedding photography”. This gave us a ton of inspiration of what we wanted our wedding to look like, but also gave us a visual smorgasbord of different photography styles. We simply reached out to the photographer we were most drawn to. For us, it was intimate wedding photos that also captured the essence of Italy’s charm and beauty.

Looking at wedding photographer portfolios can also help you narrow down your venue. Our photographer had done weddings all over Italy – from Tuscany to Lake Como to the Amalfi coast to large cities like Rome and Florence. There were weddings in castle courtyards and little medieval towns. You can put together your destination wedding almost just by looking at photos of other weddings!

Tips for finding a good destination wedding photographer

Style is one thing, but a good destination wedding photographer can really make your wedding.

A good destination wedding photographer should be actively involved in your wedding planning, as opposed to simply showing up to take photos. Ours helped plan the day, so we could figure out when to sneak away for photos, and when to get the best lighting. He was even able to tell us ahead of time what he expected the lighting to be like during our ceremony (midday and partially shaded, so not great :P).

Our photographer also had his own connections to wedding planners, florists, hair and makeup stylists – not to mention had a list of wedding-friendly venues for all the main Italian locations. In retrospect, we recommend you recruit your photographer to hire your hair and makeup personnel. For a photographer experienced in weddings and styled wedding shoots, they will have a pretty solid list of people who will make you look good on your wedding day!

It’s also important to select a photographer who is intimately familiar with your area. Our photographer – already Tuscany-based – drove to our wedding venue before the wedding and explored the surroundings. During our wedding day, he knew exactly where to take us and what elements he wanted to visually incorporate into the photos.

Your wedding venue/accommodations manager/owner

Let me tell you, for a destination wedding, it is SO much easier if you have your ceremony and reception where you and your guests are staying.

If you are having a religious ceremony, these would obviously be held off-site. If you are having a legal wedding, you may need to head into your local town hall. However, for couples having a symbolic ceremony, the best “package” is to find a resort, hotel, or villa that can host a ceremony on the grounds and have the reception on site. The less moving pieces you have for your destination wedding the easier it will be to plan, and the smoother things will go the day of. Think about having to arrange transportation for your guests from place to place, or what your guests are going to do when you are off taking photos!

We found that finding a venue was the hardest piece in planning a destination wedding, as we couldn’t see what the space physically looked like. We relied heavily on photos from other weddings and travel websites.

However, once we did secure our venue, the manager/owner took care of everything that needed to happen on site. This included arranging the ceremony space, catering for the aperitif and the entire reception (including cake), and organizing accommodations for us and our guests. He worked with our wedding planner to make sure all the details were in place (eg. to set up the sound system.)

Tips for finding a good wedding venue

This is so tricky, because there is so much choice! In the end, it will really come down to location, size of your wedding party, and cost. You want to make sure the venue you are getting married in is the right vibe, and encompasses why you chose to have a destination wedding in the first place. For us, it was a small villa that used to be a medieval village in the Tuscan countryside. You want to make sure everyone attending your wedding has a place to stay. Our villa had “apartments”, so we had multiple families or couples who already knew each other stay in the same apartments. And of course, cost. We were young professionals when we were married, and had a budget!

You want to make sure there are multiple places on site that could accommodate a ceremony, to give you more options. There should be an indoor space available as well, in case of poor weather. This also goes for your reception – ideally, you want options for an outdoor space, and an indoor space.

If you are having your wedding at a resort or hotel, look for places with good food reviews! (It’s hard to go wrong with Italian food, but we still rave about our reception meal years later!)

Your destination wedding planner

It might be surprising to see that the wedding planner is not the first person we hired on our list. We feel when having a destination wedding, it’s important to nail down the big picture – the location, and the vibe.

Your destination wedding planner is all about the details. Our planner was the last person we secured for our “team”, and actually, had switched once early in the process. (Not due to any conflict of our own, but a prior issue between our other wedding team members.) The wedding planner can help arrange your other vendors, such as florists and musicians. They work with you to achieve your vision. Lanterns or candles at the reception? They’ll figure it out. String lights for evening? They’re on it. Traditional Italian candied almonds for favours? They’ll send you a list. Your wedding planner will be on hand during your wedding day, to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Tips on findings a good destination wedding planner

We feel it’s particularly important to find a wedding planner who is proficient or specializes in destination weddings. As we said above, there are many elements of a destination wedding that need a bit of a different approach from a traditional wedding. Your planner needs to be familiar with the legalities of getting married as “foreigners”. They need to be ready to accept packages that arrive from all over the place for the wedding. They need to be comfortable with managing a wedding day without a rehearsal run. The entire wedding planning timeline may need to be shifted earlier to accommodate travel arrangements. There are so many aspects a destination wedding a planner can help navigate.

Of everyone, your wedding planner should be the one you have the best rapport with, and communicate with most often. Therefore, make sure you choose one you feel comfortable with, and enjoy working with! We were lucky that our wedding planner actually had a trip planned to Toronto. We were able to meet with her in our own country before the wedding!

Additional wedding team members

You will be able to pull off a phenomenal wedding if you have a helpful venue manager, a keen wedding planner, and a good photographer who is actively involved.

Another member of your wedding team you will need to consider is finding an officiant to preside over your wedding. They have a relatively small roll in your planning process, so they can be factored later in your wedding plans. Your planner should also be able to connect you to one.

While planning a destination wedding, you may want to recruit some of your guests to help out ahead of time. Some of your guests who have cars may have to help pick up those who don’t. Some guests can help with decor – since you won’t be able to do much ahead of time. We had family members bring some of the things we needed for our wedding (eg. teacups for our Chinese tea ceremony), so we could free up some space in our luggage.

Are you planning a destination wedding? Give us a shout – we’re always happy to share our experience!