Wedding planning

[OnHisSweaterAlreadyMomsSpaghetti]

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Can anyone tell me tips or where to start with planning a small wedding abroad? We are thinking either France (the south) or a Greek island.

I believe we have to do the legal marriage in the uk which is fine.

but I have absolutely no idea where to start

we need somewhere with accommodation as we are paying accommodation for our guests too.

any help is appreciated!

You don’t have to do the legal wedding in the UK first if you don’t want to, many tour operators do full wedding packages, which includes helping you manage the legal requirements in your chosen country. Tui definitely used to do have this, might be worth checking a few websites.

I would say think who you need to have at your wedding to be happy and consider covering their flights and accommodation. Assume everyone else will decline and then just be happy if they don’t.

Thanks! I didn’t know TUI did this so will have a look!

yes we are covering all costs for our guests (well flights and accommodation/food).
thank you! :)

South of France…. Count me in as your photographer 😁

In France you won't be able to have a legal wedding unless one of you is french national or resident. And even then, it was such a faff to get the paperwork sorted that we decided to have the legal marriage in the UK.

But we organised our wedding in France with a secular ceremony. I'm sure you can find locations that specialise in international weddings and will have everything sorted for you, but most venues in France will only provide the venue and you'll have to sort everything else yourself. It's a lot of work, and requires to go on site many times, so we got a wedding planner to help after we had confirmed the venue. We got someone local, who did all the visits for us and knew the suppliers very well.
Overall it was the right choice for us I think. It did cost a lot more than if we had done it ourselves (probably 30-40% more) because they had selected very high quality suppliers. The fees themselves were reasonable I thought.

So for France, my advice would be to identify a venue, if possible go there and view/book it yourself, and then find someone to sort everything else.
Or identify a region and then find someone to sort out the venue and everything else.

Note that we found the venue 12 months before the wedding and found it a bit tight to book everything on time. I think with 18+ months we would have had more choices as quite a few suppliers we booked up.