Tips and suggestions for weddings abroad

From someone who's been to a wedding abroad I have one piece of advice.
Pick somewhere where it is relatively easy and cheap to get to.
Flying into somewhere and then having to drive for 3 hours through rush hour traffic takes the fun out of the experience.
Somewhere with an airport nearby and the ability to book cheap flights in advance is ideal.

Tell your guests you do not want them to give you any gift - weddings abroad should by default mean no gifts are given as it is so bloody expensive to attend one.

Do not tell guests that you are telling them in advance so that they can save up - tell them in advance but do not suggest saving. I've heard of so many self-absorbed bride and grooms expecting people to attend since they've been given 12 months notice "because they had that long to save". People should not be told to save up for someone else's wedding - they have far more important things to be spending their money on.

Expect some people to decline and don't get personally offended.

By the way, you cannot get married in France unless you have lived there for at least 30 days previously or something.

I got married abroad (not Italy so can't help specifically).

I agree on giving people plenty of notice but not putting pressure on them, and also expecting that there will be some who can't go due to numerous reasons financial and otherwise (pregnancies, no work holidays etc).
We thought ours would be quite small but ended up with 80. Once we sat down and did the list we were surprised at the numbers who wanted to go (but were delighted). It was probably more celtic tiger times, and we were the first of our friends to get married so friends weren't fed up of weddings yet We both have large families too.

I also agree with making it somewhere thats easy to get to. Where we were had about 4/5 flights per day in and out with Ryanair and Aer Lingus so there was plenty of choice for people, and then for accommodation there was everything from hostels to 5 star hotels. The flights meant people could come for 2 days or 7 days depending on what they wanted. I did up an accommodation list with a few details to put in with Save the Dates but didn't get involved with actually booking accommodation or flights for people - you'll have enough to think about the few days before the wedding without having people onto you about problems with booking or their accommodations etc.

I would be very much in favour of visiting wherever you decide on before booking anything. We saw a few places on our booking visit that looked fab online but were awful in real life. Try get a good recommended planner too. Ours was great - took all the stress out of the day and the build up. She was great for getting all the paperwork sorted too.

Finally take into account the time of year...... the middle of summer may be way too hot in some European places, and may be really expensive for guests.

sun_seeker wrote: »

Sillysocks do you mind sharing where this was? I would really like somewhere with a few flights per week so that there are lots of options available to everyone. I also need to keep in mind that for my family and friends Shannon or Cork airport would be the closest, whereas it would be Dublin for his side.

Our venue was near Malaga - we also had some people using Shannon, and the flights from Malaga even in low season are really frequent. From Dublin there's usually 2/3 options per day at least depending on the time of year, and a few a week from Dublin. Our guests really made use of that - some only came for a weekend, some for 2 weeks and made it a holiday, but I know if we'd only had even say 2 flights a week where we were it would have cut down on our numbers as not everyone wanted to use up too many work holidays (understandably!)