DESTINATION DECISION

As Italy holds a special place in our hearts, we thought where else better to celebrate the wedding but in the same country where we got engaged! We went over to Italy to meet our wedding planner, Emma, who showed us five different possible wedding venues. We hadn't yet signed up with the wedding planner but this was part of the service. It offered us the chance to meet with Emma to decide if we liked her planning style and think 'yes we know she can do a good job planning our wedding'. The initial trip also enabled us to see the wedding destinations in person, which is vital, as you can really envision your wedding at the venues, rather than deciding over limited photos on the internet. We finally decided on having the wedding at an amazing hotel in Ravello, called 'Villa Cimbrone'.

CHALLENGES

We think one of the biggest challenges was to make sure as many of our friends and family could go to the wedding as possible. Our friends and family are important to us, having a wedding abroad does make it harder for people to attend so we made sure that we did as much preparation as possible before the wedding to make it easier for people to organize their trip.

Having a wedding website to describe how we met and details of where the wedding would be, what sightseeing was available in the area gave people a more positive feeling to attend the wedding. Also in the wedding website we included best hotels in the area to stay for various budgets and how to get from the airport to the hotels. Little things like this made life a lot easier for the people attending.

Other challenges included time management, and legal aspects of getting married abroad. Fortunately for us, having a local wedding planner helped us manage this process efficiently and with respect to the legal aspect, made all the difference in getting the paperwork done properly. It would have been extremely difficult to navigate this with the language barrier and without local prescence.

PLANNING

We used Emma from 'Emma Events' as our wedding planner, and she was amazing. One of the first things she said to us was 'Whatever type of wedding you want I can make it happen or you'. This showed us how flexible she could be and how important our preferences were to her. We had a budget and Emma did her best to keep to it. She was very personable and we found it easy to schedule times to speak about our wedding despite the fact that she was based in a different region. She was professional, caring, and had good networks with local vendors. She went out of her way to host us on our visits to the area during the wedding planning process. We didn't have a theme as such for the day: we kept the wedding quite simple and classic as the venue was so beautiful. This enabled us to have the wedding at our dream location without too many added costs.

BEST DECISION

Best decision was to have a wedding planner. We Facetimed Emma every couple of weeks to ensure we built up a good relationship. We did initially use e-mail but found that talking things through was much easier and saved a lot of typing! On the wedding day Emma organised everything for us and all we had to do was turn up to our wedding looking good and enjoy the day. Having a wedding abroad where you don't speak the language can cause issues, if a problem occurs the wedding planner speaks the local language so everything can be easily resolved, even without you knowing about it.

MOST MEMORABLE

Most memorable moment was looking around during the wedding day, seeing the sun shining and all our wedding guests with smiles on their faces. We knew then that we had a successful wedding and our friends and family still talk about our wedding day being one of their best memories. A wedding isn't just about the bride and groom having an amazing day, the guests need to enjoy it too. Our day was amazing and we wouldn't change one thing.

ADVICE

Use modern technology to help your guests plan their wedding trip. I've never built a wedding website before but it was really easy to do and I only spent three nights doing it. Also, e-mail everyone the wedding programme a couple of days before the wedding. This allows them time to check where to go and what time, as well as giving them an idea when the first meal is so they know what time to have their pre-wedding meal. Sometimes guests are too shy to ask for information so doing the above will help them a lot!"

Photographer: Matteo Cuzzola | Wedding Planner: Emma Events | Ceremony: Ravello Town Hall | Reception: Villa Cimbrone | Florist: Franco Di Bianco | Hair Stylist: Andrea Serretiello | Makeup: Gisella