Organizing a wedding in Europe. Let’s take a look at what it consists of.
Official and symbolic wedding in Europe.
First you need to decide whether you want an official ceremony or a symbolic one. Simply put, do you want to officially sign in another country to arrange a symbolic ceremony and wedding banquet or you definitely want to get an official marriage certificate in the country where the wedding is planned.
List of European countries where official registration for foreigners is possible:
The official registration means that having collected a package of documents in your country at least 30 days before the planned date of registration, this package is sent to the country of your choice. Where the documents will be checked, legalized, and then a marriage license will be issued and a date and time for the official ceremony will be booked for you.
In other countries there is officially no such possibility. Even in Spain, which is so beloved by lot of tourists, it is not possible to get married according to this scheme. But each country has its own individual rules and nuances of legislation, which also allow you to officially conclude a marriage for foreigners. Although for this you need a few more conditions: a sufficient amount of time before the planned date of the wedding (from six months at least), the financial component of 10 000 — 15 000 euros only for the preparation of the legal grounds for the official birth, and, of course, the great desire of you as a bride and groom, as you will need several trips before the wedding in the country where the official registration is planned.
As a result, what we have:
-official registration in a European country, where it is possible — from 2200 euros (only paperwork).
-symbolic registration in a European country — from 4500 euros, for the person who will conduct the ceremony, say beautiful words and give you a symbolic certificate to remember the day.
Site selection
After understanding which country you want to have your wedding in, you need to think about how you envision your wedding. Europe is beautiful because it can be a castle from the early 15th century, the ocean coast, mountain peaks, luxurious modern 5-star hotels, beautiful palaces and villas and much more.
When choosing a venue, the timing of your wedding preparations is important. The more time you have, the more choice there will be in terms of date and venues. Good venues are booked long in advance, Europeans themselves start planning their wedding 2 years in advance.
What are the things to consider when choosing a wedding venue in Europe? As it does not sound paradoxically, but the better and more sophisticated wedding venue (simply put, the more popular it is with the locals (and who as not the locals know them best), the less chance that the staff with whom you need to communicate on the organization, will speak English. The more popular the venue is with locals, the less the venue will be interested in foreign clients, as they are already doing well with bookings and reservations. This means that you will need a translator, preferably with a fluent language, for the entire preparation time. For ease of communication, the interpreter should live in the same place as the venue — this will make the preparation many times easier.
What exactly to pay attention to when choosing a wedding venue in Europe:
-Venues that specialize in banquets may have a number of conditions. For example, if you were told the cost of the menu is 100 euros per person, it is necessary to clarify whether there will be an extra charge if you have fewer people than the venue can accommodate. Because for them it is a lost profit, which will eventually fall on your budget.
-you may additionally take a considerable amount of money for insurance. And it may become clear after the prepayment has been made, because for them it is standard and does not cause surprise.
-The most favorable offers you can find on sites in Portugal, Cyprus, Greece and Hungary.
-the most expensive and exclusive offers will be in world-famous areas — Lake Como and Garda in Italy, the Loire Valley and the Cote d’Azur in France, the suburbs of London in the UK.
Choosing a convenient date
Once you have decided on a venue, you should decide on a date based on the days that your favorite venue has to offer. The second most important moment for choosing a date is local peculiarities, such as holidays, festivals, religious festivals, sports competitions. That is to say, large crowds of people.
For example, in 2016 from June 10 to July 10, you can safely cross out the main cities of France, including Paris and Nice, because at this point, will be held the European Football Championship. This event can put in question the realization of your holiday or make very big adjustments. Prices will increase as it will be considered a «mega high-season». Adequate contractors will be involved in these events, we mean those in charge of lighting and sound equipment, musical groups and other entertainers and even offsite catering and floral arrangements may be tightly involved in this big sporting event. Photo shoots may be disrupted as significant venues adjust their schedules to accommodate the games and the Eiffel Tower is «decorated» with crowds of drunken fans in colorful scarves and t-shirts.
So when choosing a date, don’t be lazy to spend a couple days studying the calendar of local festivals and events to make sure nothing will interfere with your celebration.
Selection of contractors and artists
Now it’s time to choose those who will work at your wedding.
Even though you are paying customers, you will still have constant communication with them before and during the event. Accordingly, it is important to speak the same language with them, so that everyone understands each other.
If even with the photographer and videographer you can communicate through an interpreter or sign language, should be chosen at the meeting.
The videographer and his team should know English or local in order to understand what the guests are saying. Sometimes it happens that you look at a video and a phrase is cut off in the wrong place because the cameraman did not understand the language when he was editing it.
Regarding the choice of photographers — in Europe the cost of services for photographers and videographers is much higher than (even before the rate increase), and the quality of work is much worse. Very few professionals among wedding photographers in Europe, who make high-quality and beautiful photos.
Decorator — florist with a team makes sense to bring from Russia, if you want a chic wedding with a large budget for decoration. As local decorators can offer only some classic solutions or try to repeat the design on the photos you like (the main word — «try»). They do not really understand the expression «concept development», which means that you can’t expect any creativity, creativity and luxury. As an option, bring one decorator, who will initially develop a design concept of the whole wedding, draw sketches, approve them with you and then explain everything to local florists, what and how to do.
All other contractors and artists can be hired locally.
And so what we have:
-host — from 3500
-dj — from 1300
-photographer — from 3500
-videographers — from 4500
-plus everyone will have to pay for flight, accommodation and per person if you have destination wedding
-rental of sound and lighting equipment from 20000 euros
-floristics from 30000 euros
-artists of various genres from 2000 euros for one performance. Music groups from 5000 euros.
What else to keep in mind
Advice — when making an advance payment — come to their office (not in a cafe meet), if it is equipment, then come to their warehouse. And you should also remember that all contractors and artists should look for alternatives — 2 — 3 options, because the prices can differ in times.
Do not forget about the various taxes. For example, in Spain, the tax can vary from 10% to 21%, and in Italy, in addition to the standard taxes there is a tax for the authorship of music when the band and DJ.
Let’s summarize:
Cost of wedding in Europe (approximate calculation)
This is an approximate minimum, which should be guided by, organizing a wedding in Europe independently.
Wedding planner in Europe
If you understand the scale of the problem and the amount of work involved, one option is to hire a local organizer.
Choosing a local organizer is another of the pitfalls of organizing a wedding. You may get the misleading impression that once you find a translator, he will help you find everyone else and basically organize everything on the spot. This is far from true. It is necessary to be able to understand the contractors, to know the technical and organizational aspects that at first glance are not obvious.
For example, a technical contractor can bring all the equipment, and a couple hours before the wedding it turns out that the site lacks electricity or there is no electrician who can connect them, because the interpreter did not provide for this moment. Or decorators arrived at 6 am to start their work, and the restaurant is closed and everyone will come to the usual time of opening the restaurant, because the interpreter (in the role of the organizer) did not know that this should be warned.
Accordingly, it is better to turn to professional wedding organizers. They can be divided into 2 categories.
The first category is those who among themselves in our business are called «beautiful Instagram».Most often they are experts in organizing weddings, after having arranged their wedding for two on their own. Working with such organizers can get expensive. Beautiful pictures in social networks do not guarantee anything, it is the work of a good photographer, as well as a large database of photos from various stocks. Pay attention to the quality of the site and its content. Since serious companies or serious organizers make enough money to invest in a website. Try to find their site in search engines on some query, for example, «wedding in …» (the city is the country where you want your wedding). If they will not be in the first 30-40 search places (this is the first 3-4 pages of the search engine), it means that people are not invested in promotion in any way at all. And people with a serious attitude to their business do not do so, talk about the fact that clients come to them and so — not serious.
The second kind of organizers — these are serious companies who are engaged in weddings with good budgets. Here most likely will be all right, but you should immediately realize that the amount of the fee will start from 5000 euros and at least half of it should be transferred to them at once, so that the company began to deal with your wedding. The budget for such weddings will start from 100 000 euros.
Plus in both options you need to realize that communication on Skype is not communication and you need to put in the budget of your wedding at least two more trips during the preparation period to visit the company’s office, drive around and choose a site for the wedding and for other meetings.
