The Truth About Planning a Destination Wedding On Your Own

Bride and Groom image on a Costa Rica beach by SilverSparrowWeddings

If you've decided on a destination wedding, there's a chance that you feel confident you can handle planning it out entirely by yourself or even with the help of your friends and family. While not impossible, destination weddings involve a lot of arrangements and logistics that can be confusing and difficult to sort out. It isn't just your wedding day that should be peaceful, but planning should also be. Considering working with a professional wedding planner might be more worthwhile than you think. 

Let's get honest about what planning a destination wedding is really like. Here are some things to consider when thinking of planning your destination wedding on your own.

Planning a Destination Wedding Takes A Lot of Time

Wedding planning itself is complex, but planning a destination wedding is a far bigger task. With the amount of research, planning, liaising, and adjusting you need to do to make any progress, it's almost a full-time job on top of the one that you currently have – and you don't even get paid for it! Any other large commitments and plans you have might need to be put on hold. Planning a destination wedding is extremely time-consuming, and you'll need to allow at least 9 months to do it. 

Finding and Dealing with Local Vendors Can be Difficult 

In 2021, weddings typically had 14 vendors. You might not need that many for your wedding day, but you will need to be able to find those vendors in the locale of your destination. Coordinating them all is something else you will have to do from afar, especially if their primary language and yours differ. Keep in mind you will need to manage things like specific dates they need to be contacted for things like finalizing the menu and seating charts. 

There's also the problem of industry-specific lingo and knowing how to ask for whatever it is that you want. And remember, once you've found and secured your vendors, you'll have to keep up with each and every one of them and deal with whatever hiccups come up involving them. 

A Destination Wedding Has A Lot of Moving Pieces to Juggle 

Destination wedding planning consists of: 

• Budgeting 

• Planning guest lists 

• Deciding on specific locations 

• Marriage licenses

• Sorting out passports and travel visas 

• Working with a travel agent

• Wedding invitations 

• Finding and securing vendors and so, so much more!

That isn't even including the honeymoon planning. With so much to worry about when planning your wedding, it's common to want to delegate tasks to friends and family. But delegating in and of itself is an art form because you need to know what tasks suit which people and what they can accomplish in a specific time frame so you can manage your expectations and outcomes.

Hiring a Wedding Planner Removes  the Stress 

Working with a great wedding planner can ease the stress of planning your destination wedding. They have the experience of planning many destination weddings. Chances are, this will be your first. With a wedding planner, you don't have to worry about remembering a thousand different little details, dealing with language barriers, worrying about who to delegate tasks to, and all of the logistics involved. 

With our destination wedding planning experience, every aspect of your wedding will be exactly as you dreamed it would be. Get in touch with us today so that we can start mapping a course for your dream wedding together.