How to Choose a Wedding Planner from a Distance
The table setting for our wedding in Normandy, France. Much of what I saw when I arrived came as a pleasant surprise—our wedding planner had to make many decisions without my direct guidance and going only on our conversations and sharing of photos on-line. July 25, 2018.
Through writing up my experience coordinating a wedding and getting married in France from a home base in the United States, I’ve had the good fortune of speaking with several other people planning their weddings far from home.
In the process, I’ve had several questions on my process for and experience with finding a wedding planner to help with a ceremony and reception happening somewhere far from where I lived at the time.
For such an important role for such an important life event, how did I go about researching and selecting a planner to help me with a wedding taking place across an ocean in another country where I didn’t speak the language? What a-ha moments did I have? What best practices did I discover? What lessons did I learn?
All good questions. Here’s how I’ve responded.
Don’t Wedding Plan Solo
First: Don’t go without a wedding planner if you’ve decided to have your wedding far from where you currently live.
You should not try to plan a destination wedding or distance wedding solo or with a close friend or family member unless your circumstances meet the following two criteria:
You can easily reach your wedding location regularly and without undue stress throughout your planning process.
You know your wedding location intimately and have contacts with caterers, florists, and other venders of this ilk in the area.
Otherwise, going without a wedding planner will almost unquestionably result in disaster. And why take chances and cause undue stress and strain for yourself when it comes to such an already stressful event?
Start as Early as Possible in the Planning Process
Although I imagine everyone begins to research wedding planners shortly after picking a wedding venue, city, or region, someone planning a wedding at a distance absolutely should put finding a wedding planner next on their to-do list.
The most experienced and popular wedding planners often have weddings booked over a year in advance—something especially true in wedding hotspots (like France, where we got married).
Unless you envision a very straightforward wedding or plan to have your wedding during an off season or on an “off” day of the week, get your wedding planner booked as soon as possible. Further, consider moving your date to accommodate the wedding planner’s availability, if necessary. The right planner is typically more important than a specific date.
The Wedding Planner Must Know the Area
We found several amazing wedding planners in France, where we got married, but few to none with deep experience in planning weddings in Normandy—and zero with experience in the specific part of Normandy where we wanted to get married.
Fortunately, we had family in our desired area of Normandy who had experience planning and attending weddings there. They made recommendations for venues and caterers that really helped. And we found a wedding planner we really liked in Paris who was willing to go outside her normal operating area to work with us.
Contacts, relationships, and local knowledge are some of the most prized qualities in a wedding planner. If we had worked with someone who had only had experience planning Parisian weddings or weddings in the South of France (and we talked to several like this) and if we’d had no family connections in our wedding region to help us, we wouldn’t have had the wedding we wanted.
Ensure the wedding planner you select has experience working in the specific region in which you want to get married (defining the area as narrowly as possible, too) or who has deep relationships with people in your target location who can make recommendations and introductions to help them create the wedding you want.
Dual Language and Dual Culture and Customs Fluency is a Must
You must find a wedding planner fluent in your native language and in the language of the area in which you want to get married. Full stop. No compromises on this point.
This piece of advice seems evident, but questions from readers have made me realize that it is not obvious and that it’s not always easy to find, either.
I suppose you could make it work to have a wedding planner fluent in one of the two languages with a skilled translator for the other language, but I’d go this route only in dire circumstances where you couldn’t find any other viable option for wedding planning help.
To take it a step further: Ideally, your wedding planner will be fluent in your native language, fluent in the language of the region where you plan to wed, and wholly versed in the wedding customs of your home country and in the wedding customs of the wedding location.
Here’s why: You need to ensure your wedding planner fully understands what you want and how you want it—and I do mean “fully.” If your planner isn’t fluent in your native language and your culture’s wedding norms (which will be your point of reference), they will have a hard time understanding what you mean when you ask for a certain look or style or have a certain expectation for the ceremony or event flow. Further, they will have a hard time translating these desires and expectations to the venders with which they’re working to plan your wedding in your destination country.
For a wedding planner, especially one working in a different region that has different customs and language than your own, planning a wedding for someone is as much an exercise in translation and cultural accommodation as it is in event creation.
Don’t Forego a Face-to-Face Meeting (via Video)
Fortunately, even before COVID-19 made videoconferencing the norm, the wedding planners we interviewed ahead of our wedding all happily jumped on a Skype call with us to meet “face-to-face.”
We wanted to save our travel time for visiting venues, rather than scheduling a trip just to interview wedding planners. If you live close enough, though, an in-person meeting before making your decision could really help you feel comfortable with your choice.
Face time, even via video, will help you feel confident in your wedding planner. Do you like the planner’s demeanor? Do they make you feel at ease? Do they seem to listen to your questions and concerns and give thoughtful and specific responses? Do they ask smart, relevant questions that follow on what you’ve said and asked?
When you plan a wedding at a distance from your home location, the level of trust you place in your planner is higher than it would be if you could join them for food tastings with the caterer and cake tastings with the baker and visits to the florist to view arrangements.
As you will have to leave many of these decisions and evaluations in your wedding planner’s hands alone—and as pictures and videos can only show you so much—you need to ensure you feel good about the person with whom you plan to work for what will inevitably be a very big event in your life.
(And if you don’t feel you can place this level of trust in someone, I’d recommend you plan your wedding in your home base, where you can have a more hands-on role in the planning and decision making.)
Get References and Case Studies
Once you’ve narrowed your options to two or three possibilities, ask the candidates for write-ups or case studies of weddings they’ve planned. (As many wedding planners have portfolios and videos on their websites, they shouldn’t find this request much of a challenge.)
If you can’t get write-ups, see reviews, or read commentary—or you don’t feel 100 percent confident in the accuracy or legitimacy of what you’ve seen, ask your final candidates for references of people for whom they’ve planned weddings. Meet with these references via videoconference—don’t just speak to them over the phone. As with the wedding planners, meeting a reference face-to-face will help you gauge sincerity and give you a better gut-check impression. (And if the references don’t respond to your request for a meeting, beware.)
Though you can easily get eager and jump into the planning process, you will sign a legally binding contract with your chosen wedding planner. Take the process seriously and ensure you find someone in whom you can place real trust for such a momentous life event.
More Weddings-at-a-Distance Resources
As to where to start looking for a wedding planner, I’d recommend asking people in the region. Your best source for quality resources will always be people in your network.
If you don’t have local contacts you trust for honest opinions, use your search-engine skills as a starting point—recognizing that you’ll need to do significant due diligence on any possibility you find solely via the web.
If you have further questions, I’d love to hear them! Send me a note via the contact form or add a comment below. Also, by popular request, I’ve added a service via which we can talk through distance weddings—you can learn more about it here. (Though I am very much not a wedding planner!)
And if you’d like to find other articles I’ve written about planning weddings at a distance—including on planning weddings in France, where I got married—click here for the full repository of resources.