How To Plan A Destination Wedding
We have so many favourite moments, but one that sticks in my head was that first moment walking down the stone steps to our welcome party and seeing all our favourite people all together, abroad, in this place we'd dreamed about for the past two years. It was so surreal and overwhelming and incredible all at the same time, and we felt so very grateful and lucky to be surrounded by so much love. I loved that we had a prosecco tower complete with cold sparklers in place of a cake cutting – it was so much fun and really kicked off the 'party' section of our wedding in style – plus we got some fab photos! The cold sparklers were a gift from my mum and were a way of bringing some of my dad's 'light' into that special moment and tying in with the lights on our memory tree.
"Make the most of the morning before your ceremony. It might not be the part that you put on your mood board, but it's such a gorgeous part of the day that goes by so fast. We were lucky in that one of our guests is a yoga teacher so she held a yoga class by the pool on the morning of our wedding and our other guests loved it. It was a great way for people to bond and get ready for the day ahead.
Always have a backup plan for the weather. Our planner strongly advised this and at first I was reluctant to consider anything other than the outdoor ceremony I'd dreamed of, but the reality is you can't wish the rain away! The weather in Italy in particular has been so up and down over the past couple of years. It thankfully didn't rain on our wedding day, but the morning of our welcome party there was a torrential downpour. Even though I was praying it would clear by the evening (and it did), it made it a lot less stressful knowing that we had a Plan B in place."
I think there's a lot of pressure on wedding photos – we live in the age of Instagram and I couldn't move for TikToks about 'best wedding poses' and 'perfecting your soft smile.’ But trust me, the day goes by so quickly that you don't want to spend hours staging your photos, and you don't want to tone down your joy in favour of a 'soft smile.' Enjoy every second and trust your photographer to capture those moments that can't be staged – those are the ones that will warm your heart for years to come (even if not all of them will make it to the grid!)
