Well, with two weeks to go we are beyond excited as we finalise all the glorious details for our first styled wedding photographers workshop here in Andalucia.

With a whole host of amazing suppliers contributing to The Andalucian Lake Workshop set in the most fabulous location on the Istan Lakes, plus an hugely talented creative team, it really is going to be head turning!  I never do anything by halves and presented with a challenge I will always go for it!

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This weekend I will cover a very popular style of wedding here in Spain, villa weddings.

As you search for venues and wedding planners you may notice many wedding planners do not offer private villa weddings as part of their service and prefer to stick to the hotel and wedding venue packages. (more…)

I don´t really know where to start with this epic wedding so I will start at the beginning!

Mary first got in contact with me in June 2016.  I had been recommended to her by a great Irish Photographer and Videographer, Dougie Farrell from Silverscreen Weddings,  thanks Dougie, I still owe you a drink!!! (more…)

During the Christmas and New Year holiday many couples will become engaged and start thinking about perhaps hosting a destination wedding.

Over the past 10 years Spain has seen a huge increase in destination weddings for a number of reasons. (more…)

Nestled in the hills between Mijas and Fuengirola with stunning views over the coastline, is the location of an extremely popular restaurant which has been running for years, the Valparaiso.

Since 1984 Valparaiso´s charismatic owner, Raffaele, has welcomed hundreds of famous people to his establishment and as you enter you are whipped back in time to the glamour of the 80´s and 90´s.

The walls of the reception are adorned with framed photos of famous faces who have frequented this restaurant from James Hunt, the racing driver, to Cilla Black and more recently the Beckhams.  There are so many famous faces it is really quite a sight to see.

The charming restaurateur, Raffaele, works his magic to make sure visiting his restaurant is a romantic experience and always hands out red roses to the ladies, me included!  Often during planning this wedding I rocked out of there with a red rose between my teeth!

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I will start with going back to the day I found out about David Toms accident.  Utter shock, horror and could not get this off my mind, even to this day I often find myself thinking about David and wonder how he copes with the life changing accident he suffered, both mentally and physically.

Having broken his neck and now a quadriplegic, this situation challenges our understanding as to how anyone can move on and enjoy some quality of life, but they do.

Some of you may recall the blog post I did about David over a year ago a few months after his terrible accident.

A quick recap, it was about an amazing and inspiring couple, Mary and Marc, I had the pleasure of organising their wedding for.

They had faced a very similar life trauma when Marc also had a life changing car accident, at a much younger age.

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It is very rare and probably never happened before that I have posted such a blog post but I am so angered by this situation so here it is in black and white and for everyone to read in the big wide world of the internet in the hope that word gets out and about of this utterly ruthless couple who are currently plaguing and taking the piss our of our wedding world.  Excuse my French!

Our Wedding World, as we like to call it here, is a very close knit community.  All the venues and suppliers know each other and we are like one big family, with a few exceptions, and we look out for each other.

Together, with Lucy from Boutique Weddings, one of my good friends, we set up a closed Facebook group about 2 years ago,  purely for all the wedding suppliers here in Southern Spain.

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I often wonder where the busy summer months go and of course in the winter we do slow down, but ever so slightly as there is always so much to catch up on.

So what do wedding planners get up to in the winter!

I thought it would be a nice idea to write a little blog post about what we have been up to and give our readers a little insight into our lives.

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As we head towards the autumn here now in Spain and start to quieten down, there is nothing nicer than receiving a thank you and we have been spoilt already this week with two :)! (more…)

Here in Spain there are a wealth of fabulously talented wedding suppliers, from planners, stylists, photographers, caterers, entertainers, you name it we are brilliant at it!

We live, eat, sleep weddings and love our jobs, nurture our businesses and all work extremely hard throughout the year, often in very high temperatures, to produce fabulous events for couples travelling into Spain from all over the world. 

Clients come from the UK, US, Ireland, Dubai, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong to name but a few, in fact Spain is now so popular and such a central location with almost year round wonderful weather that the wedding industry has rocketed here in the past 3 years.

The average wedding planner will work on about 30 weddings each year, catering companies maybe double or more. Entertainers, florists, musicians, cake designers and packaged venue weddings can do up to 100 weddings each year.  We are all busy and love it!

Now some advice for couples wishing to get married in Spain 🙂

Firstly we want to help you, we want to create your dream wedding in Spain, find you the perfect venue and advise and assist as much as we can before you take the plunge.

Planning a wedding abroad can be a daunting prospect but we are all good at it, all of our clients come from abroad, it is our business, destination weddings, and here is how you can make your initial enquiry easier for us to respond to.

Email us with plenty of time before you decide to visit us.

Tell us what your ideal wedding is, location, number of expected guests and ideal budget you have to spend.  None of our weddings are factory led and we create dream days according to what our clients want.  

This cannot be factored and shoe horned into a package.  

If you want a 3 day wedding in the fabulous city of Seville or a relaxed stylish beach wedding we need to send you relevant up to date information including the following:

What venues are available on your dates.
The most up to date and latest prices for each service you require.
A true budget outline as to what to expect your ideal day to cost.
The pros and cons of each venue, we offer transparent advice to our clients.

We offer a pre-wedding consultancy service to do just this for you.

Yes we can send you generic and general information but if you wish us to work for you and provide all the information I have listed above this takes time.  

Time is something I have to pay my team for but it is worth it as you will receive personalised up to date information designed for you with your ideal day set out and if you are planning a visit, a personalised itinerary.

So here is my list of what not to do if you are planning a wedding in Spain :)!

1. Don’t rock up here in Spain, trawl through the internet for wedding planners in Spain, find us, email us and expect us to be available at the drop of a hat, we are busy.  

I have had two emails this week from potential clients who have arrived in Spain and have decided only now to contact planners asking to see venues this weekend?!

We have a wedding this weekend and pre-booked clients visiting us so this is a complete impossibility to even begin to prepare anything in that time frame, let alone organise a venue viewing trip for you which let’s face it is not going to be any good if we managed anything.  

We need time and a lot of effort on our part to make sure your trip here is worthwhile.  

You have paid for your flights over here and no doubt accommodation so why leave such an important thing as a last minute fly by night decision?   

It is always heart breaking for us not to be able to jump into action and answer every query we have because the couple have left it to the last minute to get organised.

2. Don’t approach wedding suppliers and expect them to be available to meet with you if you have not booked them.  

Every supplier again gets about 8 to 10 enquiries a day, many of the enquiries they will never hear from again so don’t ask them to pop by and meet you on a Sunday afternoon an hour away from where they are based.  If they did this for every email they receive you can only begin to imagine how chaotic their lives would be!!

Having had an ever so slightly tiny deep sigh moan on my personal page about this, this week I got many messages from wedding suppliers sending me impossible requests from potential clients.

One that stood out was a cake maker, and a very popular one who is already practically booked out for 2016.  A potential client had just arrived in Spain, was around on Sunday and would love to meet with her……she has two weddings, a family and her husband gets one day off a week which ironically is a Sunday….I say no more!

3. Check out our busy times.

Our wedding season starts usually from April through to October, the months of May, June, July and September are bonkers, we are literally running from wedding to wedding.  
Here in Spain being a destination wedding country weddings are not nicely spaced out to one every Saturday, some suppliers are completing 7 or more a week.

Unless you have prebooked your trip and organised venue viewings here are the obstacles you may come across if you decide to visit Spain during busy wedding months.

You cannot access the venues, they are full and have weddings on.
All the event managers at the hotels are otherwise engaged and cannot attend to meetings.
You cannot see suppliers, they are booked with weddings and are too busy to attend to meetings.
If you wish to view private villas, they may having paying guests staying there so you won’t be able to view the property unless the guests concede and allow access during their stay.

My summary and mantra for this blog post is be organised and be aware that you need to contact us and any wedding supplier sooner rather than later.   We are here and willing to help but we are human and running businesses that are at times so busy it does not leave us anytime to factor in last minute requests and demands made upon us.

It is not within us to want to disappoint clients as we run hospitality led businesses and our aim is to please and delight our clients but when we are given last minute demands and unrealistic timelines we just are not able to fulfill these to the best of our abilities.

Be an organised bride to be and give us lots of notice, as much information as possible and appreciate our time and efforts.

If we meet with you and follow up our meeting it would be lovely to have a response instead of nothing, we have taken time out of our busy schedules to spend time with you chatting weddings and it is just courtesy to follow up.  

If you have decided on another planner or stylist then tell us, we are not offended, usually it is one of our business buddies you have booked so we will know what you decided in anycase!

Images taken from Pinterest