Here at Porto Weddings, we specialize in weddings for non-Portuguese clients, which really means we offer a completely different range of services to other wedding planners in Portugal. Here we are going to talk about the range of services we offer as a destination wedding planner, which means planning a wedding for clients who may not be familiar with the local culture, venues and vendors and how we look after all the guests who may need accommodation, transport and entertainment for a few days.
When you are holding a wedding in your own country, it is generally much easier to organize much of the wedding yourself and perhaps use a wedding planner for some elements of the wedding celebration (and of course a lot of weddings do not have a wedding planner at all). Generally, for a destination wedding a planner becomes an integral part of the wedding however because it is so difficult to pull all the strands together for a wedding, when you are based overseas, do not speak the language, are not familiar with local business practices and do not know local vendors. Furthermore, you have to worry about organizing what is going to happen to your guests! In short, running a destination wedding without the help of a local wedding planner is at best fraught with difficulty and at worse a disaster waiting to happen.
Whilst some venues will offer the help of an in-house planner, which in some cases can be sufficient, many venues insist on clients having a wedding planner for destination weddings as so many services have to come from outside of the hotel’s own facilities. So here are the wedding planning services we have to offer at Porto Weddings:
Venue & Vendors
When you don’t know an area well, finding out which venue will best suit your requirements can be a lot of work. Once we understand a client’s requirements, we can typically narrow down the venue options to a shortlist very quickly and then the client can either visit the venues in person or make a decision based on our recommendations. There are of course a number of venues that we do not recommend for one reason or another, often because we know some problems associated with a wedding venue that might not immediately be apparent. We can also quickly cut down the options through our knowledge of pricing and availability.
When it comes to choosing vendors it can be a series of labyrinthine decisions to make when working in a foreign country and the options we present to clients are generally based on a simple formula – we work with a relatively select group of wedding vendors (catering, floral, decoration, music, hair & makeup, photography/videography and so on) and we recommend them because we have worked with them time and time again and we know that they will not let us down and that their prices are fair for the quality of service that they offer. It can be very hit and miss for our clients to select vendors independently, because no matter how fancy their website may be or silky smooth their sales pitch, they only have once chance to deliver and they simply cannot mess up!
The wedding day itself
For all our clients we insist on having one of out wedding planning team present for the entirety of the wedding day – this means that we will be the first point of contact for any issues or questions that may arise and it is our responsibility to make sure that everything runs like clockwork. All weddings are about drawing together a number of different threads and running such a complex event in a foreign country when you are trying to have the best day of your life is no easy task, so having your wedding planner by your side to handle whatever may arise and to be a guiding hand behind the scenes is absolutely crucial.
Beyond the wedding
For a destination wedding, many guests will need help with accommodation and transport and many of our clients will want to organize activities for their guest on days other than the wedding day. We have organized all manner of things for guests, including cruises, wine tasting, touristic visits, cultural activities sporting challenges and so on. Our sister company, Porto Events, runs corporate activities for foreign companies visiting Portugal, so we have a lot of expertise under our roof for exactly this kind of thing. Indeed running a destination wedding can be a bit like running a corporate event (but better dressed), in that there are so many elements that make a successful event/wedding that have to work seamlessly together.
We understand what a complex challenge it can be to organize a destination wedding, so we encourage all our clients to lean on our experience and to use all or know-how so that we can give them the very best that Porto and northern Portugal have to offer. We will go the extra mile to make your vision for your wedding a reality so that you can just sit back and enjoy the experience to make the wedding planning and the wedding itself as fabulous and trouble-free as possible.
Please contact us at Porto Weddings to being our conversation!
