Once you have s/he finally popped the question and you said ‘yes’, no doubt you can’t wait to get married, but these days you hear stories about having to book the best wedding venues years in advance to guarantee availability. So, in this post we will give you some idea of how things tend to work for Porto wedding venues to help you plan the timings for your weddings.
The first thing to note is that as a general rule, weddings are not planned as far in advance as in many northern European or North American countries for example, so a year in advance is very normal. However, as is the case all around the planet, the most fashionable and iconic wedding venues are always difficult to reserve. One of the great things about Porto (and in northern Portugal in general) there are a number of hidden gems which are far less sought after, so if you are looking for a shorter booking period, then this is probably the first avenue to try. Here at Porto Weddings we work with a number of either new developed or relatively isolated wedding venues which are not so popular as many better known venues, which can not only save you a lot of money, but also give you much better availability.
In northern Portugal there is a very well-defined wedding season (May to September), when of course the sun is nearly always out – so many weddings held in Portugal have much of the event outdoors, making good weather an important consideration. It is worth noting however that beyond this peak wedding season, there is still plenty of sunshine, so having a part of your wedding outdoors can still be an option (although of course for all weddings, even in peak season, you always need to have an indoor option, just in case). Outside of the peak season, wedding venue availability is infinitely better and of course there are some great deals on prices to be had also.
Whilst the great majority of weddings are held on Saturdays for obvious reasons, when holding a destination wedding, it can be possible to look at other days of the week: given that guests may be having a few days holiday in Portugal to coincide with your wedding, it can be a lot more viable to have a mid-week wedding than a home wedding would be. Given that mid-week weddings are so unusual, this does open up much more venue availability, so it is certainly worth considering.
As wedding planners, one of the most difficult things we have to deal with when wedding bookings have a short lead time and at peak times is the availability of our standard vendors. At Porto Weddings we much prefer to work with a small number of vendors that we are more comfortable working with (caterers, bands, decorators, photographers, hairstylists or whatever); it is typically very difficult for our clients to assess the quality of vendors for themselves, so they have to trust us to make the best decisions in this regard and we are always reluctant to use vendors that we do not have a solid relationship with. This means that even though you might get lucky with finding a wedding venue not too far advance, you may find it much more difficult to book the best vendors. Even our time as wedding planners in Porto is very much in demand at peak wedding season: we are a relatively small team and all our weddings have a senior wedding planner in charge, so we can be limited in how many weddings we can take on within a given period.
If you are looking for a wedding in Porto or northern Portugal without too much waiting around, then please contact us at Porto Weddings and hopefully we will be able to help you navigate the best options available to you!
