If you got engaged and are planning to get married in France, you might wonder where to start. First of all, congratulations on your engagement! You are now entering your fiancé era, and as a bride/groom to be, I highly recommend to fully embrace and enjoy this time of your life where you get to plan your wedding with your life partner.
In order to help you start this project but also to understand the necessity of a local planner, here are the three main reasons (in my opinion) why you need to choose a local wedding planner for your destination wedding in France:
- she knows the culture of the country
- she knows all the local vendors (and the best ones!)
- she is located in France
A wedding is a unique event where you will commit to your fiancé for the rest of your life. It is probably the one and only chance to celebrate your love story surrounded by all of your family and friends, all of your loved ones reunited in one spot, for one day (or more!) just to celebrate you.
If you live abroad, you might need help in order to organize this big celebration. As you and your guests are travelling from far away, planning a multi-days wedding can be ideal to embrace the celebration. This is where I highly recommend you to hire a wedding planner to work with you in the organization of your destination wedding in France.
A destination wedding can seem challenging at first sight, because you might live in another country, a different time zone, you might speak another language and the culture of this country might not be very familiar. But if you work alongside with a local wedding planner who is used to work with international couples planning their destination wedding in France, you will be able to enjoy this time and plan the bespoke and refined wedding you have ever dreamed of!
Your local wedding planner knows the culture of the country
Yes, this reason might seems very obvious to you. But as obvious as it seems, it is in reality a huge advantage to make your life easier during the year (or the few months) you will spend planning your wedding alongside with your local wedding planner.
Knowing the culture of the country (and its codes) is highly important for every step of the process. It will save you from making mistakes and it will help make everything run smoothly. The contact with the vendors will be easier, which will make the decisions effortless.
Whether you speak French or not, whether how much you know (or have experienced!) the French culture, whether how much your partner knows about France, hiring a local planner who speaks French and English, who knows all of the cultural codes and who is used to managing business across cultures is the solution to make sure you fully understand every step of the process.
Your local wedding planner has contacts with the best local vendors
Having all the contacts of the best vendors and service providers from the area is the biggest underrated gem when it comes to planning your wedding. It will save you time and money, and this will make planning and decision making much easier. The expert planner will be dedicated to the research of the vendors that qualify for your wishes.
Give me your criteria, show me your inspiration, and I’ll outsource the right fit.
Because creating a dream team is one of my favorite missions, having a wide range of vendors and service providers is essential. Even if it is always better to work with local vendors, if the needs and wishes are very specific, it is important to react quickly and sometimes to find the perfect vendor require to search further away and it’s totally ok. The goal is to make your wedding unique, to bring to live a vision in order to celebrate your love story during this destination wedding and this step is so much more important than you might think.
Your local wedding planner is located in France
Again, to hire a local wedding planner based in France is a criteria that can look obvious at first sight, but this matters way more than you might even imagine! Living in the area (or at least in the country) of the location of your future wedding venue is helpful (and can even appear as necessary in some ways). Just to remind you some notions of geography: France is actually smaller than Texas. Yes, the whole country of France is not even as big as the state of Texas. This comparison shows that hiring a French wedding planner provides you with a local expert able to cover the territory. Being on site and being a local expert allows your local planner to offer the best reactivity and a full flexibility.
This is correlated to the fact that your local wedding planner knows the culture, the language, the country and its local customs.
CONCLUSION
So here are the main three reasons why you should hire a local wedding planner if you are considering planning a destination wedding in France (or anywhere else!).
This is, however, a non-exhaustive list, and I could write a part 2 of this blog post. I hope this is helpful to you in order to realize the needs and stakes of the organization of a destination wedding.
Never underestimate the benefits you can have from making the right decisions right from the start. As soon as you are engaged, the wedding planning process can officially start. Hiring a local wedding planner should be one of the first steps taken in order to enjoy fully this bride-to-be era.
But if you have already started wedding planning, if you already have found a venue or if you hired some vendors, don’t worry, it is never too late to ask for help! The organization of a wedding is a journey and hiring an expert specialized in destination wedding allows you to embrace it.
