Planning your wedding in the UK when you live thousands of miles away can feel rather more daunting than planning one closer to home.
Different time zones. Busy working lives. Family spread across several countries or continents. Suppliers you may never meet in person until much closer to the wedding, or even at all. And a venue, church or private estate you may only be able to visit a couple of times before the day itself.
Over the years, Weddings By Mary has planned weddings for couples living across the globe, from Bermuda, Thailand, the States, Switzerland and Germany to name but a few, who all chose to marry in the UK. Every wedding was, of course, completely different. But what those couples needed from a UK based wedding planner was remarkably similar.
They needed someone who knew their wedding inside out, someone they trusted to keep everything moving when they couldn’t be in the UK themselves and someone who could anticipate what needed to happen next. Find solutions when challenges arose and bring a sense of calm to planning their wedding from several thousand miles away.
Having a UK based wedding planner isn’t simply about bridging the distance. It’s about knowing there is someone looking after the bigger picture on your behalf.
Planning a UK wedding when you can’t simply ‘pop over’
Plenty of decisions involved in planning a wedding can be made perfectly well from overseas. Emails can be exchanged, virtual calls arranged and design ideas shared from almost anywhere in the world. Sometimes, however, somebody simply needs to be there.
Perhaps another site visit is needed to work through the complicated logistics of a marquee wedding. Your florist wants to understand access to the church. The caterer needs to view the available space. Measurements need checking and rechecking. A vendor wants to meet at the venue. Or something that sounded straightforward on paper suddenly raises further questions and another in person site visit is needed.
When couples live overseas, dealing with these seemingly small things can become surprisingly complicated.
Having a UK wedding planner on the ground means your wedding doesn’t necessarily have to wait until your next trip before conversations can happen and questions can be answered.
Weddings By Mary will handle venue site visits, meet suppliers and vendors on your behalf, ask the questions you may not know need asking and come back to you with the information you need to make a confident and concise decision.
You remain completely involved without having to be physically present for every part of the planning process.
Understanding UK weddings when you’re planning from overseas
Planning a wedding in another country inevitably brings questions. Some are obvious. Others you may not even realise you need to ask.
There may be different terminology, different ways suppliers work and different expectations around timings, contracts, logistics or wedding traditions.
If you are marrying in an English church, there are particular requirements to understand. If you’re planning a marquee wedding at a family home or on a private estate, there is an entirely different set of practical considerations.
Even if one of you is originally from the UK, planning your wedding after living overseas for several years can still feel surprisingly unfamiliar.
Part of Weddings By Mary’s role is to help you navigate all of this. Rather than overwhelming you with everything there is to know, it’s about filtering what is relevant to your wedding. Explaining what matters and making sure important details aren’t overlooked.
If you’re at the earlier stages and wondering about the legalities of marrying in the UK, Weddings By Mary has also written about getting married in England as an overseas couple and getting married in an English church, which explore those requirements in more detail.
Why a UK wedding planner needs to understand the whole wedding
Your venue coordinator knows the venue. Your florist the florals, your photographer the photography and your caterer the food and service. Each has an important role to play. But your wedding planner looks at how all of those individual elements come together. Something that becomes particularly valuable when you’re planning from overseas.
Weddings By Mary gets to know not only your wedding plans, but both of you and often your families too. It’s about understanding what matters to you, where your priorities lie. What you’re excited about and perhaps what you’re quietly worrying or feeling nervous about too. While giving you the reassurance that someone else understands it all.
Planning a wedding can feel rather like piecing together a very large and intricate jigsaw puzzle. Every supplier, decision and detail is an individual piece. But they all need to fit together perfectly for the final vision to work as intended.
When a supplier or vendor asks a question, it isn’t considered in isolation. Weddings By Mary understands how that decision may affect another element, who else needs to be involved and whether it could create a potential problem further down the line.
Instead of managing numerous separate conversations across different time zones, you have one person keeping sight of the entire wedding and making sure every piece comes together seamlessly to create the wedding you envisaged.
Keeping your UK wedding planning moving from overseas
One of the realities of planning a UK wedding from overseas is that your wedding is happening alongside an already very full life.
You have your careers, family, travel and everyday commitments wherever home happens to be. Add potentially an eight hour time difference and UK suppliers working while you’re asleep, and even straightforward decisions can take longer than expected.
Expert wedding planning creates structure around that. It means knowing what needs your attention now, what can wait and what is already being taken care of.
There will still be decisions for you to make, it is your wedding after all, but with the research already done and relevant options in front of you. You can concentrate on the decisions that genuinely need to come from you while your wedding plans continue to move forward.
Making the most of UK visits before your wedding
For most overseas couples, trips to the UK during the planning period are few and far between.
You may be trying to fit venue visits, menu tastings, church appointments, bridal appointments and supplier meetings, along with precious time with family, into a few days.
With careful planning beforehand, Weddings By Mary will make your time in the UK count. Schedules will be compiled in advance, the right suppliers brought together and decisions grouped sensibly. So rather than chasing arrangements, you can enjoy seeing your wedding plans beginning to take shape.
Importantly, you can leave again knowing what happens next and fully confident that everything continues to be in safe hands.
The reassurance of having a UK wedding planner you trust
When you’re planning from another country, there is enormous reassurance in knowing someone understands what has been agreed, what remains outstanding and what needs to happen next.
Questions can be answered, potential problems spotted and the unexpected dealt with without distance becoming another complication.
One overseas couple described working with Weddings By Mary as giving them “a sense of calm we hadn’t experienced previously.” While another described the planning as “seamless.”
Neither description is about flowers, stationery, marquees or timelines. They describe the reassurance of knowing their wedding was being looked after.
Arriving in the UK for your wedding
By the time your wedding arrives, Weddings By Mary hasn’t simply been handed a schedule and a vendor list. Mary will already know your wedding inside out. The decisions behind your plans, the details that matter to you and how everything is intended to come together.
While you’re welcoming friends and family who may have travelled from around the world to be with you. Mary will be quietly making sure everything you’ve spent those months planning is happening exactly as it should.
Rather than answering supplier questions, checking whether somebody has arrived or wondering whether the church, venue or marquee is ready. You can be right amongst the loved ones you’ve brought together to celebrate with you.
As one couple rather perfectly put it:
“We felt confident that everything was being looked after and we could just enjoy ourselves.”
And ultimately, isn’t that what all those months of planning are for?
Planning your UK wedding from overseas?
Distance doesn’t have to make planning your wedding in the UK feel complicated.
If you’re planning your UK wedding from overseas, Weddings By Mary’s Full Wedding Planning takes care of a single day of celebrations. From those exciting early ideas through to the final farewells.
While Multi-Day Wedding Planning extends that expertise across two or three days. A welcome party or rehearsal dinner, the wedding day itself ending with a relaxed post wedding day brunch.
