Destination Wedding in Italy Cost: A Full Budget Breakdown!
Does it feel impossible to figure out how much your destination wedding in Italy will cost? Imagine knowing what the whole thing will cost before you actually book anything. Now you can. We've worked all over this beautiful country from the lakes region to the Amalfi Coast to the Italian Riviera to Tuscany planning weddings on a budget.
I'm going to take you line by line of a full budget breakdown, not of estimates, not of starting prices, not of price ranges, but of actual numbers, we have actually spent on weddings in Italy. So if you want a no BS wedding budget breakdown to follow from a destination wedding planner, stick around. You’ll finally be able to answer for yourself - are destination weddings cheaper than what you can get in the US?
Let's jump right into it. We're going to cover all the categories today, so buckle up. I will walk you through what we've actually paid in Italy for food and beverage, photography, videography, entertainment, hair and makeup, floral, rentals, lighting, decor, stationery, venue, transportation, excursions, and those random little extras so you’ll no how to plan a destination wedding with a realistic budget. For the sake of clarity, all the pricing I'm going to share with you today is in USD.
Food & Beverage
Let's start with food and beverage. Food and beverage can cover multiple days. If you're having a multi-day wedding, you’ll have the welcome dinner, the brunch costs, and of course the wedding dinner itself. So first, let me start with the wedding dinner, which is the most expensive.
A lot of people will do a cocktail hour, a three course dinner, some dessert, maybe a late night bite, and then usually an open bar. We have spent as low as $296 per person on the wedding day dinner itself. At a different wedding in Italy, we spent $325 per person. At another wedding we spent $348 per person and another wedding we spent $400 per person.
So all in all, it's close to $300 to $400 per person. That variance really came from the quality of the caterer and the different areas in Italy that were more or less expensive.
For the welcome dinner, they're almost always beer and wine only and something more casual like a pizza dinner that's really local and authentic to Italy. We've spent $75 per person and up to $100 per person on this. It completely depends on the venue, the caterer, what they provide, plus how nice the wine is, but $75 - $100 is what we’ve historically spent. As for the brunch, we have spent $50 per person, $75 per person, and all the way up to $100 per person. Again, all depending on what kind of alcohol offerings there are, what kind of food offerings there are, and the general quality of the caterer.
2. Photography
The lowest we spent on photography in Italy was $1250. That was for a local photographer. The catch, they were not a wedding photographer. They were actually a tourist photographer specializing in taking pictures of couples on vacation. They’re a super talented photographer, and I loved the price, but unfortunately they don't do weddings anymore. So we kind of got lucky there because we slipped right in while they were still experimenting with weddings, but now they only do tourism photography. BUT, that could be a good strategy for you to use if you're going abroad, finding a photographer that you love their style, but they haven't done weddings before. Of course there are some caveats to that. They're not going to know how the flow of the wedding goes and might not be as prepared. At the very least, you probably just want to make sure that you hire someone that's done at least a couple weddings before. So if you can find someone that's kind of early on in their career like that, that's awesome If you want to save money.
Next up from there, we spent $2935 on a photographer that lived within Europe that we flew from another lower cost market. Italian photographers who are used to doing weddings are typically more expensive than this. So we flew a photographer from a different country to Italy, (and that included travel price) for their most basic package, one photographer for six hours.
Next, we spent $4,800 for a very skilled local photographer. We didn't have to pay to travel over there.
Lastly, we have spent as high as $14,000 for a photographer to fly them from the United States to Italy.
3. Videography
In most of the weddings we have planned in Italy, we've actually spent $0 on videography. The reason being, a lot of the couples we work with prefer to splurge on their photographer rather than splitting that cost across two different vendors. In one case, we also had a couple who had a friend who was a filmmaker do some shots at their wedding as well, which worked out nicely and also was $0.
On another occasion, we spent $2200 for a videography team who was local to the destination. We did not need to fly anywhere.
And the most we've spent on videography for weddings in Italy is $6,000 for a really experienced talented local team.
4. Entertainment
This could be ceremony entertainment, cocktail and dinner entertainment, dancing entertainment – whether it's live musicians or DJs, we've done it all.
We spent $1,200 for a live trio for two hours, which was honestly one of my favorite vendors that we've ever booked, and so worth the money. At another wedding, we spent $3,900 and that covered the cost of an organist for the ceremony, a live trio for cocktail hour and a DJ for after dinner.
At another wedding, we spent $4,500 and that covered the cost of a DJ for the whole time and for a portion of the dancing, we had a live musician join. You know how they work the crowd and play live with the DJ – such a fun element! At another wedding we had a similar setup with a DJ and one live musician. In this case, we paid 6,300 because we actually flew that DJ in from a different country.
And finally, we paid $8,000 for a really talented music trio to play during cocktails and dinner (so an extended period of time) plus we had a great DJ for dancing.
5. Hair and Makeup
Let's talk about hair and makeup for just the bride (not the full party).
For one wedding, we spent $875 to cover her hair, makeup, gratuity, and trial for her wedding in Italy. That also covered some travel costs to move the stylist within the country.
On three other separate occasions, we've had a larger group, so the bride plus some members of the wedding party join. On those occasions, we spent $1280, $1335, and $1950, all pretty close in cost. There's a slight variance between the number of wedding party members that included, and if there were travel costs included to move the stylists throughout the country, but all of those artists were based in Italy.
6. Floral
This is the one that gets the worst reputation. Most of the couples that I talked to are like, okay, I want to have a beautiful wedding in Italy, but I couldn't give two craps about flowers. The flower costs vary greatly because it's heavily tied to the number of guests that you have. The more guests you have, the more tables you need, the more arrangements you need. So I'm going to give you the costs and the guest count so you can see how those two qualities are interconnected.
For one wedding in Italy, we had a long table for 40 people. We spent $2,700 on flowers for that table, but it was light on the flowers, just a smattering.
For another wedding with 80 people, we spent $5,000. For an additional wedding in Italy for 80 people, we spent $6,500. They just had a little bit more going on.
And for a wedding of 60 people with one of the most impressive floral installations we've seen, we spent $10,400.
7. Rentals, Decor, Lighting
There's a lot shoved into this line. So let me first break down what this means. Lighting might include string lights (maybe your venue has some already included and the price is $0 or maybe they don't have it included and you want to add that on). Lighting could also be chandeliers, disco balls, uplights (the color lights that shoot up the walls). All just to make it a little bit more cozy.
Rentals would be any tables, chairs, linens, or tabletop that isn't already included from your venue or your caterer. Typically, your caterer will bring basic stuff like white China, silverware, regular glassware, but this is generally the cost to upgrade these items to be more colorful or design forward..
Decor is kind of a smorgasbord of everything. Decor could be those little fun accents that you add from Etsy, like custom cocktail napkins, signage, a photo wall or a little props for your dance floor.
So for one wedding, for chandeliers and minimal upgrades to the tabletop rentals, we spent $3,800. On two other occasions we had lighting added and then more impressive tabletop upgrades, plus upgraded chairs. On those separate occasions, we spent $6100 and $6400.
8. Stationery
This covers all of the paper goods for your event, whether it's the save the date and invitations or the day of pieces (your table numbers, escort cards, place cards, menus, ceremony programs, reserved signs, etc).
For one wedding in Italy, the couple elected to do electronic save the dates so that they could spend more and have custom invitations. Then all of their day off pieces were from a templated website like Minted. That was $1,200.
On another occasion where we did printed save the dates, invitations, and day of pieces from a site similar to Minted, one of our couples spent $1,400 and another spent $1800.
9. Transportation
No, it’s not required to pay for this for your guests, but in a couple different occasions for weddings in Italy, we did have couples who wanted to cover some portion of it.
So for one wedding, we put a few different guests in shuttles at the end of the night to just send them home (they got their own way to the wedding, so this was just end of night transportation). That was around $400.
For another wedding, we had the ceremony offsite at a church, so we needed to move all of the guests to the church and back to the reception. They were staying there so we didn't have to pay for end of night transportation. Moving them to and from the ceremony was $1350.
For another wedding, we had a bunch of guests staying offsite who needed to be moved to and from every wedding event for the weekend. That was $3000.
10. Excursions
A lot of times with multi-day destination weddings, you want to use the extended time as an opportunity to immerse yourself in the culture, whether that's a cooking class, boating excursion, truffle hunting or wine tasting.
We have had some couples in the past spend $100 to $200 per person on a cooking excursion. That was completely dependent on what their venue charged for that service.
We've also spent about $6,000 on a yacht rental. Again, it's going to depend on how many people and what kind of boat you want. So in our situation, that was a small catamaran.
11. Venue
Why did I save this for the end? Because the venue rental can be $0 or it could be $50,000+.
The key to wedding budgeting is to start with all of the vendors that we did first to create that foundation of additional costs. That way, you say, “okay, when I add up my photographer or videographer, hair and makeup, rentals, stationery, all of that equals X.” Now I'm going to go out and look for venues and just pop that X cost on top of whatever the venue cost is, rather than going out to find venues first and making a complete guess about what those other vendors cost.
So how much have we paid for venues in Italy? We truly have had a wedding where we paid $0 for the venue. The reason being their ceremony was in a church and typically churches do not charge you a venue rental fee, but it is nice to give a donation to the church. They gave about a $350 donation. Some people give up to a thousand, totally depends on what you want to give. For their reception location, it happened on property at the hotel where all of them were staying. In that particular case, they only charged them for the food and beverage. There was no fee for the event space. If you find a venue like that, consider yourself lucky.
On another occasion for a wedding in Italy, we spent $4,500 that covered the cost of a ceremony, space rental, the reception space rental along with their rooms. Their room was actually attached to where the reception space had to be anyway, so it kind of was like a double bang for your buck. So they got a really nice room and the space and the price was right. It also was a smaller venue, which is why the price was a little bit lower.
We've also had larger venues that we book that have accommodations on site for multiple people.
In one circumstance when we spent $30,000, it came with a villa for five nights and had six rooms on site. In another circumstance we spent $48,000 for a villa that we had for three nights and it slept 70 people. In both of those examples, when we spent $30,000 and $48,000, we actually recouped funds back from the guests who were paying to stay in those rooms onsite. Check out my list of cheapest wedding venues in Tuscany for more cost-effective options!
12. Contingency
This is like our “oh crap fund.” As in, “oh crap, the exchange rate changed, we're going over budget.” Or, “Oh crap, 10 people that we totally thought were not going to come are now coming. We're going over budget!” Or, “oh crap, the venue just hit me with the most unexpected fee that was nowhere in our contract. We're going over budget.” If you have a contingency set aside, you won’t go over budget!
We have had couples put between $3000 and $5,000 in that contingency line at the start of planning, and yes, they used it.
13. All the extras!
Now, there's also going to be extras like your rings, your travel, your honeymoon, your outfits.
That is all super subjective. I mean, you could literally spend $100 on a wedding dress or $5,000. So I'm just going to tell you what we've typically seen. Typically couples spend between $3000 and $7,000 on these items, not including the honeymoon.
Friends, we've come to the end. Now you know exactly what you'll encounter when you start planning from the first hand perspective of an Italy Destination Wedding Planner. Next steps, check out this video for more of my cost saving hacks for a Low Budget Destination Wedding in Europe.
Ciao babe!
Free Guide!
Estimate the Cost of Your Destination Wedding
In Europe before booking a venue!
