Are Your OVERPAYING for Your Wedding in Italy?

Oct 15

Too many couples have come to me ~some literally crying~ because a wedding planner told them they need at least 200,000 euros to have a wedding in Italy. Whether it’s a destination wedding in Lake Garda, the Italian Riviera, Tuscany, or even a destination wedding in the Amalfi Coast - this is simply untrue. How do I know? Because I've produced weddings in Italy for as low as $30,000. So where is this massive discrepancy coming from? Why can I produce a wedding in Italy for well below six figures, but they are claiming you cannot?

Let's break down how to plan a destination wedding without overpaying. It's a really important topic to me because I don't want you overpaying for your wedding, or worse, deciding not to have a destination wedding because of a lack of information or the byproduct, (of what I've observed over the last 12 years of my events career) of a pretty shady industry.

Alright, let's get into the main reasons why I see this information being given to couples that you “need to have at least 200,000 Euros” to have a wedding in Italy.

Portfolio Standards

First of all, the easiest explanation and most innocent explanation is that these planners have portfolio standards. I support this wholeheartedly if you're a wedding planner and you have standards for the types of weddings that you produce. Some planners just have a certain level of portfolio that they want to maintain, and that's absolutely their prerogative after the many years they put into building their portfolios up to these levels. And those weddings might just happen to be a minimum of 200,000 euros. These are planners that are in the luxury category.

They don't want to plan weddings for less than that, and that's totally their prerogative. But I think the message that's been getting lost in translation is that you still can plan a wedding for less than that, just not with the suppliers that they work with and for the weddings that look like the ones that they produce.

I get it, I used to work for a luxury event planning company, and trust me, if you have luxury expectations, you can spend a half a million dollars like THAT! $30,000 for lighting, $50,000 for flowers, ETC, and yes it looks incredible. But the thing that these couples have told me is that they were never asking for that level of luxury. They just want a wedding that is simple, minimal and elegant and leans into the beauty of this amazing venue and landscape.They're adding intentional tasteful touches of decor that are aligned with their priorities.

So yes, expectations do matter and it will sway how much your wedding is going to cost. When I do weddings for $30,000 USD, there are sacrifices. There are less guests. They probably don't have a videographer. They're probably not paying for transportation for their guests. The flowers are more on the minimal side. The guests are likely paying for their accommodations at the venue to help offset that cost. And maybe their bar is beer and wine only, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, for couples that have more luxurious expectations than that, we go into the six figures with them. Oftentimes, our couples in our full service package are spending between $125,000 and $150,000 USD on these high touch weddings in Europe. But notice that's still not close to 200,000 euros, which is based on today's exchange rate is about $220,000 USD. There's still a ~$100,000 gap between the high touch weddings that we produce and this “minimum” that's being told to couples that they must have to even have a wedding at all. So what's another reason why this could be?

2. Vendor Relationships

It could be the vendors that they're using. You might not be given choices to price shop certain vendors because they have their go-tos that they know, they love and they trust. And as a wedding planner, I get it. I love working with my “friendors” as we call them in the industry, more than the next guy. It is so fun to go onsite with a team that you've worked with before. You can guarantee the quality control for your couple. It's just a surefire thing. But the reality is sometimes we have to price shop certain vendors and pick the cheaper option, and I really recommend doing this with the vendors that are just less of a priority to you. So you can splurge on your two to three favorite top vendors that are most important to you – pay for the best! But that means to save some money down the line, you'll have to maybe price shop and get the cheapest vendor that gets the job done for those other vendor categories that you don't care as much about.

The reality is in the market these days, if you pick the best vendor in every single wedding planning category, you're going to be in the six figures.

But that still doesn't explain the total discrepancy of why these minimums are so high. One couple that I recently talked to who got quoted this 200,000 euro minimum was given a photography quote of 20,000 euros. Now, this particular couple didn't know if that was normal or expensive because they don't know what to expect. Photography also was not in their top two to three vendors as far as priorities to them. So there's no world where I would've recommended that they spend $20,000 on something that they don't care the most about. Without any frame of reference, they didn't even know if that was a good deal or not for photographers in Europe. That's what scares me.

Yes, I support charging what you're worth. Photography is art, no doubt about it. There are photographers out there who are charging $20k, $30k, $40,000 for their work and I support them. But if you're looking to have a great photo/video team that is experienced in shooting weddings and are local to Europe, there are an abundance of alternatives for between $5,000 - $8,000 USD. I've had couples share with me that getting these types of quotes is almost insulting because it feels like there's a lack of respect for their hard earned money. Rather than educating clients about what things cost in the industry and the different price ranges and quality associated with those price ranges, we are just expecting couples to pay these fees.

3. Kickbacks, Commission and Hidden Markups

Unfortunately, there's another reason why vendors could be so expensive: kickbacks, commission and markups. This is actually normal in the wedding industry. I have friends that do it. It's part of their business model. I cannot pass judgment on how other wedding planners decide to charge. It's not my business, literally. But what I do believe in is full transparency. I think when couples understand that there's a commission that the wedding planner makes for working with certain vendors, that's okay. But when the couple has no idea that the planner added a 15% markup on top of the vendor's true cost, it feels wrong. I had to do it for years. It's actually one of the first signs in my career that the light bulb went off, and I thought, someday I want to open my own business and do this differently –charging a fixed fee that covers my worth, that is independent from what couples spend on their wedding and making a promise to never add markups and always pass on any commission that vendors give us to the couple.

This is why I am an advocate for price transparency, because a lot of couples don't even know that this is happening. This is why I do cost reveals every week on Instagram, and this is why revealing prices is a huge part of my mission as a destination wedding planner. And unfortunately, it seems to be a rare thing. You hear a lot about couples sharing what they've spent, which I think is awesome, but not a ton of wedding planners are doing it, but couples love it. They eat cost revealing for breakfast. So why aren't more planners doing it? Well, if I was adding markup or doing anything shady, I wouldn't be doing this. I wouldn't want anyone to know what things cost behind closed doors so they wouldn't notice that I put a markup on top of things. Not saying that everyone does this. I'm just telling you that this is actually happening, and I'm pulling back the curtain on something that I think you, an engaged couple, deserves to know.

4. Attitude toward Budgeting

Now, to a certain extent, I think cultural differences could also be at play here between US planners and Italian planners, or ultimately it could just be a personality thing. But let me explain. I have interviewed a lot of couples post wedding doing research for my own offerings to understand the pros and cons of hiring a European wedding planner versus an American wedding planner (from the perspective of an American couple.) The number one con that I heard across the board was that there was a misalignment of expectations in the planning timeline and when they thought things should be getting done by.

The second biggest complaint from the specific couples I talked to that got married with a local planner in Portugal and Italy was that there seemed to be a general disregard from the planner for staying on budget. Again, you can boil that down to a cultural thing or it literally could just be a personality trait. Bottom line, if your planner doesn't understand that your budget is finite, it is going to cause you stress. It's really important to have a planner that spends your money like it's their own, as in it hurts when you go over budget because it feels like they are going over budget.

5. Charging based on % of total budget

It's also really common in this industry for planners to charge based on a percentage of your total budget, meaning the more you spend on your wedding, the more they get paid. I don't know why this is normal, it just is.

I personally just think it's a greater industry problem because I respect wedding planners who are just charging this way because this is the way that it's always been done. But I've just always had a huge problem with it on a personal level. So the case of a wedding planner telling you that you need to spend at least 200,000 euros on your wedding, it could actually be tied to a minimum percentage that they need to make off of your wedding for it to be worth it to them.

For more helpful ways to save - check out Cheapest Wedding Venues in Tuscany and How to Have a Low Budget Destination Wedding in Europe.

So I guess this accidentally turned into an expose of shadiness in the wedding industry. Clearly, I'm very passionate about this topic as an Italy Destination Wedding Planner, but it's all connected guys, and frankly, you deserve to know where your money is going so you can rest assured knowing that you're not overpaying for your wedding, and therefore avoiding any destination wedding regrets. For more on this topic, check out my blog "Are Destination Weddings Cheaper?” In the spirit of price transparency, I have a free guide to help you estimate the cost of your destination wedding in Europe. It's a really great place for you to start to make sure your expectations are realistic–because maybe your high guest count and high expectations actually will cost 200,000 euros. But trust me when I say this guide will show you exactly how many guests and what type of expectations you need to have so you're not spending that– well below that! Download the guide below!