Seventy guests, another country and a single link

♥

In early September we said “I do” on the Costa del Sol, in front of around seventy guests. Most of them flew in from Hungary, and a few were Spanish locals we spoke English with. Anyone who has planned a wedding abroad, or is knee-deep in planning one right now, knows that at this point the biggest question on guests’ minds isn’t what to wear, but how they’ll actually get there, where they’ll sleep, whether they need a car, and what the weather will be like by the sea in September.

I’ll admit that when we started, I never imagined our own wedding website would turn out to be one of the best decisions of the whole planning process. Looking back, though, I honestly can’t think of anything else that took quite so much weight off our shoulders.

When guests need a plane ticket, not just directions

At a wedding close to home, guests get the invitation, type the address into their sat nav, and that’s more or less it. Abroad, every single guest has a little trip of their own to plan: flights to book, ideally early, because prices wait for no one; accommodation to find in an area most of them have never seen; a decision to make about renting a car. And of course they want to know what’s happening on the other days of the weekend, because if they’re travelling all that way, they’re not coming for just one evening.

Every one of these questions is fair, and every one of them comes up again and again, only from seventy different people, at seventy different times, and quite likely just as you’re on the phone with the decorator.

What went on the site

Honestly? Pretty much everything we could think of, and looking back, I’m glad we did. For the journey there was information on flights, accommodation and car hire; for the weekend, the programme, the venue and a weather forecast; and this was also where we asked guests to RSVP and choose their menu. Towards the end the seating plan went up, along with a photo upload app where guests could share their own pictures, so the moments of the day wouldn’t end up scattered across seventy phones. Alongside all that there was the dress code and gift information, plenty of smaller but important details, and of course a contact section, so anyone who got stuck knew who to ask. And the site didn’t fall silent after the big day either: on a separate “Thank you!” page we thanked everyone who came and celebrated with us.

We tried to set some things up so that guests had to think as little as possible. On the menu, for example, every dish had its allergens marked and there were vegan options too, and for the seating plan all you had to do was type in the name on your invitation, and the site showed you which table and which seat was waiting for you.

From a professional point of view, the key thing is that guests didn’t have to piece the picture together themselves. They didn’t have to dig through an old email, a Messenger message and scraps of a conversation from months earlier to work out what was happening when and where they needed to be: there was one place where the latest, valid information was always waiting for them.

We still talked, of course, just in a more organised way

Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t hide behind a website. We had a Facebook event and group, and we wrote to people on Messenger and by email, but these didn’t run side by side, each doing its own thing. They were all part of the same system, with the website at its centre.

And this is the part I’m probably proudest of: as the big day got closer, the flood of questions simply never came. Anyone who has planned a wedding knows that last month, when the phone rings more and more often and everyone gets in touch with “just a quick question”. For us, the number of individual enquiries stayed manageable the whole way through, which, with seventy guests mostly travelling from abroad, is no small thing.

What would it have been like without it?

It doesn’t take much imagination: a far busier Messenger and inbox, and many more phone calls, especially in the final month, when there are a thousand other things on your mind anyway. That stretch is for the final arrangements, the last rounds with suppliers and, let’s be honest, the excitement too. You don’t want your energy going on explaining for the tenth time which airport is best to fly into.

What I’d take forward as a professional

Today I look at this story not only as a bride but as a professional, and if I could give a couple facing a wedding abroad or a big guest list just one piece of advice, it would be this: don’t cut back on how much you communicate, work on keeping it organised. These are the things that helped us most:

• ✦Make one place the “official” source. If something changes, you update it in one place, and every other channel points there.
• ✦Whatever guests need to do, let them do it there. If RSVPs and menu choices happen in the same place as the information, you won’t have to hunt down answers across your messages.
• ✦Get the travel information out as early as you can. Flights, accommodation, car hire: guests decide on these sooner than you’d think, and it’s best if everything is in front of them by then.
• ✦Keep the other channels, just give them their place. The group, the event and Messenger are there for the human connection and the atmosphere, not for looking up the programme.
• ✦Things decided at the last minute need a place in advance too. The seating plan or the exact timeline often only comes together in the final days, but if guests know where they’ll find it, they won’t ask about it beforehand.
• ✦Think about languages. If your guests come from several countries, it makes a real difference if everyone can read the essentials in their own language, or at least in one everybody shares.

Where it all began

I built our website myself, and looking back, that was the spark that gave me the idea for my business. I saw how much it gave us, and I thought: if it helped us this much, it will help others too.

If you’re also planning a wedding abroad, or simply one with lots of guests, and you’d like the last month of planning to be about the excitement rather than the phone calls, have a look around my site or just drop me a line.