Destination Weddings and Events

We start with the occasion and the guest list. How far your oldest guest can comfortably travel, how many rooms a place really has and what the weather does that month decide more than the view does. A hill town with one good property and a day's drive from the airport suits forty people. It does not suit two hundred.

Once those answers are clear, the choice of place usually narrows to two or three. We then look at what each one would be like on the day: the light, the sound and the walk from the rooms to the ceremony.

A festival changes a small town for weeks either side of the date. Festivals reshape a place while they last, and a wedding planned for a festival week competes with pilgrims and visitors for every room. The same festival can also be the reason to come, if your guests would like to see it. The months of the festivals worth planning around are set out in one place. We check the local calendar before we suggest a single date.

Some events are held in a village, a courtyard or a heritage property that belongs to somebody else's daily life. The people who look after it are hosts, not a venue team. We agree with them what happens where, who is paid for what and what may be photographed. The ordinary rules of being a guest matter more at a celebration than on any other trip, because a celebration is loud and it lasts for days.

Local cooks, musicians, florists and drivers bring more to an event than suppliers brought in from a city. Hiring them also means the money from your celebration stays in the place that hosted it.

Guests arrive from different cities on different days, and most of the problems at a destination event happen between the ceremonies. We plan arrivals, transfers, room allocation, food for every diet and what guests do on the free afternoons. Older guests, children and anyone with limited mobility are planned for by name, not as an afterthought.

There is no package price, because two events in the same place can cost very different amounts. The guest count, the season, the standard of rooms, the distance from the nearest airport and what has to be arranged locally set the figure. We quote against the event you have in mind. If it does not fit your budget, we show you what would have to change.

Tell us the occasion, the rough number of guests, the months you are considering and the kind of place you picture. If you already have a place in mind, tell us that too, and we will tell you honestly whether it can hold the event you want.