PART 1 - 10 biggest mistakes couples make planning their wedding

OUR ADVICE ABOUT YOUR WEDDING

After organizing 20,000 marriages in 25 years of business for couples from all over the world we can truly express an opinion on the classic mistakes that couples make in thinking and organizing their own wedding.

We have taken care of the weddings of world-renowned soccer players, NBA players, famous singers, actors, anchorman, ministers and presidents and of course people who are not famous, regular people. We even gave a free ceremony to a couple who couldn't afford to have their wedding here in Italy. All of them have in common the fact that they repeat some of the same classic mistakes.
What we can say is that we know well the mistakes of couples from the last 25 years and we want to make a list of the 10 most important and serious mistakes in order to help couples avoid them in the next 25 years.

Going for the cheapest deal

The biggest mistake and unfortunately the most common is going for the cheapest deal. Independent of the economic capacity of many couples, they tend to think that the quality of some suppliers is not so dissimilar and therefore among various florists or catering restaurants, photographers, musiciansthey prefer to go look for and choose vigorously the one that costs less.
The idea that some suppliers here in Italy initially try to inflate the prices is true, and therefore it is important to ask for different price quotes and make comparisons to avoid those who try to take advantage of people.

That said then you need to look at the value you get for the money because very often a very low price corresponds to a matching quality or inefficiency of the service.

How many times has the low price paid for a photographer resulted in that photographer taking photos that were worse than the ones the guests took. (In fact our advice is always get a good photographer or instead get photos from all the guests and make an album from them instead of throwing away money on a bad photographer).

How many times has the low price paid to a florist for the bouquet, boutonniere and arrangements resulted in the flowers wilting in June, July and August before the ceremony is over making the photos horrible.

How many times have we seen bouquets with very few flowers and excessive greenery or extremely small bouquets in hand the brides.
How many times have the low cost musicians and bands and DJs arrived late because they are disorganized or they did not show up at all or have forgotten the play list or sheet music or amplifications or cables or having everything they played something else than what was requested.

But all this is nothing compared with the mistake of choosing the cheapest solution in the case of catering or restaurant. Eating food that is not edible (to cook food for two people at a prior tasting is not how to do it for fifty people at an event) or to be served by a waiter that is working for the first time is common, actually very probable in high season when you rely on caterer that is not organized and has several events in one day. But above all, the raw materials: unfortunately eating fresh fish of dubious origin but with cadmium is easier than you think, eating meat not checked properly that seems good and soft but with harmful substances or even a high level of radioactivity is possible and this can also be so with oil, wine, cream etc. etc. Health is a precious commodity and it is absurd to risk your health by eating harmful foods and it is better to double check who you are dealing with and ask why when the price is considerably lower than the norm.

Mistake n. 2 Underestimate the time and the difficulty of doing it all yourself

For two people that have a lot of time for meetings, site inspections and research, it is possible to think of organizing a wedding in Italy on your own. It requires both the bride and groom to have many hours and days to travel and study in search of venues and suppliers and to communicate with them. For a wedding the average is at least 500 hours divided in many days. But the best part is that:The surprise is still around the corner and therefore it can be that not even after the second visit to the venue it becomes known that the day after the wedding the bride and groom have leave the villa before noon because of the arrival of other customers or a new event. This may not be acceptable and therefore another trip is needed to find and confirm another venue.

It is true that for a Catholic wedding, the priest or the diocese of the couple must send the documents to the local priest or diocese in Italy but it happens inexplicably that the documents get lost or they lose a part of them and therefore they have to start from scratch.

It happens that the photographer remembers late that he was already booked with another wedding and that he is sorry for the fact that he has to send an assistant (not always true . imagine you're your photo package is for 1000 Euro and two months later he gets a bigger service for 3000 Euro that only he can do.) In the meantime the other photographers that the couple met are busy and they have to come back and find another spending an enormous amount of time and energy and money.

Many buildings and churches in Italy are more than 500 years old and therefore it is always possible that there is a need for a last minute restoration or that there was a long planned renovation that the couple was not told about right away and then this discovery results in the need of finding a new location.