Our Wedding
How to Plan a Wedding in Paris
I always imagined having a very small wedding or elopement in Paris. When it came time to actually plan a wedding, choosing a destination was our biggest hurdle. We tried to make it work in Charleston, but our favorite hotel doesn’t allow weddings, and most venues were not in our wedding budget. France seemed like so much work and it’s hard to imagine that it might cost less, but it did. We got married in Paris in October 2017, so I’m want to talk about how we decided on Paris, and our wedding plans.
How to Plan a Wedding in Paris
Our Wedding Reception
See all our Paris wedding details here
How to Start wedding planning in another city or country:
Once we ruled out the US, we were hoping for The South of France. Certain factors made it seem impossible. It’s harder to get to, more difficult to get around once you’re there, and hotels and chateaus ($$$) were our only venue options. Then there’s Paris. It’s a major city with plenty of hotel, airbnb, and affordable venue options. We’ve both been a few times (once together), it’s easy to get around without arranging transportation. There’s so much for everyone to do. And now we’ll always have Paris.
We invited a small group of 16 people (so 18 total including us and our photographers), and made sure our friends knew there was zero pressure to make it all the way across the world. A few couldn’t make it and we completely understood! There will be a party to celebrate with the rest of Conor’s family and our friends once we’re back in Chicago.
Things to consider when planning a wedding in another country
The rules vary country to country, but in order to get married in France, one of us would have had to move to Paris for at least 40 days (tempting, I know) and would have needed to submit at least two bills proving residency. If that’s not an option for you either, plan on legally getting married before traveling to France.
Almost every vendor has been on vacation most of this month, making it difficult to make significant progress. My advice here would be to not plan a wedding in early – mid August although I always try to avoid any hot or peak season–travel is more enjoyable and affordable. Also allow yourself some additional time before or after August if you’re planning a September or October wedding.
How to Plan a Wedding in Paris
Make a Wedding Timeline and Hire a planner
At first, I thought we would be able to plan everything on our own. I’m organized, so surely I could handle a simple wedding checklist. We planned on keeping things fairly straightforward, so should be easy enough, right? Not exactly. I had zero luck finding a venue or vendors, and felt so discouraged. Late one night, I was looking up weddings in France on Style Me Pretty and inquired with two planners, just to see if that might be an option for us. Luxe Paris Events ended up being a lot more reasonable than expected, so we arranged a call. We mentioned wanting a venue that looked like this (below). Billy showed us a photo of the perfect studio space that cost 1/5 less than most venues in the US. We never would have found it on our own, and he ended up saving us a ton of money.
How long does it take to plan a wedding?
We put together a wedding planning timeline with his help, and figured out what would need to happen over the next 6 months. Making it happen that quickly wasn’t an issue, and the thing that saved us was having our wedding on a weekday. Days don’t matter while you’re on vacation, so we were completely open to the idea. It meant vendors were available, and our venue was, too. We also wanted to give our guests plenty of time to plan accordingly since they’d have to fly to Paris.
I created a mood board (or pinterest board) with planning ideas. Showing Billy my vision made it all so easy. That helped us nail down vendors and the general aesthetic for our ceremony and dinner.
Choosing a venue
We signed contracts with Luxe Paris Events and our venue a few days after speaking to Billy. Having a wedding at a hotel is probably easier but not really cost effective for a small wedding. One of the number one questions asked is how to plan a wedding on a budget and my answer is to find simple venue. When you consider the cost of the venue and food and beverage minimums, hotels (and most venues) really add up. We found a great studio space (an empty apartment) and brought everything in ourselves. We kept decor simple and really, it was perfect.
Choose a photographer
There are plenty of photographers in Paris, but we’re flying our photographer and her second shooter (aka her husband) to shoot our wedding. I have a handful of close friends who are wedding photographers and know what it’s like to shoot with someone I’m comfortable with. Katie has been one of my closest friends for almost 4 years and she and her husband are both insanely talented.
Given my circumstances, being close to both the photographer and second shooter was important to me. And both our friends will have a chance to be in photos, and to take plenty of breaks to enjoy the wedding weekend. I’ve also told them both 500 times that I want half the amount of photos regular people get, but we’ll see how that goes. Because what am I going to do with a photo of my shoes? I don’t even have wedding shoes, so that’s a whole other ordeal.
Choosing Vendors
I didn’t really have to think about this since we spoke with and hired an American planner who lives in Paris. But – I would also recommend hiring a planner that’s fluent in English unless you speak French. Billy has been helping us plan our wedding weekend and has worked on everything from boat rentals and furniture to florals and hair and makeup. Ultimately, I was able to choose everything I wanted, but was shown options that would work for me based on the mood board I put together.
Conor’s friend who lives in Paris happens to be a classically trained violinist and is going to play for us during the ceremony. Really lucked out there. We asked one of our good friends to officiate, although my planner does offer that service as well. Had we not asked Wil, we would have been happy to have Billy officiate.
How to Plan a Wedding in Paris
Skip The Wedding Cake
This is basically my dream because French pastries are my favorite type of dessert, so much that for years, I always asked for an assortment of pastries for everyone to share in lieu of a cake. We’ll have a traditional croquembouche (cream puff tower!), and an assortment of pastries.
How to Plan a Wedding in Paris
Wedding Weekend Plans
Since everyone’s traveling across the world to celebrate our nuptials, it was important enough that we planned few events to make the trip a memorable experience for everyone. We will host a welcome cocktail party, planned a river cruise on the Seine, our wedding, and a farewell brunch the day after we’re married. Conor and I plan on spending time with everyone during the day, too, but these events will hopefully be highlights of the trip for everyone.
We’re also making sure to plan a little downtime before and after the wedding.
Create a Wedding Website
Our wedding website is password protected (sorry guys) but I’ll share details once I’m back from our wedding and honeymoon. I would recommend including details of the wedding weekend, a map including your hotel and venue location, suggested nearby hotels, and a list of things to do and see in the city.
It doesn’t have to be perfect
People keep telling me it’s going to be perfect, but that’s now what I’m after. Wherever your wedding might be, try not to play out exactly how everything should be, because chances are, it will be different than you imagine. That doesn’t mean it won’t be wonderful and amazing.
Our Wedding Weekend Events
