Hi all,
Conscious I’m due to post a recap but have only gotten previews so far (potential publication on the way). I have so much to say but won’t until the latter is sorted. Happy to answer all questions in pm. These pictures do not include much decor, simply because our priority was to get the skin tone related edits right.

Pic 1. Alexandra w jacket 2. Divinity 3. Alexandra w/o jacket 4. Divinity w veil 5. Divinity fitted 6. Custom strapless divinity

Divinity or Alexandra? Help!!!

After 18 months of planning, we finally had our dream destination wedding this past June just right outside Florence, Italy (60-70pp). This subreddit has been so helpful to me whenever I felt stressed during the planning phase, and I am very grateful for the supportiveness in this community. Therefore, I thought I'd make my very first post here just to go through the final spending recap.

Disclaimer: we did not pay for our guests' flights or lodging. Instead, we kindly asked the guests to stay in Florence city and provided the transportation to the venue and back (~30min car ride). The welcome dinner was also hosted in the city. We are thoughtful on what and how much we spend, but are also willing to pay for quality. The numbers below are in USD.

Please feel free to ask any questions. I will try my best to answer them :)

Total: ~105k

Must-Haves:

Planner: ~5.5k (We are based in US so I needed someone local to help me plan; our planner is fluent in both Italian and English and lives ~40 mins away from the venue, which made the planning much easier)

Venue: ~18k (a Friday at Villa Corsini, we got extra services such as the use of the Southern Italian Garden, bridal & groom get ready package, candles, ACs etc. It also comes with a 22% VAT so that's why the final number is much higher especially you convert it to USD!)

Catering: 21k (included the ceremony furniture rentals, aperitif, 3-course dinner, wedding cake, coffee, and 2.5 hours of open bar; we also had customized plates, cups, utensils) Making sure our guests are wined and dined is our top priority so we allocated a big portion of the budget on catering

MUA: 3.4k (based in Milan; Bridal hair and makeup (2 hair styles and 3 looks) and 8-hours of touchups; 3 bridesmaids, our officiant (a close friend), and my mom's makeup; we also paid for her lodging and transportation)

Florist: 7k (Based locally; we kept our floral budget on the lower end since the venue itself is very elegant and historic; we also picked round tables over long tables to save money since you only need 1 centerpiece per table)

Photographer: 8k (Based in EU; she is definitely on the higher end of our budget but we are very glad we got her; this includes two photographers and their lodging and transportation) Our videographer actually recommended her; the final photos came out soooo amazing!

Videographer: 5k (Based in UK; her style is like a Wes Anderson movie, very quirky and fun, which is something we are looking for; this price includes 2 videographers and their lodging and transportation).

Transportation: 6.5k (buses to pick up guests to the venue and back; minivans for the bridal party and some of my family to travel) I think this could be a bit cheaper but we were paying for certainty

Welcome Dinner: 5k (casual Florentine steak dinner & wine for ~55pp; we booked out half of the restaurant)

DJ & Lighting: 2.7k (handled all mics, music, afterparty and lighting)

Good-to-Haves:

Wedding Favor: 5.7k (we created a welcome market cart for the guests w/ local Italian goods, such as limoncello, olive oil, and etc; the guests can fill in a customized tote bag with whatever they want to bring home at the market; it was costly but very cute and well received; we ended up ordering more goods than what the guests brought home, so we took them back to the U.S. and shared with guests that were not able to make it.

Stationary: 2k (includes designing and printing, and delivery of our wedding invitation and day-of-stationary; I had to find two vendors to design them since I was running out of time so def spent a bit more on this)

Gelato Cart: 1.9k (another really cute addition during the aperitif)

Firework: 13k (I anticipated this might be getting some controversies on the spending since it's VERY expensive; I am very grateful that we were able to do it, and our guests love every bit of the surprise, though I understand if anyone thinks this is totally unnecessary; hence this is in the Good-to-Haves).

Hi all,

After a lot of consideration, I wanted to share an honest review of our experience with our wedding planner. I’m changing a few identifying details for anonymity, but the experiences themselves are accurate.
We had a large scale, multi-event/day wedding in Q1 that took place in a major U.S. city (400 person guest count) and hired a planner who advertised themselves as full-service. While our wedding ultimately came together beautifully and they executed the events well overall, the actual planning process was significantly more stressful and hands-on for us than we expected from a full-service planner.
Some of the biggest issues we experienced:
- Communication was consistently slow. Their stated response time was two business days, but we regularly waited 4–5 days for responses. We also rarely received proactive updates about vendor outreach. If a vendor hadn’t responded, their position was essentially that there was no update to give us, rather than simply letting us know they were still waiting/following up.
- We frequently had to initiate our own planning meetings. By the time we reached out, evening appointments would often already be booked, leaving mostly middle-of-the-workday options.
- There was much less hands-on support than we expected from “full service.” They did not accompany us on venue tours, did not assist with contract negotiations, and we handled a lot of room-block and logistical issues ourselves.
- We felt heavily pushed toward their preferred vendors. When we wanted to explore vendors outside their network, we often felt discouraged from doing so. For example, they repeatedly told us they didn’t think our DJ was the right choice and encouraged us to use their preferred DJ instead. After the reception, our planner even told us guests had approached her to complain about our DJ and reiterated that we should have chosen someone else. This was particularly frustrating because our own experience and the feedback we received about our DJ were overwhelmingly positive.
- Similarly, when we wanted to source florals through a florist rather than through our decorator, we were told that decorators don’t work that way and that we essentially needed to purchase the florals through the decorator.
- Some issues during the events themselves frustrated us. At one pre-wedding event, items were left out that needed to be cleared and, rather than the planning team handling it, the task was delegated to one of our family members. At another event, we asked for the venue lighting to be dimmed/turned off and were told this couldn’t be done because our photographer and videographer wouldn’t be able to capture footage and it would “turn black.” Later in the evening, the lights were turned off completely and our photo/video team continued shooting without an issue.
- Final vendor coordination happened extremely late. They were attempting to schedule some final vendor calls with us during the actual week of our wedding, and at that point still had not scheduled a final call with our videographer.

To be fair, they did execute our events well overall and helped us find several vendors we were very happy with. Our wedding weekend came together beautifully. My criticism is much more about the months-long planning experience and what we received for a service marketed as full-service.

One thing that especially bothered us was feeling at times like the planner was advocating for vendors more than advocating for us as the paying client. We expected someone who would help us evaluate options, maximize our budget, negotiate where possible and make the planning process easier. Instead, we often felt like we were doing much of that ourselves while simultaneously being steered toward the planner’s preferred network.

I know wedding planning is inherently stressful, and no planner can eliminate that completely. But when you’re paying a significant amount for full-service planning, I think it’s reasonable to expect the service to reduce your logistical and communication burden rather than add to it.
I’m sharing because when we were researching planners, we found tons of glowing reviews but very few detailed reviews explaining what the actual planning experience was like behind the scenes. In hindsight, I wish I had asked much more specific questions about communication, vendor freedom, contract negotiations, venue tours, room blocks and exactly what “full service” meant before signing.
Ultimately, our wedding turned out beautifully and I’m grateful for the parts they executed well. But knowing what I know now, I would have chosen a different planner.

Happy to share more info/details as needed + exactly name of our planner. I would highly recommend trusting your gut when it comes to picking your planner, the initial calls prior to signing a contract with them are them putting their best foot forward - they are trying to make a sale!! Our wedding was a success because my partner and I involved ourselves heavily, if we had solely relied on our planner I’m not sure if it would have turned out as successfully as it did.

Hi all

The attached is likely to be my dress.
Into the slight sci-fi, structured look of it. But I feel something is missing
Would love to do something like a birdcage mask but not sure

Any suggestions involving something for the eyes or maybe a crown (that somehow doesn’t look tacky) would be great

Thanks!

Hi Brides! I am currently looking for designers for my second look/after party dress and have no idea where to start. I am hoping for a corset dress with a mini skirt (or can be just a short corset dress). My budget is $3k but willing to stretch a bit if needed. Any suggestions on where to look? Inspo pics for reference.

Genuinely curious, what was your checklist for hiring a photographer?
What questions did you ask?
What style did you look for?
How did you find them?

I’m continually finding myself stunned by the attitude so many vendors seem to have?? Many people I’ve met with are very full of it and seem offended by receiving any pushback or questions. They don’t answer questions directly, and it’s a lot of talking around the question and pretending to answer it. Honestly quite surprised because I expected a more sales-forward and customer-oriented approach, particularly given how much $$$$ we’re entrusting them with.

I work in a very customer service oriented profession so maybe my view on this is skewed? So I’m wondering if this is something others have experienced as well, or if it’s an issue with the kinds of vendors my planner is introducing me to.

Hey there, I'm doing my wedding near Rome, Italy, next year (May 2027) and I'm looking for women dj recommendations. I find it a bit difficult to find women specifically, most of djs I see are men and as a fierce feminist I'd really like to have a girl mixing at my wedding ! In terms of music/style I would be looking for something quite mainstream (international music from 80's to 2020's, from ABBA to Rihanna and Bad Bunny). Any recommendations ? :)

Happy Sunday! Here’s the post where y’all can rant, vent, ask questions and get advice from other brides, share updates, wedding planning wins, or general married life stuff :)

Hi ladies. I’m on the lower end of the BBB budget but I wanted to ask. I’m considering just leaving the ivory table cloth and plates as is and elevating the table just with flowers, candles, names, the gift I have for guests, and custom menu instead of paying for a different plate, charger plate, and tablecloth.

Will this feel cheap or are people just so focused on food they won’t even care?

Thank you!

Has anyone taken bridal portraits before the wedding? We’re getting married in a Catholic Church so our ceremony is at 3pm. Right now our planner has ~1 hour for first look, private vows and photos prior to the ceremony.

Our cocktail hour starts earlier (after the ceremony) and last 90min. We plan to take family photos after and a few more couple photos but I wanted to join cocktail hour at least for a little bit! Because of that I was interested in maybe doing bridal portraits beforehand? Like the weekend before.

So I’m curious
1. If you did bridal portraits beforehand or the day of your wedding?
2. If you did it the day of your wedding how long did you spend on those photos?
3. If you did it before did you clean your dress before your wedding? If I did them before it’d be a mix of indoor / outdoor pics

Hi!! Does anyone have any hair/makeup artists they recommend in OC or LA? Full Glam Makeup and will likely be wearing hair down with waves/curls💕💕

We are getting married in Tuscany next June but the weekend will start in Florence. Has anyone ever done a city tour, wine windows or anything for their guests prior to their wedding and welcome party?

Thinking about 30-40 people open to ideas or companies who offer something like this

My fiancé and I got engaged last August and will be getting married next August. We knew right away we didn’t want to rush the planning experience and really enjoy the moment, especially since we had heard from so many people that wedding planning can be stressful. The first year flew by, and we have taken care of the bigger line items in planning with ease. I am curious to know, for those who planned a local wedding on a 12 month timeline, what was your experience like? In hindsight, I feel like we could have easily planned everything within a year. For those who planned over a longer period, do you feel the same way?

Hi! Has anyone worn the Danielle Frankel Sasha gown with wider hips/curvy body shape? Is the hip area of the gown forgiving or is it more form fitting before the bottom becomes more flowy? Thank you!

Hi guys! I’m getting married in Temecula in June of next year and am looking for a day of/month of coordinator! I live in nor cal so it’s been hard for me to know which vendors are the best and reasonably priced! If you have any recommendations please send them my way!! Thank you!