What It Was Like To Have a Destination Wedding in Spain

Special edition blog! It’s officially been a month since Matt and I got married in a 10th-century castle in the countryside of Catalonia, Spain. And it was more than a wedding venue — the castle had 8 bedrooms, which meant that up to 16 people could stay there, so our families came a few days early and we spent three nights together. (You can book it on your favorite homestay booking app, like Booking.com!) Then, on the day of the wedding, about 15 more friends came in by shuttle bus from Barcelona for the ceremony.

As you can probably imagine, planning a destination wedding wasn’t easy — especially because I didn’t have a wedding planner. I figured that since it was going to be so small, I’d be able to figure it all out on my own. And I did! But it was a lot harder than I was expecting. 😅 So I thought I would share some wisdom about what it was like to have a destination wedding in Spain.

1. Planning a wedding is way harder in your non-native language

I’m good enough at Spanish, but I’m still not quite where I want to be. (I’m at a B2 level or so.) If I didn’t speak any Spanish, there’s absolutely no way I could have pulled this off without a planner. While several of our vendors — photographers, videographers, and makeup artist — were from Eastern Europe and spoke English, our caterer was from a small town in Catalonia and didn’t speak any English at all.

A few months before the wedding, we flew from Alicante (where we live) to Barcelona to meet with the caterer, Mirador del Montserrat, for the first time. While we were there, we were treated to a 3.5-hour tasting to help us select our wedding menu. And then we sat down for a 2-hour meeting with the head chef, Josep. Since Matt is still learning Spanish, that was all me. I felt like crying at some points because I was confused, or didn’t understand, or felt like I wasn’t doing a good job of explaining myself. But we got through it. It was hard, and I love challenging myself like that (most of the time).

2. Living in Spain was a major advantage

Most of the time, I feel like destination weddings are a “destination” for everyone — the guests as well as the bride and groom. We were kind of in a weird situation because a wedding in Barcelona was a destination for us, but we still live in Spain. That really helped because we were able to go physically meet with vendors like the caterer, when typically if you live outside your destination wedding country, you may not have the opportunity to go check everything out in person.

In fact, when we went to Spain last summer to apply for our Spain digital nomad visas, we made arrangements for a quick visit to the castle where we would be getting married a year later. That was a huge help, because otherwise we would have had no idea what the space really looked like when we were trying to envision our day.

And another reason living in Spain was so helpful: When we went to meet with the caterer, I also scheduled a wedding makeup trial while we were in town. Unfortunately it didn’t go well, so I had to find another makeup artist and schedule another trial. A month later, I hopped on a quick one-hour flight to Barcelona, had a trial with a new makeup artist, and flew home later that night.

3. Spanish weddings are quite different from American weddings

I don’t think it hit me until we were having that meeting with the caterer, but Spanish weddings are really different from American ones. While I feel like American weddings are very alcohol-focused, Spanish weddings seem to be very food-focused. During the meeting, we were trying to pick two main course options for our guests, after having already chosen snacks and appetizers, and I told Josep that we didn’t need starter courses. He (very kindly) asked then if I was bringing our American guests all that way to starve them?

So we ended up having snacks, appetizers, starters, main courses, homemade sorbet, and cake. That was plenty of food, especially since our wedding was dinner-party style and only lasted from about 5-9 p.m. At a typical Spanish wedding, the dinner portion wouldn’t even start until 10 p.m. or so, which means you’d have more time to digest between courses. 😂

4. Having a Spanish bank account made life a lot easier

While about 70% of our wedding expenses were able to be paid with a credit card, there were a few vendors that we needed to make payments via bank transfer.

Bank transfers aren’t a very common way to pay for things in the U.S. — typically we just use a credit card, or maybe Venmo or Paypal if the vendor is small and doesn’t have a way to take credit card payments. But in Spain and Europe, bank transfers are much more often used. We needed to pay our caterer, makeup artist, and guitarist via bank transfer.

With a Spanish bank account, you won’t have to worry about paying any additional fees for making the transfers. However, if you don’t have a Spanish account, you could use an app like Transferwise (actually I guess it’s just called “Wise” now) and send money from your American account to a Spanish account, for a fee.

5. Bodas.net, the Spanish equivalent to The Knot, was a lifesaver

Americans know that The Knot is one of the most popular websites for wedding planning. Not only can you create your own wedding homepage to share with family and friends, but you can also use it as a wedding planning dashboard for so many more things: vendor research and outreach, budgeting, RSVP tracking, and more. I actually made two sites on TheKnot — one for our Spanish wedding, and one for our American reception.

While I was able to do website creation, budgeting, and managing invites/RSVPs for the Spanish wedding using The Knot, I had to figure out a different way to search and reach out to vendors in Spain. I’m lucky to have found Bodas.net, which is pretty much the same thing as The Knot, but for Spain! It was especially useful for reaching out to caterers. I started talking with Josep from Mirador del Montserrat on Bodas.net and then we eventually moved the conversation to email. While I didn’t use Bodas.net for making our wedding website, I did use some of its other features such as visual seating chart planning.

One note — Bodas.net is only in Spanish, so it will be most helpful if you have a decent level of Spanish knowledge/understanding.

6. American and Spanish wedding prices can be very different

So, we essentially are having two “weddings.” First was the one in Spain, which I’ve been talking about this whole time. But second, we we’re having a big reception in Kansas City this weekend, so we’ve kind of seen both sides when it comes to planning a wedding in both countries.

In general, I would say that weddings in the U.S. are much more expensive. (This is honestly kind of the theme between life in Spain and life in the U.S. — the U.S. is always more expensive, so it makes sense.) Also, I feel like if you slap the word “wedding” on something in the U.S., the price automatically increases.

One thing that surprised me though was the fact that catering seemed to be quite a bit more expensive for our Spanish wedding. Considering we were having less than 30 guests at the Spanish wedding, looking at the menu prices for different caterers on Bodas.net, I was confused as to why it was going to be more than twice as expensive as our Kansas City wedding which would have 100 people.

But eventually I figured it out. First, a Spanish catering menu includes SO MUCH FOOD (as mentioned earlier) so you’re not just getting a salad and a protein — you’re getting all the appetizers, different courses, and dessert. Second — and this is super important — beer and wine is typically going to be included with the price of your dinner! For a Spanish wedding, having beer and wine isn’t a “nice to have” like at American weddings. It’s a necessity. So that’s pretty much taking your alcohol/open bar budget out of the picture, which can often be just as expensive as the food itself at an American wedding.

And finally, and I’m not sure if this is the case for every caterer in Spain or just ours, but our caterers provided all tables, chairs, plates, cutlery, drinkware, and even decor like fresh flowers! Our catering team was TRULY the MVP of our weekend and I couldn’t be more grateful for everything they did for us.

So if you get any sticker shock when looking at caterers in Spain, be sure to clarify what their prices include.

7. Expect the unexpected

Guess what happened the night before our wedding? A huge thunderstorm that knocked out all power to the castle, including water. As we talked to the castle owners, they said that a storm like that only happens like once every five years. Great timing, right?

Luckily, by later that night, power and water had been restored. But when we all woke up on wedding day, the power and water was off  again. I was fortunate to have taken my shower the night before, but my sisters ended up washing their hair under buckets of well water in the kitchen sink while I got my makeup done. 😅

We also had to flush the toilets manually with buckets of water, which was less than ideal. And I didn’t love the idea of all our guests having to deal with that, but what else could we do?

Our guests arrived, and since they were a small group of the people we love most in the entire world, nobody cared at all.

We truly had the best day ever, and we couldn’t be more thankful for all the people who journeyed across the world to come celebrate with us. If you’re having a destination wedding in Spain, or a destination wedding anywhere, please do everything you can to make your guests feel as loved and appreciated as they’re making you feel by coming to your wedding. 🤍

One wedding down, one to go. Though being able to do everything in English for this one is making the last-minute planning feel like a breeze. 😉

Are you thinking about a destination wedding in Spain? Let me know in the comments!

-Cathy

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