5 Tried & Tested Long Distance Wedding Planning Tips

This post was written by Christy from Simply Together, who has very kindly shared her long distance wedding planning tips based on her own experience.

Let’s set the scene; at the airport, husband-to-be anxiously waiting at the gate. Wife-to-be in queue to clear customs and border control. She collects her luggage and has her passport stamped. The doors open. The wife-to-be walks through and falls into the husband-to-be’s arms. It’s been at least 6 weeks since they last saw each other. This is potentially the start of the end of the long distance relationship. Sounds like something from a romantic movie? Surely long distance relationships never end in marriage. Well, mine has (that’s a story for another time), and after a lot of long distance wedding planning, we’ve now settled into family life.

But when planning a wedding from the other side of the planet, where do you even start? Here I am rounding up my top tips on how to plan a wedding from the opposite timezone.

Table of Contents

1. Get assistance

Let’s get real; you’re on the other side of the planet. If you don’t want to have to trust website images, get assistance. Whether that’s your future spouse, a friend or family member in the area, a wedding planner or even local facebook groups to give you further insight. At the very least, they’ll be able to add additional context to those website photos.

2. Plan what you can locally

Wedding dress, suits, shoes, faux florals, wedding invites & save the dates. Anything that can/will be posted, or transported in luggage, plan it where you are. This way you’re getting direct input and will be able to lay your eyes on the final product before the big day!

3. Don’t stress the small stuff when long distance wedding planning

Forget to book transport from the hotel to the ceremony venue? Ask the hotel to book you a taxi. Honestly, anything overlooked probably wasn’t that important at the end of the day, so don’t try to cram anything overlooked into the final moments before the event. Ask for help and focus on the bigger picture!

4. Trust

We decided that the most important things on our wedding day were the photos, making memories and getting married. So that’s what we did! We wed, laughed, danced, ate good food and cringed at awkward speeches. Did it all go to plan? Absolutely not, but the joy outweighs that.

The hardest part about long distance wedding planning is not being on location. You have to exercise a lot of trust in your other half and/or onsite assistance. Throw micro-managing out the window, it will simply cause more stress at the end of the day. Marriage is built on trust, so why not start the exercise during the long distance wedding planning process?

5. Logistics

Elopement? One wedding with friends & family travelling if they can? A wedding and a blessing? Honeymoon after everything is all said and done, or are you tackling wedding number one, taking some time out for a honeymoon and then travelling to wedding number two?

We decided that we wanted friends and family on both sides of the planet to be able to attend our wedding. So, we were legally married in New Zealand, had our honeymoon in Singapore and Malaysia on our way to the UK for the second wedding/blessing. This worked great for us, gave family travelling to both events time to move around the globe, as well as giving us some downtime between all of that people-ing! It’s so important to allow yourselves some timeout from all of the wedding chaos, so make sure to factor that in!

There we have it, my top five tips for long distance wedding planning! Planning a wedding following a long distance relationship may not be the ‘normal’ journey to marriage and family life, and we could certainly dive into that further. However, I hope this provides some inspiration on where to start if you ever find yourself in a similar boat!