How to survive the complicated world of planning your Indian wedding in Italy
Dear Indian bride-to-be, if you’re reading this article then you have surely gotten engaged and are ready to plan your wedding. And lately it’s all the rage to have a destination wedding, also because many Indian actors and actresses are getting married in Italy, fascinated by its breathtaking beauty.
Perhaps you started doing some research after seeing some of their beautiful wedding photos and would like to follow in their footsteps. While having a beautiful destination wedding in Italy is certainly possible, let’s take a look together at the four most common mistakes that Indian couples take when planning their Indian weddings in Italy – mistakes which can and do lead to ruining the most important day of their lives.
1. Follow everything celebrities by bringing your own wedding planner from the UK or from India
While it’s true that she or he would know everything there is to know about Indian wedding – meaning you wouldn’t have to explain any of the complex wedding rituals – she would speak the same language, and she would have already organized Indian weddings. That’s all great, but the problem is that that was all done in the UK or India. And in Italy organizing Indian weddings is an entirely different story.
Therefore, here in Italy she would be faced with all the same problems as you would if you had decided to plan your wedding in Italy alone. She wouldn’t know the territory (only someone who has lived in Italy for many years truly knows the best venues to advise). She likely wouldn’t speak Italian. And finally, she wouldn’t know how to work with Italian service providers who would see her on the same level as foreign tourists: as someone who comes one time only and who would never be seen again – therefore the service provider would have no interest in proposing competitive prices and/or flexible conditions.
Moreover, as this weren’t enough, you would also have to pay for the cost of flying your wedding planner to Italy as well as for transportation and lodging for the inspection of the venues, for the menu tasting, and again for the wedding itself. So not only would you find yourself in the hands of someone who has extreme difficulty planning an Indian wedding in Italy and difficulty proposing a vast choice of venues and the right service providers, but it would also cost you a huge amount both to cover his or her normal planning fees plus the extra travel costs.
And after having spent all that money for a wedding planner from the UK, you risk that, should something unexpected happen during your Indian wedding in Italy, this planner wouldn’t know what to do or whom to turn to to resolve the issue.
2. Planning the wedding yourself
The famous DIY wedding planning is popular among various forums and wedding resourses which give you an endless amount of advices on how to organize your wedding in Italy yourself. And often you will also find indications from the venues themselves which have already hosted Indian weddings. Certainly you think that in the end it’s not so complicated. All you have to do is ask for a quote from the venue which could conveniently also recommend the florist, photographer, etc., and the problem is solved.
Easy breezy, and what’s more you think you could also save money on the wedding planner that way. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as that. I knew an Indian bride from the UK who did exactly as described above. After doing some online research, she found some villas that she liked – but didn’t realize that she was missing out on all the many other gorgeous Italian villas which could have been perfect for her. But there was just one small problem: their websites were only in Italian and therefore were left out of an English language search.
So, she made appointments at the resulting villas and she went to Italy to see them in person. Unfortunately, she hadn’t specified with them beforehand how Indian weddings are. So after flying all that way, she found herself in front of the owners or managers of the venues who, upon hearing that she required their location for three days of events, she was told by almost all of them that their venue could not host an Indian wedding, so she only wasted her time to fly all that way to see them.
3. Turn to an Italian Wedding Planner
First of all you’ll find hundreds on Instagram. In some of the photos the wedding planner may show beautiful flowers, in another candles, photos from a wedding in a park, or perhaps a beautiful dish of who-knows-what, but it is presented in such an elegant way. What a shame, though, that when you contact them and mention the Mandap they respond with, “what’s that?!”
How will you explain that you must also have Pithi or that you are Sikh needed to organize Anand Karaj ceremony? Worse still when you begin to talk them you want Indian food, and they respond that it’s not possible, that here only Italian food is served at weddings. I can’t imagine that you intend to pass entire days explaining again and again to people you don’t even know the intricate world of Indian weddings with the rules and traditions to follow, with the specific timing and order of events.
At this point you could do it on your own (but again, you would face the problems mentioned on the second point). But perhaps you’ve been fortunate and found an agency which has planned an Indian wedding. So you feel like surely you must be on the right path. Maybe. Maybe, because many foreign weddings are held in Italy. One day that wedding planner will have an Indian wedding, the next a Japanese one, another a Scottish wedding.
It’s true that one is just as important as the next; and these agencies just take note on their agendas only the most important elements of each kind of wedding. But in this way how can you expect from the wedding planner that he can fully understand and respect all the parameters that your traditions impose?
These wedding planning agencies which claim to organize foreign weddings in Italy don’t have the time necessary to dedicate to truly learn about each culture; for all the weddings that they organize, they would always have to be studying – in the end perhaps they have only organized one or two Indian weddings and all that time studying would have been useless. Time is money, and no one wants to waste a second.
Therefore, if you want to avoid that your wedding is treated superficially, risking to ruin the sanctity of the traditions, you would do yourself a favor to be extremely cautious before trusting one of these generalized wedding planning agencies.
4. Turn to any Indian person who lives in Italy to organize your wedding
It could certainly seem like the right choice; after all, they would be of the same background as you and would understand you and all of your needs – you wouldn’t have to explain anything. In addition, living in Italy they would be familiar with the territory, speak Italian, and you wouldn’t have to pay for their transportation costs. “So I would only gain by turning to an Indian who lives in Italy,” you might think.
Ok, let me ask you this: if you needed a dress specially tailored, would you turn to a professional tailor or to the cleaning lady who cleans all the tailor shops, who knows where all the fabric and scissors go, but who has never held a needle in her hands before, even if she has always seen the tailor at work with sparkling clothes resulting from his or her hands?
I would imagine that the answer is obvious, and since you wouldn’t ever want to ruin your dress by having a non-professional do the job requested, nor would you want to entrust your precious wedding – your dream day since childhood – in the hands of a non-expert. While it’s true you could always redo your dress if it doesn’t come out right, you don’t have that luxury with your wedding. You have one single possibility to make it come out perfect and unforgettable. And you certainly can’t risk that a non professional ruins such an important moment for you.
The art of planning weddings can’t be learned in a day. One must study and have vast experience in the field, have the capacity to organize and manage, have excellent problem solving skills, be able to work under stress, with the ability to resolve unexpected events in such a way that the bride and groom don’t see the problem at all. And finally they must be diplomatic and have a strong character in order to be able to keep all the service providers under his/her supervision, otherwise they could go off and do what they want to do.
These days everyone seems to be improvising at being wedding planners, taking advantage of the rising requests for Indian weddings. Even Indian dance schools which were invited to dance at weddings impersonate planners, publicizing wedding photos in which they danced at or in which they styled the bride’s hair, but the weddings themselves were not organized by them.
Even Indian musicians who played at weddings and henna artists who decorated the hands of the bridal party, all hired by another wedding planner, later announce that they are opening a wedding planning agency. Sure, they have travelled throughout Italy for various weddings organized by others, they took note of the names of the villas and the contacts of the providers, and they surely thought that planning weddings couldn’t be so difficult. Moreover, they are also Indian, so why wouldn’t an Indian bride trust them?
Because they’re not wedding planners. Period.
Your Indian wedding must be planned, organized, coordinated!
If your wedding planner must also dance at your wedding thinking about their own change of outfit/makeup/hairstyle instead of checking up on the kitchen and the coordination of the waiters; or if he must play during the ceremony, thus leaving you alone without anyone to tell you when it’s time to go down the isle, how can he/she possibly coordinate such an intense day as that of an Indian wedding?
How do you want your wedding to go: smoothly without any issues, or with the risk that something slips through your planner’s hands and something then goes wrong? Is it really worth the risk? Because we’re talking about a huge risk here.
And I can’t imagine that you would want to ruin such an important moment in your life that can never be corrected or redone. If you put your trust in a Wedding Planner, what do you expect from him or her? That they dance at your Sangeet night or entertain the guests with their music? That they’re in the kitchen preparing the curry? Or that your planner is with the team, with everything under control, constantly making sure that everything is where it should be, that the timing is respected, and that all the service providers are doing what they need to be doing in a timely manner?
If you’re a rational person, as I imagine you are, the response is obvious.
What to do now?
So, at this point perhaps you think that there’s no ideal solution, that either way you would have to renounce something: either the knowledge of your traditions, of the capacity to organize, or take out a loan to hire two wedding planners. What if I told you that none of this is necessary?
BECAUSE THERE IS A SOLUTION!
All you have to do is turn to the first and only wedding planning agency in Italy which specializes in planning only Indian weddings! Here you will find those who share your values, who know deeply about your culture, and who have a remarkable organizational capacity, ensuring that no detail is left unchecked. All this to offer you the solution – the only one in Italy – to help you organize your dream Indian wedding in Italy with total assurance, without anxiety or stress, knowing that all your needs are taken into account. Start here!
HAPPY PLANNING!
Svetlana Krasnova
Indian Wedding Specialist
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