2017 Wedding Part I - Distance is Not the Only Hurdle to an Overseas Event

What a year! 2017 has been filled with a lot of work and a lot of travel. Though we did have a few small projects, most of our time and efforts were put into a big wedding that took place in both Ireland and Pennsylvania! I am used to traveling for events, but this was our first major event overseas. To say there were a few extra inconveniences would be an understatement, but the week came together beautifully and we have heard nothing but positive feedback from everyone involved. This post will outline some of the unexpected issues we encountered throughout the process of planning a wedding in Ireland and how we tackled them.

Normally, when working on an event from afar, the main issue is that you cannot physically see the space, taste the food, feel the atmosphere, etc. The other glaring obstacle is the time difference, which often limits your window of productivity. Luckily, with the ever more impressive magic of technology, we now have creative ways to get around some of those barriers. Ireland, however, is not a country known for its modernization, particularly when you set out beyond the few major cities into the charming Irish countryside. I am not saying this is bad, there is simply a different mindset regarding the pace of the business world and the need to be available 24/7. In the States, we rely heavily on email for business communications and generally receive a response within a day. Emails to Ireland were often returned weeks later, and many businesses did not even have email addresses. Thank goodness for our international phone plan!

Our struggle with accessibility began in the early stages while trying to locate a church for the ceremony. A Catholic wedding must be held in a Catholic church. Not only was it difficult to find churches in Ireland on the internet, but ones that we did find had very little information online. In addition, we had become aware that priests in Ireland are not relocated every few years like they are in the United States, which means they have an established parish and will generally only marry members of their congregation. After several attempts to contact the churches, it became clear that finding a ceremony venue would require appointments in person. Even after we confirmed a church, it was still extremely difficult to communicate with the priest throughout the planning process because he simply did not care for technology and used it infrequently. When no amount of persistence via phone or email bears results, the only solution is a face-to-face meeting. Site visits are always helpful if not necessary in the event planning world. When your event is geographically far away, you need to be efficient by scheduling as many meetings as possible into each trip so you aren’t spending too much of your budget on travel. In our case, we traveled to Ireland twice before the wedding: once to secure a ceremony church and scout out hotel and reception venues, and once to firm up details with all participating vendors.

Another unfamiliar snafu emerged as several of the Irish guests on the invite list sent incomplete mailing addresses. We received some without street numbers, some without street names and many without postal codes. When pressed for more information, most would respond with, “That’s just how it is.” When asked how they receive their mail, the answer was, “The mailman knows where to bring it.” This is not what an OCD event planner with a reliable address label template wants to hear, however in this instance, you pretty much have to take their word for it and trust that the information will get where it needs to go. If you think about it logically, writing the town and country on the mail will at least get it in the right area. Trying to add street names and numbers that the local post office doesn’t use will only add confusion. As for the address label template, you will simply need to go through and make a lot of painstaking edits. Such is the nature of the job! The lack of complete addresses also prolonged the task of providing directions. In the States, one can usually list an address and people will use their GPS system of choice. In Ireland, not only were the addresses to the church, the reception space and the hotels incomplete, but the names of some of the places were different on paper than the names used by the locals. This presented the challenge of achieving the delicate balance between providing comprehensive information and overwhelming the vendors and guests. We also had to consider the fact that not every guest attending from other countries had international phone plans, which meant directions and timelines had to be extremely detailed in case people got separated from the group. Given all of these circumstances, we spent a good deal of time looking up addresses of neighboring businesses, scouring photos on Google Earth and, in the end, throwing in some of our best guesses.

The final major difference is less a discrepancy between the countries and more a product of hosting an event in a small town rather than a city, and that was the lack of vendor options. Because the wedding was in a rural area and well away from any major highways, we were limited to the one or two businesses that provided flowers, hair, makeup, catering, etc. Obviously, the negatives of this situation are that you don’t have much power over the pricing and you are also at the mercy of the vendor’s schedule. For example, the town in Ireland had one car service, and the one car service only had one driver scheduled for the entire day of the wedding. That meant that transportation to the reception would take longer than expected, as would getting everyone home at the end of the evening. If this happens, warn the guests ahead of time and make sure they have a comfortable place to wait. Most family and friends are understanding of the situation. If someone puts up a fuss, do your best to ensure that they are on the first available shuttle. Thankfully, our guests were having a good time and our driver could not have been any more accommodating. The poor guy was driving until the wee hours of the morning and then back at the hotel the next day taking people to the airport. He even drove back to the reception venue to collect the remaining decorations that the venue had stored overnight. This brings me to the positives of few available vendors. A small group of people who work in the same industry in the same area will have a lot of experience working together, which makes life much easier for the event planner. The florist knows exactly where the church likes the decorations, the hair salon knows exactly where the bridal party will be getting ready at the hotel, and the caterer knows exactly where to set up the food at the reception venue. The vendors can also be a helpful source of information about the other vendors. While in Ireland for a second round of planning meetings, we were not able to get in touch with the priest, but the hair salon knew where he was and who we could talk to instead. It may be an atypical concept for Type A planners, but don’t be afraid to defer to the experts who have a rhythm with each other or ask for help when something doesn’t work out the way you expected. You never know who might be willing and able to lend a hand.

Other small differentiations popped up as we went along. We had to consider things like using the metric system when dealing with directions and decorating, the conversion rate of US dollars to Euros when balancing the budget and paying the vendors, specific Irish wedding customs like exchanging coins in addition to rings at the ceremony and only paying for one welcome toast at the reception. Additionally, because the wedding was in 2017, we had to be aware of the political conditions following Brexit since we traveled through Northern Ireland. Fortunately, none of these factors majorly affected our timeline nor would they prevent us from going back. Ireland has so many attributes for attracting more events, specifically its beauty and charm, as well as the friendly and helpful people (once we were able to reach them)! Any roadblocks that arose were quickly met by someone eager to help, and we developed some great professional relationships.

As a side note, we have also found the same friendliness and helpfulness to be true of Austin and consider ourselves blessed to be in such a welcoming city!

Even when anticipating a challenge, there is no telling what will actually come your way. Through this wedding, we learned that there are some things we take for granted in our professional routines that we expect to be easy, but not everywhere operates the same as us and not everyone is on our schedule. No live event is quite like any other, so always build in extra time for the unexpected adjustments that will need to be made, especially in a different culture. All that said, we absolutely loved planning the wedding in Ireland and we hope to have more events there in the future!