Rustic DIY Wedding in Lucca

Ours was a DIY wedding. Everything was self planned and we took 18 months to get everything organised. We visited Lucca twice before the wedding and decided after our first visit that we would minimise costs by not using a wedding planner. I think this is quite a daunting prospect for most people and I think planners can bring a lot of value if you don’t have the confidence or time to dedicate yourself or want complete perfection. But we wanted a super relaxed day and felt a good budget organiser, google translate and some time researching suppliers on Instagram and Facebook is really all you need to do it yourself.

We’re really glad with our decision not to use a planner as the day just went so smoothly and we didn’t feel we were being rushed around by anyone. We got to know our suppliers really well which was nice and we had some nice spontaneous moments too like when our photographer suggested doing our first dance outside under the fairy lights instead of indoors. Everyone gathered round us and started singing along to “Your Song” with us which was just amazing. Our ceilidh band also suggested last minute that they pipe everyone inside for dancing which was a nice touch too.

Weddings Abroad Guide Community (Closed Facebook Group) came in so handy for getting opinions on things like ceremony timings and recommendations for caterers. Another Weddings Abroad tip was to use a wedding website and we used www.withjoy.com to issue our invitations by email, track RSVPs, put together information on where to stay and how to get there with tips for our favourite day trips, restaurants and ice cream spots. It worked out really well and had a handy app that our guests could use too.

Whilst planning the wedding ourselves was a little challenging, particularly as we don’t speak Italian, it was quite important to us to know that we were getting value for money and we were able to research lots of suppliers and find the ones we wanted to use. We found that some suppliers were really great at recommending others. For example our celebrant, Carina at Tuscan Wedding Officiant recommended our harpist (Elisa Malatesi) and hairdresser (Pamela Leti) all of whom were fantastic and we would have struggled to find otherwise.

One decision we made quite early on was to fly out a photographer from the UK. We wanted to maximise our time with our guests who had travelled to be with us so not spending hours on staged photos was really important to us and our photographer, Thirty Eight North had the most amazing energy and blended in to be more like a guest on the day. I think this is quite a key component as we didn’t want to feel pressured into taking time away from our guests but still wanted beautiful photographs which we are beyond pleased with.