Episode 10: Behind the Scenes of Destination Weddings

Episode Summary

At JLE we do a lot of destinations.. it’s one of our favorites. Today we cover off on why we do destination weddings, how we build the trust both with our clients and vendor partners and several crazy stories.. just wait till the end! Through it all, we discuss the importance of calm in the face of chaos and how coordination and pristine execution are critical. If you’ve ever dreamed of a destination wedding, this episode reveals a behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to make that a reality.

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Full Episode Transcript

Hi friends and welcome back to Mind Over Matrimony. Today we are just gonna talk a little bit about destination weddings. In our business here at Julian Leaver Events, we do a combination of both destination weddings and domestic weddings. And we love destination. It’s so much fun.

The first wedding in Julian Leaver Events was a destination wedding. And even further back, the very first wedding that I did, even when I started with Rosewood was a destination wedding. So it’s just always been something that I was fascinated by.

A destination wedding has its own set of micro decisions that you place on top of the other 3,000 micro decisions that you’re making in just a basic wedding. Destination weddings are about trust when it comes to your planning team and your vendor partners, because it’s not down the road. You literally can’t just drive there and see what’s going on. You really have to trust that you picked the right team.

In almost every destination wedding, there’s usually one or two vendors who are the through line. If they’re there, we know it’s all gonna be okay. I’ll give a shout out to Jacob and Co Lighting Company. They are almost on every single destination wedding with us because they really just do the best lighting and they will make it happen whether we are on a cliff in Amalfi or in kind of the Serengeti.

Let me just give you this example. There was this wedding that we did in Italy and one of those big bucket list things was to actually do a yacht day. So we rented this yacht. And that morning as the boat is leaving the port, there is like a massive storm. The planner who’s on the boat says to the captain, we are gonna be late. You need to go faster.

And he has a coffee in his hand, like an espresso, and he pours some of the coffee into this little Dixie cup. And he says, here, do you want a coffee? You’re gonna need to hold on. And basically she has to hold on as they plow through the ocean and the decor is like flying off the deck. Models are like vomiting over the side of the railing.

I’m getting updates on this ship as it’s coming to meet me, and I’m with the client who’s literally losing their mind. And I’m getting these text message updates on WhatsApp that’s basically saying this is a shit show. We might not survive. All the decor just flew off the boat.

Finally they make it to the port. All we can see is like a million people running around in the distance as the ship is coming closer to us. This is the whole team literally putting this entire party that was basically just thrown overboard back together. As they’re pulling into the port, everything is perfect, gorgeous.

And then, someone who shall not be named decided it was a great idea to launch off these smoke bombs—they’re very popular in Italy and Europe right now. Except they weren’t smoke bombs—they were flares. The flares that were sent off actually indicated that our boat was in distress and sinking. So the Italian Coast Guard comes. Five ships show up basically. And they’re like, your ship is sinking. We need to evacuate.

The captain is like, oh no, the ship is not sinking. And they’re like, okay, then there’s gonna be basically a hundred thousand dollars fine. So the captain helped us get out of the fine. Talked to our good friends, the Italian Coast Guard, and made it happen. Because he trusted us. He saw how hard we worked. And sometimes it’s just about asking: could you just go back to them one more time and ask just one more time? And he did. And off they went. We didn’t get arrested.