Planning from Out of Country

I planned most of my wedding from a different state..I used email and telephone calls. I definitely think it can be done from another country, but my advice is to read a ton of reviews. If you have any trips planned to the U.S. before the wedding because if you do then I would make the most of your time. The part that will be hard is that most places require tasting. You also wouldn't have the opportunity to have a trial for hair and makeup.

Hi Kaitlyn! I am also planning my wedding remotely, but we are working with a wedding planner... mostly because the venue requires us to. Do you have a planner or considering getting one? I am already grateful we have one especially with the distance! If you don’t, I think it’s totally manageable if family and friends can help you in NY!

View Quoted Comment I'm worried getting a wedding planner will make things more expensive. Are they very expensive? We're trying to keep a small-ish budget and only have a guest list of about 30 people.

View Quoted Comment We are paying $4500 and they are full time not day of. It is a big expense but we don’t really have a choice. Our guest list is 60ppl. Do you have family in NY that can help you if needed? I really do think it’s possible to do these things remotely these days, at least you speak the same language!

View Quoted Comment My mother has agreed to do in person things for us like taste testing. The hardest part will be the dress for me actually, as the country I live doesn't carry my size and I don't want to spend more than a couple hundred on the dress.

View Quoted Comment My mother is in NY and has agreed to help me with in person things. I'm definitely not spend 4000 on just planning. If that included venue and catering I could see it but 4000 just for someone to plan? That's just too much, imo.

View Quoted Comment Amazon ships internationally so that's where I would look. That's odd that where you live doesn't sell your size. How do you buy other clothes?

View Quoted Comment We live in Miami and the average cost for a wedding planner is $10k, so for us $4k was a steal. We are also planning in a country that speaks predominantly Spanish and the venue is quite remote. It comes with the territory... but don’t underestimate how much work it is planning a wedding. Clearly people make a lot of money doing it. My cousin planned her wedding from afar with the help of friends and family who were local to the venue and it turned out gorgeous (total $8k). It can be done

View Quoted Comment I have certainly been looking at Amazon but let's see how that goes with fit.
I live in Asia as a size 12~14 and the highest sizes here are 8~10. People here are generally built smaller and there is a lot of pressure to be thin. So clothes are also generally smaller.

View Quoted Comment 8k would be perfectly in our range. We're aiming for under 10k total. I hope we can pull off similarly cheap but gorgeous. Congrats to your cousin!

View Quoted Comment Well I hope you are able to find a dress.

View Quoted Comment Thank you! I'll look through Amazon and see what works.

I'm also from NY (hey!) but live in PA. So definitely not the same, but yes, you can plan a wedding from abroad (my sister planned her wedding in CT from FL, which is obviously a much bigger gap). I was able to go out whenever needed on the weekends, but it was a lot of phone calls and asking for assistance from family and friends in the area when needed.

I have never planned a wedding from a different state, let alone a different country. My advice would be to fly back home for a week to look at wedding venues and to decide on one. After you have the venue, it is a lot easier to plan. I have only been to my venue once. After I booked it, I have been able to plan and hire people from my phone.

Hi! We're in Europe planning ours in PA! So far it's not a problem because we started with 2 years to plan. I see you have time as well, so I'm sure you'll be ok!

Skype call vendors - speaking to someone and hearing their voice has been so helpful for us and made it much easier to narrow down vendors. I know the time difference can be challenging, but if you have that Beijing time 12 hour difference you can ask them to call you when their office hours open. It's annoying to have important calls like that late at night for you, but personality is important for some vendors such as photographer, DJ, coordinator.

Day of coordinator - you mentioned you don't want a high cost wedding planner, but I'd suggest a day of coordinator at the least. We're so luck ours was included with our caterer, but knowing she'll be there to make sure things happen how they're meant to has been a huuuuuge sigh of relief for me. Their job is to come in at the end (last month, typically) and help you coordinate your plans. They'll organize vendors, keep you on your timeline that day, and smooth out any difficulties. Ours is even saying she handles setting up all decorations and table arrangements!

Finances - as well as the contribution my parents made, I also gave my mom access to my US dollar accounts as well so that she can handle mailing checks. Not all vendors will be able to take credit card over the phone or Paypal.

Your venue might be hard to pick from abroad. Do you have any time to go back to NY? I was lucky my FH proposed to me right before we went to visit my family. We'll only go back one more time, which I'll use to do a hair trial, my final dress fitting, as well as do caterer/cake tastings.

Good luck

View Quoted Comment I'm afraid I don't have enough time. Everywhere I look we're supposed to boom vendors a year in advanced but we're not visiting NY until the summer. And even then we'll only have a week. I'm a teacher and the long vacation here is in winter time, and I can only get time off during school breaks except in case of my own wedding.


I hope we can find a venue that includes a day of planner and caterer. It would really make things much simpler, but because of our timeline I think we'll be stuck choosing this over the internet.
As for finances, I'm not sure what to do as all our money is in Korea, since I live here full-time and he's from here. I guess we'll be stuck choosing places that accept Visa over the phone.
Anyways, thank you for all this info! It's a lot of goods things to think about!
I hope your wedding is amazing!

View Quoted Comment I wish it was that simple to fly back, but unfortunately with a teacher's schedule it's not. We won't be in NY until the summer and everything I'm reading says that's too late to be choosing a lot of things, including venue...