15 September 2026
There is something wonderfully effortless about the idea of getting married in Tuscany. A long table overlooking the hills, dinner under the stars, music drifting into the night, and the people you love gathered together in one extraordinary place.
Getting everyone there, however, is the part that requires a little more planning.
A destination wedding in Tuscany brings together many moving pieces: a venue, local suppliers, accommodation, transportation, food, flowers, music, schedules, guest experiences and, often, several days of celebrations rather than a single event.
When you are organising all of this from another country, having the right destination wedding planner by your side can make an enormous difference.
Not simply because there is more to organise, but because someone needs to turn all those individual decisions into one seamless experience.
A destination wedding planner is much more than someone who keeps track of appointments and suppliers.
They are the person who sees the whole picture.
From the first stages of destination wedding planning, they can help translate your ideas into something that works within your chosen setting, timeline and budget. They research and coordinate suppliers, manage logistics, help structure the wedding weekend and keep communication moving between everyone involved.
Most importantly, an experienced destination wedding specialist understands that planning a wedding abroad comes with questions you may never have needed to consider at home.
How will guests reach the venue? Where will everyone stay? When should suppliers arrive? What happens between the ceremony and dinner? Is there a Plan B if the weather changes? Can the welcome dinner happen somewhere different from the wedding reception? How will several days of celebrations fit together without feeling overplanned?
Individually, these details may seem small. Together, they shape the entire experience.
If you are wondering how to plan a destination wedding, one of the first things to understand is that distance changes the process.
You cannot necessarily visit a supplier at short notice or return to the venue every time you need to make a decision. You may be working across languages, time zones and different ways of doing business.
And Tuscany itself has its own geography and rhythm.
A beautiful countryside venue may be reached by winding roads rather than public transport. Guests may be staying in several nearby properties or villages, and taxis are not always as readily available in rural areas as international visitors might expect. A historic estate may also have very different logistical requirements from a modern hotel.
Then there is the rhythm of the wedding itself. An outdoor ceremony may need to be planned around the heat of a summer afternoon. Dinner might take place beneath the stars, while the party moves somewhere entirely different later in the evening. If the weather changes, another space may need to be ready without changing the atmosphere of the celebration.
A local wedding planner for a destination wedding can anticipate these practicalities long before they become problems.
That local knowledge is particularly valuable when choosing suppliers. Tuscany has an extraordinary network of florists, caterers, musicians, photographers, rental companies and artisans. Knowing who is right for your wedding, rather than simply who is available, requires experience.
Planning from another country becomes much easier when the process follows the right order.
Before choosing flowers, menus or table settings, start with the decisions that will shape everything else: your approximate guest count, the kind of celebration you imagine, the area of Tuscany you would like to consider and the overall budget you are comfortable working with.
Then come the venue and your planner.
Ideally, a destination wedding planner should be involved early, particularly if you are still comparing venues. A beautiful property also needs to work for the wedding you have in mind. Is there enough accommodation nearby? Where can the ceremony and dinner take place? What happens if it rains? How late can music continue? Will guests need organised transportation?
These are much easier questions to answer before contracts are signed.
If you have already fallen in love with a venue, however, you can reverse the process. Ask the venue whether its team regularly works with destination wedding planners they trust and would recommend. A planner who already knows the property may understand its spaces, possibilities and practical requirements particularly well.
Think of those recommendations as a starting point rather than an obligation. You should still speak with the planners yourself and choose the person whose experience, personality and approach feel right for you.
Once the venue is secured, the key suppliers can follow: catering, photography, music, floral design and any production or rental companies required for the celebration. Accommodation and transportation should also be considered early, particularly if guests will be spread across different properties.
And planning from abroad does not necessarily require frequent trips to Italy.
One or two carefully organised visits can often be enough. Your planner can bring together venue inspections, menu tastings and supplier meetings, allowing you to make several important decisions during the same stay. Everything else can continue remotely until you return for the wedding.
The terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but the roles can be quite different.
A destination wedding planner is generally involved from the earlier stages. They can help develop the concept, establish priorities, source suppliers, work with the venue, manage logistics and guide decisions throughout the months leading up to the wedding.
A destination wedding coordinator usually enters the process later. Their role is more focused on executing plans that have already been made: final schedules, supplier arrivals, ceremony timing, guest movements and coordination on the wedding day.
For couples organising an overseas wedding from the beginning, full wedding planning services can be particularly useful. If you have already chosen the venue, booked suppliers and made most of the important decisions yourself, a destination wedding coordinator may be all you need.
Before hiring either, make sure the scope is clear. Wedding planning services can vary considerably from one professional to another.
A beautiful portfolio is a good place to start, but it should not be the only reason you hire a wedding planner.
Experience matters. Have they planned weddings in Tuscany before? Do they know the area around your venue? Have they worked with international couples and managed the process remotely?
Communication matters just as much.
You want someone who understands your ideas without trying to fit your wedding into a predefined style. Equally, a good planner should be comfortable telling you when something is impractical and suggesting an alternative that works better.
During your first conversations, ask how they select suppliers, whether you are free to propose your own and how communication will work while you are abroad. If your celebration extends over several days, clarify whether their services cover the welcome dinner, wedding day, farewell brunch and other events or only the wedding itself.
It is also worth understanding exactly who will be there on the day. Will your planner personally attend? How large is the coordination team? Who will manage suppliers and unexpected changes?
Transparency around fees is equally important. The cost of a destination wedding is not determined by the venue alone: accommodation, transportation, rentals, production and the number of events can all influence the overall investment. Your planner should be able to help you understand how the different pieces affect the budget and explain clearly how their own fees and supplier payments work.
For larger or more elaborate celebrations, luxury wedding planning can also involve additional layers of production, multiple events, bespoke design and a larger team of specialists. In these cases, it is particularly important to choose a planner with experience managing celebrations of a similar scale and complexity.
A good wedding planning company or independent planner should make a complex process easier to understand, not more complicated.
And then there is something less measurable: trust.
Over the months of planning, you will make a remarkable number of decisions together. You should feel comfortable asking questions, changing your mind and relying on their judgement when you cannot be there in person.
Quite a lot.
One of the greatest advantages of working with a local planner is having someone on the ground while you are elsewhere.
Depending on the wedding planning services you choose, your planner may coordinate catering and menu tastings, floral design, furniture and tableware, photographers and videographers, entertainment, hair and makeup, lighting, technical production, transportation, accommodation logistics and ceremony arrangements.As the wedding approaches, all of these separate elements are brought together into one timeline: when suppliers arrive, when guests leave their accommodation, when the ceremony begins, when dinner is served and when one part of the celebration flows into the next.
They can also arrange site inspections and supplier meetings around the occasions when you are able to travel to Italy, allowing you to accomplish much more during a relatively short visit.
The goal is not to remove you from the planning process. Quite the opposite.
A good planner removes much of the noise around it, leaving you more space for the decisions that actually make the wedding yours.
For international couples, there is another important question to consider: whether the wedding ceremony in Italy will also be the legal marriage.
The requirements for legally getting married in Italy can vary depending on your nationality, country of residence and the type of ceremony you choose. Documents may need to be obtained in advance, translated or formally recognised, and the process can differ from one couple to another.
For this reason, the legal side should be discussed early rather than left until the final stages of planning.
An experienced destination wedding specialist can help you understand which questions need to be addressed and guide you towards the appropriate local authorities or professionals when necessary.
Some international couples choose to complete the legal formalities in their home country and have a symbolic ceremony in Tuscany instead. Others prefer their Italian ceremony to be legally binding.
Neither choice makes the celebration more or less meaningful. What matters is knowing which option you want early enough to plan accordingly.
One of the defining qualities of a destination wedding is that the experience begins before the ceremony.
Your guests are travelling, sometimes a very long way, to celebrate with you. Many will turn the occasion into a short holiday. Some may never have visited Tuscany before.
That changes the rhythm of the wedding.
Instead of everyone arriving shortly before the ceremony and leaving after the reception, you have the opportunity to spend real time together.
Perhaps everyone meets for an informal dinner on the first evening. The following day might be left open for exploring nearby towns, relaxing by the pool or enjoying the countryside. Then comes the wedding itself, followed the next morning by a long, leisurely brunch.
Suddenly, you are not planning a single day.
You are creating a few days that people will remember together.
This is where experienced destination wedding planners become particularly valuable. Guest arrivals, transfers, accommodation, activities and different events all need to fit into one coherent schedule without making the weekend feel overplanned.
The best celebrations leave room to breathe.
A planner does not replace the expertise of your venue, and the venue does not necessarily replace a planner.
The most successful destination weddings are usually the result of both working closely together.
Your venue team knows the property: its spaces, its possibilities, its rhythms and all the practical details that come from hosting celebrations there. Your planner brings together the broader wedding: suppliers, styling, production, timing and your vision as a couple.
When those two sides communicate well, decisions become easier.
This collaboration is especially important for countryside weddings and private estates, where the venue may become much more than the setting for the ceremony and reception. It can be where guests wake up, have breakfast together, relax during the afternoon and meet again for dinner.
The property becomes part of the wedding itself.
Tuscany has a way of encouraging celebrations to unfold slowly.
Guests arrive and settle in. Aperitivo stretches a little longer than expected. Dinner becomes an evening under the stars. The morning after the wedding, everyone meets again over coffee and breakfast, still talking about the night before.
At Locanda in Tuscany, in the heart of the Val d’Orcia, weddings can become precisely this kind of experience: not simply an event to attend, but time spent together in one place.
Surrounded by the Tuscan countryside, the property can become part of the rhythm of the celebration itself: a place where guests arrive, gather, celebrate and meet again the following morning, allowing the wedding to feel less like a single scheduled event and more like a shared journey.
If Locanda in Tuscany is where you imagine your celebration taking place, our team can also introduce you to trusted wedding planners we regularly work with. You can then speak with them directly, explore their approach and find the person who feels right for your wedding, knowing that they already understand the property and how to make the most of it.
Working with an experienced destination wedding planner allows all the complexity behind those days to remain where it belongs — behind the scenes.
So that when everyone finally arrives in Tuscany, the planning can stop.
And the celebration can begin.
