Lesson 5: How to Easily Price an Overseas Wedding Before Booking

Pricing an overseas wedding can seem daunting, especially when you’re concerned about keeping within a budget. It’s natural to want to know the cost upfront before getting too emotionally invested.

However, getting a precise price before booking isn’t always possible because the exact details of what you need aren’t clear until you engage in the planning process. Here’s how you can get a good estimate to guide your decisions.

Understanding the Complexity of Wedding Planning

Weddings are highly customised events involving various elements like venue services, external vendors, and unique guest requirements. Each component—from the floral arrangements to the entertainment—adds layers of complexity, making it difficult to transfer one venue’s plan directly to another. Different venues might have varying limitations or package inclusions, which can affect your choices and, ultimately, your costs.

The Practical Approach to Wedding Pricing

Rather than trying to nail down every detail before booking, which can be overwhelming and impractical, focus on understanding the major cost drivers of a wedding:

1. Major Components: Start by getting the costs for the ceremony, reception, food, drinks, and any must-have extras like fireworks. You can do this easily on the site instantly by clicking to get a quote and access all the venue’s prices and packages. These elements form the backbone of your wedding expenses.
2. Wedding Packages: Many venues, particularly in popular destination wedding locations like Asia, offer comprehensive wedding packages. Each venue knows what’s required (and what’s not required) to have an amazing experience at their particular property. These wedding packages typically bundle the essential services and amenities needed for a wedding at a competitive price, providing a solid base from which to plan.
3. Flexibility and Customisation: Wedding packages are designed to be flexible. They often include a range of options that you can tailor to your preferences. For example, the choice of seasonal flowers can vary significantly based on what’s available at the time of your wedding. Most venues are willing to customise details if their standard options don’t meet your needs, though this may involve additional costs.

Controlling Costs Through Smart Planning

When you choose a wedding package, you control the level of customisation. This flexibility allows you to manage costs effectively:

• Standard vs. Custom: Starting with a standard package and only opting for customisations that truly matter to you helps keep costs predictable. Customisations are usually optional, and sticking closely to the package offerings can prevent your budget from ballooning.
• Get a Ballpark Figure: Focus on the big-picture costs to get a ballpark figure. This approach gives you a rough estimate that’s useful for comparing venues and making informed decisions without getting bogged down in details.

Ensuring a Unique Wedding Experience

Starting with a generic package doesn’t mean your wedding will lack personality or uniqueness:

• Tailored Experiences: Quality venues work with skilled vendors to ensure that every aspect of your wedding can be personalised if desired. Whether it’s a specific flower arrangement or a unique culinary request, venues are typically able to accommodate your vision.
• Resulting in a Unique Wedding: By using the wedding package as a foundation, you can build a celebration that reflects your personal tastes and love story. The end result is a wedding that feels uniquely yours, tailored to your specifications while also keeping within your budget.

Personal Tip: Embrace flexibility

Understand that while you can start with a rough cost estimate, the final details and personal touches you choose will influence the final pricing. However, this flexibility allows you to prioritise what matters most to you and your partner, ensuring the wedding is a true reflection of your personalities.

How To Get The Best Wedding Prices Guaranteed

For us at My Overseas Wedding, we pride ourselves on transparency and direct connections. We link you directly with our venues, which means all pricing information comes straight from the source. This direct line not only ensures authenticity but also allows us to offer a Best Price Guarantee. It’s just like booking directly with the venues, but with the added advantage of exclusive MOW Benefits.

Why do we go to such lengths? Because we know how special and unique an overseas wedding is. It’s a rare chance to bring together all your loved ones in one beautiful place, everyone in holiday mode, celebrating together. It’s more than a wedding; it’s a reunion, a festivity, a moment in time you’ll cherish forever.

Michelle and I cherish our own wedding memories deeply, and it’s our mission to help you create those unforgettable moments too. We just want everything to be simple and straightforward, so you can focus on what truly matters—celebrating your love with family and friends in a spectacular setting.

The Easy Way – Using the Platform to Easily Price & Book Your Wedding Venue

Say goodbye to weeks of back-and-forth messaging with each of your venues by getting an instant quote. Together with our venues, we’ve preloaded all their wedding packages and prices into our systems so you can easily play around. These prices are exactly what each venue charges however it’s always best to see this as a good estimate, since venues do update their packages and prices from time to time.

Select different ceremony and reception options as well as different food and drinks packages to get a price for a full wedding experience. Don’t worry too much about getting all the details exact as you can always make adjustments and changes later on.

WHAT TO DO NOW

• Understand and compare how much weddings cost in your chosen location on a high level
• Focus on pricing a full wedding experience based on the ceremony, reception and extras. Don’t worry about accommodation until you’re happy with the price of the wedding experience.
• Play around with instant wedding quotes at your favourite venues. Try different numbers of guests and options to see what different wedding experiences will likely cost.
• Request a wedding agreement for 1-3 of your favourite venues once you’re sure to get an accurate price. Make sure you’ve completed the quotes above so they already know most of your choices. They should also give you the accommodation group rates there too.
• Request to Book your favourite venue once you’re ready, to secure your wedding date and location. Let the venue you want to book through My Overseas Wedding and you get access to our included benefits.

STEP BY STEP

1. Find out how much weddings cost by location
Before you begin drilling down into each venue, it’s good to understand the overall market and how much weddings cost in each location (e.g. understanding how much weddings cost in Phuket). Use Find It.

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Go to Find It, and use the filters to choose the location you like as well as your guest numbers. All your venues will be priced based on a basic package including ceremony, reception, food and alcoholic drinks. This is a full wedding experience but does not include accommodation (unless the venue has included it as part of their wedding package).

Tip 1: You can sort the venues in each location by price too.
Tip 2: Some overseas wedding locations are much more affordable than others (e.g. Bali vs Maldives).

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2. Group your favourite venues together
To easily group and shortlist your preferred venues, use Favourites.

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Then once you’re on the Favourites page, go ahead and get an instant quote for each of your venues.

Tip 1: You can also get an instant quote from the venue’s information pages (i.e. Visit It).

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3. Get Instant Quotes – Price your Ceremony
Start by entering your number of guests and wedding date. Use Quote It.

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Now choose your favourite ceremony location. To see the wedding package click “View package inclusions”. Some venues have different wedding packages, however we’ve chosen their main wedding package to make it easier for you to compare.

Tip 1: Select your currency to make the prices more relevant.
Tip 2: Wedding locations with an extra location surcharge will have an additional note under.
Tip 3: Wedding package inclusions can generally be swapped. Just confirm you can do it and start working on it after you book your venue.
Tip 4: To get more information on the venue’s other wedding packages, click “Ask Venue” and message the venue.

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4. Get Instant Quotes – Price your Reception
Now choose what experience you want for your cocktail canapés and reception. Use Quote It.

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Choose your different locations and your favourite food and drink packages. We’ve taken their most popular options to keep it simple, however you can request for their detailed packages once you’re sure this venue is right for you.

Tip 1: The price will update when each choice is made, so you can play around to see which combination suits you best.
Tip 2: Once you’re happy with the price overall, save your quote. Then you can get more details by messaging the venue for their full food menus.
Tip 3: Venues will be able to see your quote once you save it. This makes it much quicker for them to know what you’re wanting, saving you both lots of back-and-forth messaging.

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5. Get Instant Quotes – Price your Optional Extras
Here are some of the most popular extras that you can choose to add more magic to your day. Use Quote It.

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This includes decorations, entertainment and contractors. Once you’re done, click save quote.

Tip 1: If there is something you really want but is not shown in the extras options, double-check with your venue before you book (e.g. fire lanterns, elephants).
Tip 2: Legal weddings can be organised overseas in most cases, however not all venues will assist you with it. So if this is a requirement for you, please check with the venue.
Tip 3: Extras only need to be chosen after you book. Thus you will generally not need this to secure your venue unless it’s a last-minute wedding.
Tip 4: You can always come back to this page to update your quote. Your previous saved quote will be loaded and you can update any details you like.

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5. Compare your quotes at each of your venues
When you have completed quotes for your favourite venues, you can compare all of them by going to the Saved Quotes page.

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Here you can update and play around with all your quotes. Then you can compare your venues based on your selections and the resulting wedding experience cost.

Once you’re ready, go ahead and message your favourite venues to get more information. You’ll save lots of time explaining what you want, since the venues will be able to see what you are wanting through your wedding quote and wedding profile.

Tip 1: Messaging the venue is a great way to get information, but also to get to know your Venue Coordinator who will most likely be planning your wedding.
Tip 2: Click “Request to Book” to let them know you’re ready to book. This will not lock you into anything. It just tells the venue you are serious and to go the next step by providing you with their wedding agreement.
Tip 3: Save time and effort explaining what you want, by filling out your wedding profile in more detail. This will help venues know what you want.

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