The Ultimate Guide to Planning a Multi-Day Wedding

Planning a wedding is no small feat, especially when it spans multiple days. From managing a budget to creating a seamless guest experience, there are countless details to consider. To help you navigate this intricate process, we spoke with Jessie Westwood: the esteemed director of the internationally renowned Studio Sorores.

With her expert insights, you’ll be well-equipped to plan a multi-day wedding that is both memorable and stress-free.

Think About Your Budget

The first step in planning any multi-day wedding celebration is to get a good idea of your guest numbers, and then start creating an in-depth and detailed budget breakdown for each day of events. Include as much as possible— from invitations, to florals and rentals. Too often, couples will have a general idea of their spending limits, but they begin by booking in venues and catering before understanding the price per head and how that will impact the rest of their budget. This can result in overspending in areas when it wasn’t necessary, under-spending on elements you wanted to prioritise, and the overall design of your wedding can suffer.

If you decide to invest more in something along the way, you can track your overages and savings to see where you may need to pull back, or if you are happy to spend more to get the vision you want. Always give vendors your upper limit up front to allow them to make proposals that give you the most value, and avoid out-of-budget quotes that you have to pull back on (which is never much fun).

If you follow my advice on budgeting effectively and tracking your spend along the way to make adjustments, there shouldn’t be many surprises! I think often couples forget to budget for things like vendor travel and subsistence expenses, or even VAT that may be applicable. So make sure you ask about these in your quotes, and include them in your budget tracker too. Oh, and of course, keep control of your guest list… because the more people you have, the more everything costs.

Create a Seamless Guest Experience

I always recommend keeping two things at the heart of wedding planning – the couple’s own story, and your guest experience. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go crazy booking in extravagant entertainment or sourcing outlandish gifts or favours; it’s much more simple than that. For each event focus on the quality of service and each element satisfying all of the senses. Does it look, feel, sound, smell and taste great? That’s the most important part, followed closely by ensuring you have staff that are polite and efficient, and considering flow of the day to limit any awkward pauses or areas where guests may feel frustrated. It’s why I always try and avoid buffet service for food (nobody likes queuing)!

If a couple is having a great time, it’s far more likely that guests will follow. Make sure you have a well-briefed team with an effective event manager who will oversee everything you’ve carefully planned, and just focus on having your own fun. Don’t stress too much about entertaining guests, I think too often couples can overdo this element, but you have to remember you need the time space and time to catch up and talk to friends and family too. Experienced and talented suppliers, great food, a beautiful setting, quality materials, amazing music and a free bar… that’s all you really need to make sure guests have a brilliant time.

Coordinate Multiple Venues and Suppliers

If you haven’t hired a planner to take care of this for you, be prepared to do a lot of admin and coordination work in the final weeks before the events start. Create one big multi-day wedding itinerary that includes all vendors in one place, and a detailed breakdown of timings, with supplier responsibilities and logistical set-up included for each day. Then, create separate schedules with similar information in a more simple format for each event.

Make sure you liaise with everyone involved to inform and shape these documents in advance, sense-checking that everything works together without interruption to their responsibilities and delivery. Send these documents to all vendors and suppliers in advance, and include key information like transport instructions, access times and restrictions, parking availability and any other essential pointers they may need.

One of the most challenging aspects of planning a multi-day wedding is considering design theory, storytelling, and sourcing the best suppliers to work collaboratively and cohesively on each project. A lot of couples come to me later in the process having booked venues or vendors without considering the event design, and it’s a much harder job to unpick and try to bring existing teams together rather than starting from scratch and a “blank canvas”.

As experts, our design plans are both visual and logistically detailed, and we allow the full team flexibility so that each creative professional can add their own style while keeping the finished products within the overall brief.

Plan a Diverse Itinerary

My top tip is not to overplan or fill days with too many activities— guests like having time to relax or go at their own pace. It’s fine to give an option for people to sign up to an organised excursion in advance, but generally I would advise having only one fully hosted event per day, and recommending activities and experiences around those. We offer a full concierge service to our clients’ guests, so we can support them in creating personalised itineraries for their trip around the main wedding and events.

Couples should also remember at the end of the day, there are no rules! Many of our clients broadly stick to tradition with their main wedding (guests know what to expect, and the flow of the day works beautifully), and then mix things up with pre/post celebrations through the rest of their multi-day wedding. From using alternative locations, different designs and dining set up for welcome parties or rehearsal dinners, and more relaxing pool or beach recovery days.

The temptation is to plan each event as a “wow” factor production, but the buildup and smooth transition in and out of the main wedding day is actually part of what creates exceptional experiences for guests. Trust me, overwhelming them is just as problematic as underwhelming them!

Stay Organised and Stress-Free

If you can afford one, hire an experienced wedding planner and designer who you match personality wise, and trust to make decisions on your behalf and in close collaboration. Otherwise, my advice is not to rush into anything, as much as it is not to procrastinate on decision making. Schedule time to review proposals and contracts, gather information and quotes vendor by vendor before booking and moving on to the next, and plan as much detail as possible in scheduling so there are no surprises.

Remember to take time away from it all, keep having date nights and really enjoy the engagement period with friends. It’s part of the fun of getting married! Really, it should be a really amazing experience if you have the right team on board to support you.

Finally, I wouldn’t delegate tasks to family members or friends who may offer. I have seen more drama and fall outs happen with this than anything else over the last 14 years I’ve been planning weddings— so trust your suppliers. Listen to their advice and input everything into documents where it’s clear and easy to follow or track.

If you have any concerns about the events themselves, please do look at hiring an event producer and manager in the final months/weeks to take over the logistics for you and be your “eyes on the ground” so you can enjoy what will undoubtedly be the best experience of your life.