There you are… You have fallen in love with Iceland as your destination wedding location and cannot imagine getting married anywhere else.  Now you are in the process of listing all of the “must have” wedding details that need to get packed and happen. But…You are very specific about your wedding details and just are not sure if the obscure destination wedding location will be able to match every detail you are envisioning.

What to do? 

Answer: Import your wedding day items to your Iceland (or other) destination wedding location!

You may cringe at the thought of having to take the time to package and ship your wedding details to Iceland or elsewhere but here are the pros of doing so:

1.)   You will get exactly what you stylistically envisioned (and what you want) regardless of where your ceremony or reception are located.

2.)   In countries like Iceland you can bring in the standard 2 liters of wine/champagne per person for free, take advantage of it!

3.)   You’re guaranteed to have your items arrive on time.  If your checked bag doesn’t make it to your destination wedding location you could be without on your wedding day.

4.)   You’ll have more room for last minute items to put in your checked bag.

5.)   You will save money! Do your research, buy online, and have it drop shipped directly to your wedding hotel (let them know in advance).

Easy-Peasy Directions to Importing Your Wedding Day Goods:

• Prepay Duty to your vendor (if possible) so the vendor is responsible for the importation.
• If gathering the items and packing the box yourself use lightweight materials and wrap well for potential breakage.
• Have the post office mark as “Fragile.”
• Fill out the custom forms accurately with contents and cost.
• Get a tracking number if possible and track all the way through to its end delivery.
• If prepaying duty was not an option have your hotel add it to your bill upon arrival (Iceland hotels will do this if you have prepaid and reserved your location for a few days).
• Ship a minimum of 3-4 weeks before your wedding date (depending on your destination wedding location).
• Confirm with the vendor who shipped and the receiving location that it was received and put for safe keeping until your arrival (Or ship to your Iceland Wedding Planner for her to bring).
• If there are any light or heat sensitive items communicate that to all parties so your items stay 100% perfect.
• Make sure your destination wedding hotel clearly marks the packages and they only release to you or your wedding planner.

Real life examples from our Iceland Destination Wedding:

My husband and I planned our Iceland destination wedding in less than 6 months- from October to April 2011-2012.  We’re super planners and experienced Iceland wedding photographers  so we had a very good idea of what we liked and didn’t.  We chose the most dynamic place in Iceland to get married: Seljalandsfoss Waterfall in 2012. With a champagne toast at Vik Beach, a pit stop at the infamous wool shop and a final stop at Skogafoss Waterfall before heading back to Hotel Ranga for our reception.

Our biggest and most important detail hurdle was that we wanted over a 30 x 4 foot rose petal isle that was very dense with a very specific shade of pink (In my opinion, wedding colors are uber important for photographs!).  So that means I had to order 8 cups per square foot of my isle (see a helpful petal calculator here).  The Icelandic florists quoted me over $2,000 USD and they could only promise white petals and not my shade of pink.   It was not in our budget to have that additional cost no matter how much I wanted it.  But my Iceland wedding photographs absolutely needed colorful a rose petal walk way so I needed a thrifty way to make this happen.

So!  After lots of research and 20 samples later I found an amazing vendor called Flyboy Naturals who offers eco-friendly freeze dried rose petals.  Not only were they the best deal, but they were gorgeous, AND they would ship directly to Iceland!  I had our freeze dried rose petals stored for 1 month in a cool dark place and they were perfect at the waterfall!  See our Iceland waterfall wedding isle way here.  They are one of our preferred vendors so feel free to check them out or contact us to assist in your amazing aisle way creation!

Next big challenge was champagne for our wedding toast at Vik Beach.  We bought from favorite winery Domaine Chandon 20 Bottles of their Yountville Vintage Brut 2007.  Iceland has an importing rule of 2 liters per person so between my husband, myself, and 8 of our guests we got it handled in the middle of the Toronto Airport on the way to Iceland!

Linens were another item on our list we had a specific vision for and decided to bring in all of our own for our welcome dinner and actual wedding reception.  The Iceland welcome dinner (or some call it an Iceland Wedding Rehearsal Dinner) we chose a pin tuck design.  Silver pin tucked place mats and white napkins.  For our wedding reception at Hotel Ranga we purchased and packed chocolate rosette table runners and chocolate pin tuck napkins.  They made awesome packing for our favors, welcome bags, love letter ceremony box, wedding weekend attire, and our fragile Mr. and Mrs. champagne glasses.  It’s safe to say by purchasing our own items and importing them in for our Iceland destination wedding it saved us $1,000’s of dollars that we could put to our honeymoon in Bali!

I hope this article has provided you with more destination wedding confidence!

Yours in Iceland destination wedding planning and Iceland wedding photography,  Ann Peters, Owner of Photos by Miss Ann proudly photographing the best Michigan weddings and crazy awesome destination weddings!

Please stay tuned for our upcoming blog posts on the following topics:

• Destination Wedding Timelines
• Advice to your destination guests!
• Things to do in Iceland!

© 2002-2013, Photos by Miss Ann, All Rights Reserved

The post Importing Your Destination Wedding Details appeared first on Iceland Wedding Planner.

Thank you for stopping by our blog!  Planning a destination wedding in Iceland is a tall order even for super planners.  With no elaborate wedding industry as there is in North America it surely complicates things.  There are so many twists and turns that you could have within your day it takes a professional to pull it all together and capture your vision flawlessly.

That being said… Welcome to the Iceland Wedding Planner Blog!  It is our intention in creating this blog to be informative about planning a wedding in Iceland and leave you inspired during each visit.

My Story:

My name is Ann Peters (formally Ann Rezbanyay) and I have a passion for destination weddings!  I am a seasoned destination wedding photographer and owner of Photos by Miss Ann.  Over the last decade, I have had the pleasure of being a part of and photographing over 500 wedding weekends/days local and destination weddings.  In October of 2011 my fiancé (now husband) Chris and I brainstormed on where to hold our wedding day.  So one thing was for sure, it was a no-brainier we were going to plan our wedding in a crazy-awesome-adventurous location that would stun our guests.

Our Must Have List:

1. The location needed to be somewhere Chris and I had never been to.
2. A location where no one on our guest list had visited.
3. A locale that offered endless outdoor adventures.
4. A place where the scenery was completely different than all the yearly weddings I photograph (from beaches to mountains).  We needed dramatic scenery!
5. Where the food was full of flavor and unique to the country.
6. We would receive personal service from our vendors.

What locations made the list!

1. Sweden Destination Wedding
2. Iceland Destination Wedding
3. Bali, Indonesia (we ended up doing our honeymoon 6 months later there)
4. Greenland Wedding
5. Antarctica Wedding
6. Faroe Islands Wedding

Loving Nordic cold weather, Chris narrowed the list down to Sweden or Iceland.  I sent away for travel guides, books, spent hours researching, and calling.  Because the next most important thing was securing locations within our country of choice.

• Wedding at Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden.
• Wedding in Southern Iceland.

Iceland was our answer.  More endless hours of research brought us to the decision of getting married at Seljalandsfoss waterfall and hold our Iceland wedding reception in Hella, Iceland.

We bravely decided on April 14^th 2012 as our wedding date (ask any Icelandic native and they will tell you we were crazy!).  We kept the location a secret until our custom wedding invitations went out in November (see our destination wedding invitation samples below).

The benefits of holding your wedding November-April in Iceland follow:

1)      Best chance to see the unforgettable Northern Lights every day.

2)      Seeing Iceland in its winter/spring glory.  It looks like a completely different country!

3)      In April the temperatures can still be a balmy 45 degrees!  Our day was and with that sun shining it felt even warmer!

4)      Low tourist season.  No fighting crowds for your stunning wedding photos.

5)      Vendors cater to you during the off-season which equal discounted rates and individualized service!

6)      Slower time to import goods which equals less hassle (IE, I imported my own rose petals as a cost saving) and assurance you’re getting the right shade of pink!

7)      Although there may be a chance of snow or rain on your wedding day (which both are good luck!) wait 10 minutes and you’ll probably get some sunshine.  The weather is always changing.  I think we had all 4 seasons in 1 day and it rocked!

8)      You’ll make headline news from being the brave souls who said “I do” at a waterfall in winter or late spring!  See our wedding on the Icelandic News!  We still get photos emailed to us from random people who witnessed our wedding there =)

Our Iceland guest list included a total of 120 guests both from as near as Syracuse, New York and as far away as Perth, Australia (42 hours of traveling).  Our wedding invitations gave the initial shock to our guests of “Iceland!  Really, Iceland?!”  Luckily, we had ~40 guests RSVP yes before January, so we were stoked!  Honestly, we would have been happy if it had just been ourselves, a glacier, a waterfall, and our parents.  So we were seriously overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from our family and friends.

When our guests received the wedding invitation, they received 4 things in the envelope:

1)      The actual Iceland Wedding Invitation.

2)      An “Accommodation” Card that shared our wedding website: chrisandann2012.com – This website (when it was fully active, communicated air transport, lodging, car rental coupons, and schedule for the week).

3)      The RSVP return card and envelope (We went for the 5-course  menu).

4)      4 photos of the amazing sites our guests would see if they attended.

It was important to us to communicate to our guests why we were drawn to marry in Iceland and why they should travel to the Land of Fire and Ice.  This trip was not only about saying “I do” for us but to have all the people we love, adore, and appreciate all in one amazing place to partake in this adventure with us.  Once guests visited our website and saw that everything was planned and available for them to easily book through the website- excitement began!

Chris and I spent weeks planning all of the available activities in and around the area.  Although, when we arrived in Iceland we devoted the first 1.5 days to finalizing food and wine choices, putting together welcome bags, decorations, and getting our marriage license we made ourselves available to our guests.  This was our wedding week/end, not our honeymoon so it was critical for everyone to feel included young and old.

For more tips on planning a wedding in obscure locations check out the article written by Ann on Wedding Photos USA along with the rest of this Iceland wedding planning blog!  This is just the beginning so some really awesome posts on Iceland weddings!

Who are we?  We’re a very detailed, adventurous, energetic husband and wife team who have a passion for weddings and Iceland.  We are, Ann and Chris Peters and we have 10 years of destination wedding photography and planning experience.  Traveling the globe photographing love stories and wedding adventures is seriously the best career on the planet (in our opinion)!  Not only all that, but we were also married in Iceland at the majestic Seljalandsfoss waterfall on April 14th 2012 (our 40 person Iceland destination wedding even made the Icelandic News)!  So we truly know first hand, how epic of a country it is and how special it is for you to plan your wedding in Iceland!

Throughout the last decade, we have learned what our couples desire in a wedding planner & destination wedding photographer.  Which means knowing what you want and us providing the most cherished experience possible.  We’re so excited to meet you!!

With a smile, Ann & Chris Peters  (Feel free to contact us directly here)

© 2002-2012, Photos by Miss Ann, All Rights Reserved

The post Planning an Iceland Destination Wedding appeared first on Iceland Wedding Planner.