Aisle be there for you: why more Londoners are choosing to get married abroad

Your BFFs are getting wed in the Bahamas. Can you afford to go? You can if you hijack the happy couple’s holiday says Lucy Tobin
14 August 2014

Eight cities in three countries in four months, and a £2,500 bill: that’s the price Anna Leader paid to be a good friend this summer.

Because the costs quickly rack up when all of your closest pals are getting hitched overseas — with hen nights in totally different countries too.

“Between May and August I’ve had five weddings and another three hens, all in different cities or countries,” the 28-year-old Londoner explains. “Obviously it’s great fun and weddings are beautiful and joyous and I love my friends dearly… But it’s so expensive. I have a wedding in Vienna at the end of the month, and the flights alone cost £275. This sounds spoilt but if it were my choice I had been dreaming of going to Venice on holiday this year. I can’t, though, because all the weddings are taking up my annual leave — and my budget. It’s really expensive, but you want to be there for your friends.”

The runaway bride is now a fully fledged knot-tying trend: one in six Britons’ weddings now takes place overseas, and planners say the majority of them are Londoners.

“It used to be about cutting the cost with maybe a wedding package on the beach in the Caribbean,” whispers one nuptials planner. “Now, because London is such an international city, either the bride or groom often come from elsewhere. They want to live in London, but they get married in the other partner’s home town so they have memories from there too.”

Or, as one seething wedding guest who has had to pack his three-piece suit for friends’ ceremonies in Australia, Thailand, Los Angeles and New York in the past 15 months puts it: “Australian and American girls are coming over here to steal London’s men. Yes, it’s nice to plan a holiday around a wedding now and then, but I’d rather they got married here and I could go where I wanted on holiday.”

More democratic is the wed-swap: corporate PR Daisy is flying to New Zealand for her pal’s big day. “And my friend is then flying over to ours,” she says. “We get the better deal — she’s coming to Scotland. But the timing’s not great, as I’ve just had to shell out thousands for the flights at a time when we’re saving hard for our wedding.”

Twentysomething hairdresser Carrie has five weddings to fit in this summer, including one in Toronto. “My boyfriend and I going for three days,” she says. “Flying out Friday afternoon and landing Tuesday morning, after the bank holiday, so it doesn’t touch our work holiday time. We’ve made a really clear distinction that we’re not going to tag days on to a foreign wedding because we don’t want all of our holidays dictated by wedding locations.”

She loves doing brides’ wedding hair and says there’s still a “massive excitement about weddings abroad. If I couldn’t afford to go, I wouldn’t — I think brides understand that when they’re planning.” But Carrie hasn’t even met the Toronto bash’s bride and groom. “They live in Australia and they’re my boyfriend’s friends,” she says.

Of course, an overseas wedding involves a lot of advanced planning for a lot of people — which is hard to undo even if the worst happens and the do gets cancelled. Josie Perry, 37, a communications executive, flew to Cuba on her honeymoon.

“The resort was a long drive across the island, so we had a few hours in a minibus to get there,” she explains. “Also on board were a group of 12 people who were there for the wedding of friends who had planned to get married on the beach at the resort. Only the couple had split up the week before — but as everyone had paid for the holiday in advance they all decided to go anyway.

“The odd thing was the bride and groom had also still decided to go. The bride was sitting in the front of the minibus and the groom on the back seat. They didn’t speak. And at the resort, the groom would sit in the bar indoors and the bride was at the pool bar. Their poor friends and family kept having to relay messages between the different bars, and there were lots of weddings going on in the resort all week so the poor couple had to keep watching other people have their wedding. The groom ended up going home a few days early.”

Then there are all the extra logistical problems of getting hitched abroad.

“A few years back I was the head usher at a wedding to be held in Israel,” reminisces marketing director Marc Charlton, 32. “The happy couple decided that the ushers should wear khaki trousers, pink ties, white shirts and matching dark brown shoes, and hired it for everyone. They asked me, as the responsible one, to collect them and bring them with me to the airport.

“That all went to plan, until I was sitting with a friend having a coffee pre-flight and there was an announcement from security asking if anyone had left a suit carrier at the scanners. They asked three times and I thought nothing of it. Then our gate appeared on the screens, we got up to go and my life — and friendship with the groom — flashed before my eyes. I ran back to security where three armed policemen were inspecting my bag from a distance.”

After 10 minutes of grovelling, Charlton was let off with all the suits. “I ran back to the gate with suit carrier in hand,” he said. “Thankfully the wedding went well — although I did wait quite a while before I told the newlyweds what had happened.”

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