Your wedding abroad, step by step

Before looking at places, settle on the feel. Lunch at a villa for thirty is a very different thing from three days with a hundred and fifty. Size and mood decide almost everything else: where you can go, which venues fit and how much help you'll want.

Talk about length as well. Plenty of couples stretch it over a weekend, with drinks the night before and a slow brunch the morning after.

Think about your guests as much as the view. Somewhere with a direct flight from where most of them live gets more yeses than somewhere with two changes. Check the weather for your months and what else is on: festivals and big events fill hotels and push prices up.

If you've fallen for somewhere, go and see it first if you can. If not, video calls with venues and a planner who knows the area help enormously.

Budget and guest list feed each other, so work on both at once. Decide early what's on you and what's on them: getting there is nearly always theirs, while rooms are often shared in some way.

Organise the list by family from day one (a couple, a family, a single friend). Invitations, replies and rooms all work that way, so it saves a lot of unpicking later.

The venue tends to decide the date. Popular places fill a year or more ahead for peak weekends, so have a few options ready. Ask each one what's included, whether there's a music cut-off, what happens if it rains and whether people can sleep on site.

A venue with bedrooms, or a villa big enough for your closest people, makes the whole weekend far simpler.

People need more notice for a wedding abroad, because they have to sort leave, flights and a bed. Send save the dates once the date and place are fixed, and get your site up at the same moment so there's somewhere to look.

A soft RSVP (asking how likely people are to make it, long before the real invitation) gives you an early headcount for planning rooms and food.

This is where weddings abroad get fiddly. Some couples take a villa and divide up the rooms, some hold a block at a hotel, and plenty do both. Agree who's paying, then give guests an easy way to claim a room and settle up.

Keep a clear note of who's in which room on which nights. Your venue and hosts will ask for it.

Write down every event with its time, its place and who's asked. Not everyone needs to go to everything: a rehearsal dinner might just be family. Put the schedule, dress codes and transport on your site and let guests answer for each part separately.

The real difficulty isn't any single job. It's keeping them all in step: the list, the replies, the food orders, the rooms, the money and the schedule. Spread across spreadsheets and email threads, things slip.

Marrythere joins them up. It all hangs off one guest list, so when a family answers or pays for a room, every page knows at once.

Chase the stragglers, confirm numbers and food orders with your venue, send your hosts the room sheet and check lifts for people landing on different days. Then send the final plan and let yourself enjoy it.