Cover photo by Brasspenny Photography.
Dan and I were married August of 2017 at Hotel Budir in Iceland.
We are both American and have no family ties to the country, so if you’re like many on our guest list, you may be asking Why Iceland? The main motivation behind planning a destination wedding in general is that we both love to travel and consider this to be a big part of what brings us closer as a couple.
The reason for choosing Iceland specifically is that this is the place where we got engaged in 2015 during our 9-day trip around the Ring Road. And for those that haven’t been themselves or heard all the hype, it’s an unbelievably beautiful country.
Lupine fields in the East Fjords of Iceland — what’s not to love?
Planning a wedding is not the easiest thing you’ll do with your soon-to-be life partner, and planning a destination wedding only makes things more complicated. But for us, the payoff was absolutely worth it. It was hands down the most memorable and magical weekend of our lives. And after it was all over with, it felt like we had also succeeded in creating a truly memorable experience for the 80 of our family and friends that made the journey with us.
If you’re considering having a destination wedding in Iceland or some other far-flung part of the world, I say go for it.
At the end of the day, it isn’t as difficult as you might think, especially with the many useful resources online (like this one!). In this post I’ll give some insight into what it was like planning a destination wedding in Iceland as well as several pointers on picking a venue, estimating your head count, and staying on budget. So without further ado… Here are some tips to help you plan your destination wedding in Iceland!
Hiring a Wedding Planner
I am not the type of person that ever thought I would need a wedding planner, but after a few months of trying to research and coordinate with Icelandic vendors I realized I needed someone with the language skills and insider knowledge to help me navigate the wedding planning process in a foreign country. It’s surprisingly difficult to locate Icelandic vendors online since very few have english websites (or websites at all, for that matter). We also found many vendors weren’t the best at communicating via email, so having someone physically in Iceland that could get people on the phone or visit them in person was really helpful.
We ended up working with an American-expat-turned-adventure-wedding-planner Ann Peters of Iceland Wedding Planner. It was really nice working with an American who understood the differences in customs and traditions between the two countries. It was certainly helpful having someone to help with planning in the months leading up to the wedding, but she was absolutely indispensable on day-of coordination. If you’re having a mid to large-sized wedding, you will definitely need someone running the show, keeping everything on track and on schedule, and wrangling your guests.
Our wedding planner was also a big help in navigating the legal side of getting married in a foreign country; she guided us through the process of obtaining an Icelandic marriage certificate and set up appointments with the proper agencies on our behalf. The easier route is to simply visit the courthouse in your home country before the wedding, but if you’re keen on getting an Icelandic marriage certificate then it’s worth speaking with someone who can make sure you have all the proper documents prepared in advance of your big day.
Long story short, if you know you want to get married in Iceland, the first thing you should do is find a wedding planner. It will be expensive, yes, but in my opinion it is absolutely necessary when planning a destination wedding.
Finding a Venue
Photo courtesy of Hotel Budir
As I mentioned in the intro, we had our wedding at Hotel Budir, which is on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula about 2½ hours drive from Reykjavik. We knew we would have a large wedding (by Iceland standards) so there were only a few places within a few hours of Reykjavik that could accommodate a group like ours.
We considered the Ion Adventure Hotel, Fosshotel, and Hotel Husafell but ultimately went with Hotel Budir because it checked the most boxes for us. Plus the views and landscape surrounding the hotel are spectacular — the hotel is positioned on the Atlantic Ocean with a backdrop of low mountains, trickling waterfalls, most-covered lava fields, and views of the peninsula’s famous Snaefellsjokull glacier. What more could you want?
Factors to Consider when Selecting a Venue:
1. Guest Count
As mentioned before, Iceland doesn’t have many options for large venues, unless you plan on having your wedding in Reykjavik itself. Determining your guest count is really the first step in planning your Icelandic wedding, since the size of your wedding will greatly impact the number of options you have for venues. Small, intimate weddings are significantly easier to plan, but don’t let that stop you from planning for something bigger!
2. Proximity to Reykjavik
I would recommend choosing a venue within a 3-hour drive of Reykjavik, since this is most likely where all of your guests will be flying into.
3. Proximity to Hotels
If you’re choosing a venue that isn’t a hotel, it’s important to do research on hotels in the area. Hotels can be really expensive in Iceland, so you should ideally have a range of options, including hostels, guesthouses, and Airbnb. You wouldn’t want your guests to decline the invitation solely because it’s too expensive, so be available to help your guests find a place in their budget by posting options on your wedding website. Some hotels will let you reserve a block of rooms for your guests for a certain period of time.
4. Proximity to Other Sights
We did a 2-day wedding weekend (one day for the ceremony and reception and the other day for a sightseeing tour), so the proximity to sights was really important. We didn’t want our guests to feel like they spent more time on a bus than out enjoying nature. The Snaefellsnes Peninsula is known as “Iceland in Miniature” thanks to its sampling of everything Iceland has to offer: a glacier, waterfalls, white and black sand beaches, and oceanside cliffs. The bite-size nature of the peninsula made it perfect for our group sightseeing trip.
Itinerary card with map of Snaefellsnes for our “Adventure Day”
5. What’s Included with the Venue
Part of why we went with Hotel Budir was that it was a one-stop-shop, so to speak. There were many options of places to get married just steps from the hotel (on the white sand beach, at the adorable Budir Church, in the lava fields, etc). It was also large enough to accommodate our guests for the reception. The lobby and bar area were great for mingling during cocktail hour and dancing after dinner. They have a fantastic restaurant, so all of the food for the entire weekend was handled by the hotel staff, which was a breeze to plan and coordinate.
Best of all, it’s a hotel, which means almost every guest was able to stay on-site and didn’t have to worry about traveling to and from the hotel for the weekend’s events. This is important to consider, since having all of the wedding events in one place will make it both easier to plan and cheaper; you won’t have to pay to shuttle guests around and you also won’t have to pay a separate venue fee, as was the case with Hotel Budir.
I recommend booking your venue and making hotel reservations as soon as possible, especially if you’re planning a summer wedding. Limited options means places are more likely to be booked. Even 14 months out, there were only two weekends available for summer 2017 when we signed our contract with Hotel Budir.
Preparing the Guest List
For us, one of the most challenging parts of the planning process was putting together the guest list and trying to accurately predict the guest count throughout the planning process.
With a non-destination wedding, the rule of thumb is that about 80% of invited guests will attend your wedding. For a destination wedding, it’s a lot harder to predict. I would argue that having a destination wedding in a non-tropical location like Iceland makes it even more unpredictable. Going to a destination wedding usually requires that guests use their vacation time, and some people might prefer to use this time sitting on a beach.
For reference, we invited around 200 people, anticipating 80-100 of those people would attend and ended up having a total guest count of 80, which was 40% of the original list.
Our lovely wedding guests! – Photo by Brasspenny Photography
There are also of course the inevitable handful of people who have to drop out last-minute. On one hand, a destination wedding might mean fewer people cancel since it requires more advance planning to attend, but this also means there will be someone who didn’t renew their passport on time or waited too long to book flights and couldn’t afford the price of a last-minute fare.
My suggestion: send out Save the Dates 12 months before the wedding and the Invitations 8 months before. Ask that guests RSVP no later than 6 months in advance and do your due diligence in following up with those that haven’t sent their reply in order to avoid last-minute additions.
Instead of including a return RSVP card with your invitations, have guests RSVP on your wedding website so that you can direct them to some trip-planning advice and other important information for international travel. Be sure to ask for an email address on the RSVP form so you can easily contact your guests if needed.
Budgeting for your Icelandic Wedding
In comparison to the US, certain items included in your wedding budget will be way more expensive. Iceland is, after all, an island, so most things have to be imported and are therefore pricier than they would be otherwise. Combine this with an unfavorable exchange rate, and you might start to reconsider some of your “must haves” items.
The key to success here is to be flexible.
Simply put: you can’t always get what you want, but that’s ok! For me, this meant not having chairs for all of the guests during the ceremony. I spent hour after hour trying to find a vendor that could provide 40 or so chairs to supplement the chairs that Hotel Budir was letting us use. The only quotes I received were an astonishing $30-40 per chair plus another few hundred dollars for the delivery — and these weren’t fancy chairs, mind you. Even hay bails cost $20 to rent plus another $600 for delivery! At the end of the day, we decided chairs were really not that important and it all worked out in the end.
Guests standing during our ceremony – Photo by Brasspenny Photography
Tips to Stay on Budget
1. There is no such thing as an open bar in Iceland.
And alcohol is really expensive, too! We originally considered an open bar to be one of the most important elements, but ended up doing signature cocktails for cocktail hour and just beer and wine for the rest of the evening. Guests had the option to buy their own drinks from the bar, but most people were fine with the provided options so not many people bought their own drinks.
Our cocktails cost around 2000 ISK each (~$19.00), wine was about 6-7000 ISK per bottle (~$57-67), and beers were 1200 ISK each (~$11.50). These numbers definitely seem high, but keep in mind that most guests will probably just have three or four drinks over the course of the night and some won’t drink at all. We budgeted $60 per person, which ended up being a pretty good estimate.
2. Flexibility is the key to success for flowers.
Photo by Brasspenny Photography
Flowers can be pricey, but if you’re open to what’s available (instead of specific types of flowers) then you can easily stay on budge
There are primarily three flowers in Iceland that bloom at various times throughout the spring and summer months: the Icelandic Poppy, Lupine, and Cardamine. All other flowers are shipped from overseas. I originally envisioned centerpieces of anemones and peonies but these weren’t available or were prohibitively expensive. I instead focused on a color scheme and went with all white flowers and greenery.
Our wedding planner took care of the bouquet, but for the other flowers I simply ordered large quantities of eucalyptus and baby’s breath from Reykjavik florist Upplifun and just dropped by the shop the day before the wedding to pick out a few other flowers to use as accents. The other thing to remind yourself is that the scenery is going to be spectacular, so flowers are not that important.
3. Consider rental delivery fees.
As mentioned before, chairs and other rental items (tents, dinnerware, napkins, etc) can be prohibitively expensive. If your wedding is outside of Reykjavik like ours was, you’ll also find yourself paying high fees for delivery. Instead of paying high rental fees, we used the dinnerware provided by the hotel and brought over a few decor items in our suitcases (votive candles, picture frames, etc). We also bought some other miscellaneous decor at the Ikea in Reykjavik and just donated these items to the hotel at the end of the weekend.
4. Save money with an Icelandic DJ.
We originally really wanted a live band. Unfortunately, there weren’t many options for our date and any halfway decent band was going to cost us $5000+ (not to mention having to pay for their travel and lodging). We ultimately decided to hire a DJ instead and were really happy with our choice. We used DJ Kristján Á Baldursson and would highly recommend him for your wedding as well. We sent him a playlist in advance and he did a great job working with our taste in music and kept the dance floor going until 2:00 in the morning!
5. Do your own hair or makeup (or both!).
At the salon in Reykjavik the morning of the wedding – Photo by Brasspenny Photography
An easy way to save money is to do your own hair or makeup or both. I opted to do my own makeup and went to a hairdresser in Reykjavik the morning of the wedding before leaving for Hotel Budir so that I didn’t have to pay for someone to travel to Budir.
My updo cost 25,000 ISK (~$240), whereas having a stylist travel to Budir would have cost around 40,000 ISK (~$380). I only had a Maid of Honor (no bridesmaids), but if you have a full bridal party you may want to consider recruiting a friend to do everyone’s hair and makeup. Alternatively, you might be able to find a professional in the US who’s willing to come for the cost of a flight and accommodations, which is likely to be a more affordable option depending on the size of your bridal party.
Tip: if you opt to have your hair done in Reykjavik, bring along a shower cap to protect your hair from unexpected rain and wind and some hair spray for some last-minute touch-ups before the ceremony.
6. Monitor exchange Rates
Lastly, it’s important that you closely monitor exchange rates between the US dollar and Iceland krona. Iceland has become a popular destination in recent years due in part to the 2008 financial crisis, which made the country more affordable to visit. Little by little the Icelandic krona has been gaining back its strength and is on a steady upward trend.
We tried to combat this by paying for as many things as we could upfront and as early in the planning process as possible. Any time you convert money from one currency to the other, you’re going to lose money in the exchange, but by paying attention to the ups and downs of the exchange rate you can at least combat this by strategically timing when you pay for large ticket items.
Having a credit card with no foreign transaction fees is key, too. Some credit cards will also give you double points for travel-related purchases, which can really add up when planning an international wedding.
Other things to keep in mind
- There isn’t as much of a wedding industry in Iceland, probably because fewer Icelanders get married (most couples have children together before even considering tying the knot). While this means you won’t necessarily pay more for using the ‘W’ word as you would in the US, it also means you might have a difficult time finding vendors to cater to your every wish.
- Have a back up plan in case the weather turns south. The weather is extremely unpredictable in Iceland. It can be sunny with not a cloud in the sky one minute and pouring rain the next. We decided to include ponchos in our guests’ welcome bags just in case. It was pouring rain the morning of the ceremony, but miraculously turned it around in time for our ceremony. If the rain continued, our plan was to have the ceremony outside with ponchos or inside the hotel if the rain was really bad. The beauty of a wedding weekend instead of a wedding day is that a little rain won’t ruin the entire weekend.
- As I mentioned earlier in the post, we opted for a wedding weekend instead of a wedding day and would highly suggest going this route. We had our wedding ceremony and reception on Friday and then toured around the Snaefellsnes Peninsula during the day on Saturday. Saturday night we had a BBQ at the hotel and released lanterns from the nearby beach. Sunday happened to be my husband’s 30th birthday, so we headed back to Reykjavik to continue the festivities with friends and family still in town. With people traveling halfway around the world, a weekend of activities will make it much more memorable for your guests. Plus, it’s true what they say: your wedding day will fly by, so that extra day will give you more time to relax and really interact with all of your guests.
- One benefit to planning a wedding in Iceland is that tipping is not compulsory, although it never hurts to tip someone who you feel really went above and beyond.
