How to choose a local wedding planner in Hungary?

If you are searching for an international wedding planner in Hungary, then you:

• are living abroad or

• don’t speak Hungarian

(or mostly both) for sure, which might result in hopeless difficulties at first sight, when you start to plan a wedding. But fortunately, there are a number of experienced wedding planners here, specialising on international weddings. The question is, how to choose your one from the Internet.

One of the unequivocal disadvantage of the Internet is that anybody can seem anybody. A nice website, good marketing (or a husband/brother experienced in Google Adwords and SEO) and professional photos from a friend photographer and you think, you’ve found the best international wedding planner. Not always.

21st century women are enough busy also out of being a bride, so simply there is no opportunity to “run unnecessary circles” - as we say in Hungary.

What can you do, if you want to be sure, that your potential wedding planner is really experienced in international wedding planning? In Hungary we have appr. 150-200 wedding planners. Only a couple of them have English website (this is a good filter anyway). So, now you have narrowed the options. But as we said above, a good English website is not enough. I know wedding vendors having English website, but not speaking English well... I Skype conversation can help a lot to check, if it is a marketing trick, or you really can trust the vendor. Some areas really need smooth communication (planner, photographer, master of ceremony, etc.), so language is an important point.

However, there might be super-talented newly graduated professionals in every area, wedding planning has no long history in Hungary (the first wedding planners appeared appr. 20 years ago), therefore there isn’t a strong educational background for this profession. Life and years of work are the only factors, what can make a wedding planner really successful and strong. Therefore, don’t forget to check since when is the potential planner working in this field. A good method is to check the registration date of the domain of the website or to visit the social media activities. For this latter, we have to make difference between uploading photos gathered from the Internet or social media and uploading photos of real weddings planned by the given planner, having feed-backs from clients and guests, etc.

In addition, feel free to ask for references, i.e. e-mail address of previous clients. The bride and the planner usually keep in touch with each other also after the wedding and they definitely don’t mind to share her experiences with you.

Last but not least, your own intuition and personal sympathy are also very important, or even essential. It is the best, if you can meet personally, or at least have a conversation via a video call.