Mallorca Weddings - FAQ
How to use a Wedding Agency and some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Wedding agents are professionals who are experienced in getting the best rates for hotels and services, co-ordinating all services with the dates, and juggling with a back-up of suppliers if one is not available.
In a number of consultations, we assess the needs of the client, and come up with a package combination of hotels, florists, service and music etc to suit that client's pocket, tastes and personal choices. It is natural for us all to see what else is available.
Click on a question in the list below to see the answer
Why use an agency in the first place?
Why is the choice of hotels limited?
How are the fees calculated?
But if you get commission from the hotels you are being paid twice?
How do we pay?
Why is there a fee for the priests, don't they have to perform weddings anyway?
What does a Wedding Organiser do? Why can't I do it myself and save your fee - and just come to you for the things I can't arrange myself?
We have been recommended to get in touch with you regarding documentation. I have some background already, but I was wondering if you have any suggestions or helpful advice?
Mixed Marriage - how does one go about having a simple wedding ceremony in the church (my son's fiancée is a Roman Catholic), we are not.
May a divorced person marry in Mallorca? I am a divorced nominal Christian. My fiancé is a Roman Catholic. May we marry in Mallorca?
How much will it cost? I have come across your company's website and found it to be of some use considering that I am getting married in mallorca 2004. I was hoping to get a rough quote for a wedding that you would organize but there are some things I will not need you to do.
Legal Matters - Please can you inform me about the legal matters in getting married in Mallorca? If you are not resident can you not have a service at all? Can you get married in a private house? When are the laws likely to change with regards to the licence?
If your question is not listed here and you cannot find the answer from the site using our site map, please use our Ask Us service.
Why use an agency in the first place?
When things go wrong, as they will - the florist cannot manage the date and the priest has another wedding at mid-day etc - it is for the agent to co-ordinate and solve the problems without bothering the client overly. The agent takes on the stress and problems releasing the bride and groom and their families to concentrate on other matters and arrive at their wedding day calm and happy.
If the client does not know how to use the agent properly, they will try to take over the arrangements and end up taking on all the stress themselves - having paid good money to an agency to do that for them!!
Why is the choice of hotels limited?
The answer is obvious. Each agent has to be able to be reasonably sure that the hotels they recommend will be consistent in service, competitive in price and more imortantly, STILL THERE several months later when the client needs to use it! It is therefore impossible to be able to recommend every hotel. Some might not meet certain expectations. Others may have a reputation of being cavalier about their service. Others are not consistent in price. Many reasons why an agent, whose job it is to know their environment, may decide not to show certain hotels to a client.
A specific hotel may be suitable to one type of client and be an anathema to another.
How are the fees calculated?
Each agency has their own policy. We usually base the baseline fee on how much work is involved, how many hours and how many things we have to do. This agency bases these costs at between £10-£20 an hour for example, and includes all travel and accomodation costs. Whether the wedding is a low budget or a super-duper celebrity affair, the amount of ground work needed is basically the same. So we have a base line rate of £2000. Then the bigger the wedding, the more extra work is involved, so, if a wedding cost exceeds £13,500, our fee goes up accordingly at the rate of 15%. See also our Terms of Business.
But if you get commission from the hotels you are being paid twice?
No, we are not. We also occasionally do receive a commission from the hotels. This is fair, we are representing their interest and deserve to be paid for our work on their behalf. But we are not being paid twice, our clients are paying us for work we are doing for them in organising the wedding, not for anything else. And we have an open policy. We show our hotels to clients to let them choose. Some give more than others, some do not give anything but allow a discount against rooms, which goes to the client. With others we organise a special service (like flowers and champagne) - again, a service for the client not for us. We choose our hotels for the reliability and service they offer, not for their level of commission!
How do we pay?
Once you have accepted our firm quotation and signed the contract, we request a 10% deposit. This covers our work in the following months on your behalf.
When you have settled on a date, and the hotel is ready to be booked, you deposit a 50% sum (of the total estimate of the wedding costs) with the agency, so that we can make firm bookings and pay the deposits to the services. Many ask for 50%.
When you arrive in Mallorca for the wedding, the balance of all monies, both for the agency and for the services is due. Some services request the balance a week or so beforehand. See also our Terms of Business.
Why is there a fee for the priests, don't they have to do weddings anyway?
Each priest is obligated to celebrate the services for the people of his own parish. It is normally the custom to give him an offering anyway. However, the priests in Mallorca are under no obligations whatsoever to perform marriages for anyone from another country. They do so as a courtesy. Usually we are looking at the use of a church, its heating or air-conditioning, lights and candles etc... The cleaning of the church and the cleaning up afterwards. The agreement of the parish priest to us using their church, and the services of an English-speaking priest to officiate.
So, yes, it is necessary to allow a sum for this service. Mallorca Weddings pays a stipend of €600 or 15% of its own fees, whichever is higher. We cover this cost from our fees - which makes our fees even more reasonable!
What does a Wedding Organiser do? Why can't I do it myself and save your fee - and just come to you for the things I can't arrange myself?
This is a very good question and one I am going to reply to at length, as it is important - both to you the customer, and to us the consultancy.
You can, of course do all the arrangements yourself. There is no need to employ an arranger to do things for you. However, wedding arrangers / planners can usually offer a better package at a more attractive rate. That is because we have whole lists of contacts and services at our disposal. We have spent years building up relationships and confidence with services so that we are able to guarantee that all will go well for your special day.
Suppose you book a caterer. They look good on the Internet, but it's just one person working out of a back kitchen somewhere. They get sick - what happens to your reception?
Or the photographer who forgets your time - who is responsible for ringing them and saying, 'You are supposed to be here'. Or the hotel which has promised you the moon and when you arrive all is not well; who is going to take that stress from you on your big day? Yourself? What a shame! Much better to let an Organiser be there to see to everything for you.
And the fee? Well by the time you have spent hours on the Internet looking for services; telephone calls to see if their dates are compatible; trips to Mallorca to check things out, often staying in an hotel and hiring a car - you have spent our fee already, with nothing arranged and all the stressful work still before you!
So, we would say, for such an important occasion you need a Wedding Organiser to get it together for you, and to take away the stress of trying to co-ordinate with people who basically do not know you, and do not particularly care. You are just one amongst many strangers who come to the island looking for weddings / parties etc. They themselves prefer to work through agencies which bring them guaranteed work all year round, and they depend on that work, so they pull out all the stops to accommodate the requests of the wedding organiser. And then they make sure they do the job properly, or they know they will lose the contract with that agency. Whereas once they have your money, they can afford to be a bit laid back about the service they offer!
Not that all services are like that! Mallorcans work hard for a good price. But there are many foreigners in Mallorca just waiting to exploit.
We have been recommended to get in touch with you regarding documentation. I have some background already, but I was wondering if you have any suggestions or helpful advice?
Mallorca Weddings offers a documentation service for 150 Euros.
For this we advise the clients exactly what they need for a wedding in Mallorca, and what they, personally have to do. We then check all the paperwork, translate it and courier it to the diocesan offices in Mallorca. This service is particularly useful in cases where there is little time, or papers have to come from different dioceses etc (eg: bride in UK, groom in Ireland, living in separate parishes) it saves a lot of time, and possibility of lost paperwork in the post. When a priest is slow, we contact him to ask for a speedy attention. If names are difficult to read, we type up all the information so that clergy in Mallorca do not have to send back for clarification.
NOTE. You must apply for your baptismal certificate no later than six months before the wedding, to allow time for all the other documentation to be put into place. However, the copy certificate is only valid for a wedding which takes place WITHIN the six months of the date of the stamp! So do not apply for this before six months.
Mixed marriage - how does one go about having a simple wedding ceremony in the church (my son's fiancée is a Roman Catholic), we are not...
Mixed marriages are permissible in the Roman Catholic Church. You will need to visit the parish priest of the Catholic , and tell him what you plan, and tell him that the RC Church in Mallorca will permit this. refer him to MALLORCA WEDDINGS 01600 713374 for information from the Mallorca diocese.
Usually you will be requested to attend some talks with the priest to make sure you understand the obligations of marrying a Catholic...
May a divorced person marry in Mallorca? I am a divorced nominal Christian. My fiancé is a Roman Catholic. May we marry in Mallorca?
If you were married the first time in a Church ceremony in the Church of England, then your marriage is considered valid and indissoluble by the Church as a whole. You would need to get an annulment of that marriage. If however you were married only by CIVIL LAW, then the divorce is sufficient to enable you to contract a marriage in any Christian Church.
How much will it cost? I have come across your company's web site and found it to be of some use considering that I am getting married in Mallorca. I was hoping to get a rough quote for a wedding that you would organize. There are however a few things that I will not need from you.
For us to be able to give you an estimate, we need to know in the first instance how many guests you will bring, and the amount you wish to spend.
With regard to part service; Mallorca Weddings quote a fee of £2,000 or 15% of the total wedding cost. This pre-supposes the client has arranged their own travel to Mallorca. This fee covers the planning and co-ordinating of everything else. It is easier to co-ordinate if we have all the services to plan, photographer, florist, cars, church hotel etc etc... If we are asked to do just the flowers, or just the entertainment etc it becomes less cost-efficient co-ordinating with other people and many possible dates.
What we can do individually is
- All the Church arrangements, providing we are given a fixed date which has already been confirmed by all the other services
- All the arrangements except the Hotel
- Hotel finding service only
- Paperwork service only (from €150)
Our fees are quoted individually for such services.
If you simply need a couple of questions answering, please check out our Ask Us service.
Legal Matters - Please can you inform me about the legal matters of getting married in Mallorca? If you are not resident can you not have a service at all? Can you get married in a private house? When are the laws likely to change with regards to the licence?
This depends on whether you want a religious service or civil wedding. Civil weddings are only available now for people who have been personally resident on the island for two years; (ie parents having a villa there is not enough!)
Church Weddings - If it is in the Roman Catholic Church, you can be married in a church only, the diocese of Mallorca does not permit Roman Catholic marriages anywhere else.
If it is Church of England, it depends on the minister. We have the services of an Anglican minister who will conduct the ceremony in a hotel, garden, house or wherever is suitable.
Because of the civil wedding restriction many non-church goers who would normally have had a civil wedding, will decide to have a simple religious ceremony in a house/hotel etc in order to have their Mallorca Wedding! It may be necessary to show commitment to the church of your choice.
For ANY denomination Church wedding, you need to register civilly in the UK before the wedding. This is very simple. You just book a civil wedding at the registry office in your home town or wherever, and then come out to Mallorca for the religious ceremony.
Paperwork is not complicated. It is just a bit time-consuming for those who are not familiar with the way to do it. Once hired, Mallorca Weddings advise clients what preliminary things they must do themselves and then take on all the complicated bits for you!
