Most UK couples considering a wedding abroad end up with the same shortlist: Italy, Greece, and then something cheaper they have heard about but cannot picture. We are the cheaper thing people have heard about, so take what follows with that in mind — we have tried to be straight about where the others are the better answer.
Italy
The most established destination-wedding country in Europe, and it shows. Tuscany, Puglia and the lakes have decades of infrastructure behind them: planners who have run hundreds of weddings, photographers who shoot nothing else, venues with a dedicated events team and a tested running order.
Go to Italy if you want the look everybody already has in their head, you want the deepest possible supplier bench, and the budget is not the thing shaping the decision.
The trade-offs: it is the most expensive of the three by some distance, the best venues book furthest ahead, and in peak season you are one of a great many weddings happening that weekend. You are also paying a premium for the name on the invitation — Tuscany costs what it costs partly because it is Tuscany.
Greece
Hard to beat for the sea. If the image in your head is white buildings, blue water and a ceremony with the Aegean behind you, nowhere else gives you that.
Go to Greece if the coastline is the point, or you are planning something small — the islands suit elopements and thirty-guest weddings particularly well.
The trade-offs: logistics. Getting eighty guests onto an island involves connecting flights or ferries, and the coordination load lands on you. August is brutally hot and brutally busy. Island venues can also be surprisingly constrained on numbers once you account for where people actually sleep.
Albania
The honest pitch: it costs considerably less, the flights are short, and it is not yet worn smooth by mass tourism. The honest caveat: it has nothing like the wedding infrastructure of the other two.
Go to Albania if the budget is doing real work in the decision, you like the idea of somewhere your guests have not already been to twice, and you would rather spend the money on the day than on the postcode.
The trade-offs: fewer established wedding suppliers, less written about it online, and you will be explaining to some guests where it is. If you need a venue with a full in-house events department and a hundred prior weddings on file, Albania is not there yet.
The money, as honestly as we can put it
We are not going to quote you Italian or Greek prices. We do not book weddings there, the figures vary enormously by region and season, and any number we invented would be worth nothing to you.
What we can give you is one real data point from our side: a wedding at Jerina Mansion runs at roughly £100 per person, covering the venue, the food and the drinks. For sixty guests that is around £6,000 for all three together. There is a full breakdown in what a wedding in Albania actually costs.
Take that number and go and get comparable quotes from the Italian and Greek venues on your list. That is a far more useful exercise than reading anyone’s ranked list, including this one.
How to compare them properly
Venues present costs very differently, which is how a cheap-looking quote stops being cheap. Ask every venue on your shortlist the same questions:
- Is venue hire separate from catering? Many quote them apart, and the headline figure is only one of them
- Is there a minimum spend, on the bar or overall?
- Is corkage charged, and what happens if you bring your own wine?
- Does the day have a hard finish time, and what does going past it cost?
- How many people sleep on site, and what does everyone else do?
- Is the venue exclusively yours, or is there another wedding that weekend?
- What is quoted in which currency, and who carries the exchange risk between now and the day?
For what it is worth, our answers: catering and venue are in one figure, there is no minimum spend, no corkage, no finish time, sixteen sleep at the villa, and the property is only ever booked exclusively.
Practical differences that catch people out
- Albania is outside the Schengen area. For many nationalities that means visa-free entry for up to 90 days, but every guest should check their own position rather than assuming it works like Italy or Greece
- The currency is the lek. Cards work in Tirana; smaller towns still want cash
- Season. Late May to June and September are the sweet spots here — warm evenings without the August peak
- Distance from the airport. Tirana International is around forty minutes from us, with no ferry and no connecting flight in between. That is a genuine advantage over most island venues
Where that leaves you
If you want the established thing and can pay for it, Italy. If the sea is the whole point, Greece. If you would rather have a hundred people at a private house with the budget going into the day itself, that is the case for Albania, and it is the case we would make.
Our venue takes a ceremony of up to 180, with seated dinners usually 80 to 100. Details on the wedding venue page, and the practical side — the legal route, timings, transport — is in our guide to getting married in Albania.
To talk through a date, email reservations@jerinamansion.com or message +355 69 40 200 22.
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