6 steps to plan your wedding in SYDNEY: venue to florals to food & drink
There are many boxes to tick in order to plan your dream wedding in Sydney. From venues to flowers, outfits to desserts, this once-in-a-lifetime event can take months of research and planning to execute perfectly. Here's how you can get started planning your Sydney wedding.
1. When to start planning your Sydney wedding
2. How to find a Sydney wedding venue
3. Choosing a Sydney wedding date
4. Budgeting for your Sydney wedding
5. What suppliers to hire first
6. Gathering inspiration for your Sydney wedding
1. We are starting planning
We are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel, venue and supplier bookings for 2025/2026 are going wild. We're seeing more couples than ever considering weekday weddings and off-peak dates just to get their day locked in.
All that to say, the sooner you can start planning, the better access you'll have to the venues and suppliers you love. One of the fastest ways to find out who's available for your date is to speak with our wedding packages team — they can sort out availability and suggest personalised options for your wedding style, budget, and date.
2. How to find a venue?
When choosing a wedding venue in Sydney, your first step is to decide what kind of wedding appeals to you and your partner. If you close your eyes, what does your dream wedding look like?
Is it a rural setting with rustic aesthetics, timber accents, and open fields overlooking the Hunter Valley or the Blue Mountains?
Is it a coastal water backdrop in Rose Bay or Cronulla with white walls, seaside views, and a beach photo opp?
Or something CBD style with a ballroom & hotel vibes with modern fixtures and CBD accessibility?
3. Choosing a wedding date?
Ahh, the first question you will receive as soon as you announce your engagement to the world: when is the wedding?
If you're planning on basking in engaged bliss for an indefinite amount of time, feel free to shut those questions down with a smug smile and a, “We're just enjoying this chapter for a while”. If you're keen to dive straight into the planning process, then the date is absolutely the first thing you should decide upon. And there's no reason to panic if that date is coming up soon.
Often, choosing the wedding date goes hand in hand with choosing a venue. For people who are set on a particular Sydney wedding venue, they may not be too concerned about the date itself; as long as they have the right location, they're happy to say “I do” on any day, any time, any season. If that's the case, then your task can be slightly easier – simply get in touch with your venue and find out what their calendar looks like over the next few months or years.
On the other hand, many couples lean into the romance of marrying the love of their life by choosing a date that's significant to them. That could be the anniversary of your first date, a special birthday or holiday (Valentine's Day is corny enough to be cute, right?), or the date of an event that shaped you as a couple. If you've got a dream date in mind, we say go for it!
Just keep in mind that it might require you to be flexible about your venue and suppliers as they could already be booked for that day. Weekends are always going to be in higher demand, but weekday weddings become more and more popular every year.
4. Budgeting for a wedding?
Of course, there's another major consideration to booking a venue: your budget. Our 2022 / 2023 weddings have venues 35% of the couples budget. The average spend for a wedding in 2023 is $78,000, you can expect a significant portion of that to be dedicated to your venue with food & beverages taking the chunk.
Venue packages will often include a catering and beverage selection, which is another consideration you'll have to factor in when choosing your Sydney wedding venue. If the idea of a wedding budget has you feeling spooked, we've got your back. Couples who have found their dream venue and suppliers through LUKdesign often love the way we discuss spend of the wedding budget with our calculator too! This tool itemises all of your key wedding expenses & shows you what and where your spending the money.
5. What suppliers to hire first?
Common (and sometimes misinformed) advice about hiring suppliers is that you should book them all as soon as the ring settles on your finger. However, our one stop shop approach makes the whole 300hrs of planning a breeze. We chat about what you want and match the right vendor to your brief, be it an intimate micro-wedding with a handful of friends and family or a large-scale event with hundreds of guests and a whole network of vendors.
The primary factor will be the timeframe for your wedding. Some couples are adamant about keeping their engagement as short as possible, happy to make all the necessary arrangements within a few short weeks or months. If that's your situation, you'll need to book your venue, celebrant, photographer/videographer, and florist as soon as possible, as their calendar will likely be full or close to it.
6. Gathering Inspiration
You're already on your way to planning your dream wedding in Sydney, and here are some of our favourite weddings as featured on our social media to get you inspired!
Unlike others in the industry we are a one stop show focused on our clients special day making it personalised and unique to the couples vision covering things like skincare, nutrition, wedding experiences, venue and fitness tailored of course