Mallorca Weddings - Beware
Things that can go Wrong
Some important points and problem areas...
Getting married abroad is a complicated and fairly costly effort. Anyone with less than £10,000 to spend should not consider this option unless it is to be a quiet wedding without many guests.
It is not cost-effective to try to cut corners by doing bits yourself. Mallorca Weddings has many years experience in troubleshooting, and having to liaise with several different services will create unnecessary expense for our clients. Some hotels will want to claim that they do all the wedding arrangements themselves. Be wary, there have been many mistakes made (see below).
Included in our fee is a personally guided tour and consultation in Mallorca of 2-3 days as needed... we do not charge extra for our travel and accommodation. We accompany clients around the island to visit the hotels we feel will suit specific tastes and budgets...
Fireworks
Many clients have asked for the Mallorca custom of a firework display during the reception. Please be aware that the fire regulations in Mallorca are strict due to the many flash fires which occur in the summertime.
- No display may be longer than ten minutes
- Accredited pyro-technicians MUST be used
- Fire precautions must be in place by the hotel
- The cost of this entertainment is often very high, as much as 2000 Euros...
Hotel Chapels
Some of the old manor houses have been turned into rural hotels. Many have a house chapel, very beautiful, which is often offered to clients as a suitable venue for their wedding. Please be advised: the Diocese of Mallorca only allows weddings to be celebrated in the parish churches and the hermitages, NOT the house chapels - these are not valid for public weddings.
We have also come across hotels which offer a Roman Catholic wedding ceremony by an Anglican Priest! As they do not have Anglicans in Mallorca, they see Anglican (ie English Catholic) as being the same as Roman Catholic!
In both cases these weddings are not valid in the eyes of the Church.
At the moment of writing, the Spanish Government has stopped all CIVIL WEDDINGS of non-resident foreigners in Mallorca. We hope this will be changed back again soon, but for the foreseeable future, you must be resident for at least three months before you can apply for a civil wedding on the island. This does not apply to Roman Catholic church weddings.
Weddings from Hell!
A dip into our archives of cautionary tales (not ours we hasten to add - except where the couple came to us to put things right!)
Jane and Derek wanted a splendid wedding with as many trimmings as possible, for as little as possible. They decided to choose their own hotel & flight arrangements, so that their budget would not be too high to incur extra fees to their agent.
Their chosen hotel promised they could arrange everything in one price, including flowers, catering, accomodation, transport, entertainment, in fact, very little was left for the agent to do! The agent's fees were fixed regardless of the amount of work done. They got their extra commission from the services booked, not from the clients! So did the hotel of course, so by letting the hotel provide the service, Jane and Derek were paying twice over for the same service. Only on the big day, the food was not up to standard, the music during the reception was akin to a 5th year student, and the transport was late, making the party late for the Church, which meant that they could not have the full Mass, and had to make do with a simple marriage service, as there was another service half an hour later!
Then there was John and Enid. Their big day was ruined by overbooking at their chosen hotel, and they all had to go to another hotel after the reception.
The 'Smith' family had their party and barbecue ruined by the local fire-fighters bombing them all with water bombs. Similarly, another wedding reception ended abruptly during the firework display, when orange fire-retardant foam was squirted on the display from planes!
The hotel in each case had not advised the services (it is necessary to get permission in Mallorca) and when the smoke was seen, out came the fire planes!
But at least the couple were married. Unlike the couple who came to the agency in some distress. They had their wedding in the lovely little house chapel of the hotel, and when no papers came through made an enquiry. They were not validly married!
Many of these old rural hotels were manor houses, and being a Catholic country, they had their own chapels for the use of the extended families and their retainers and land workers. The diocese does not recognise these chapels now as valid places for public services to be held. Local priests know this, but sometimes couples take their own priests with them, who, assured by the hotel, perform the marriage/baptism without proper attention to diocesan detail.
Last year during an inspection of hotels, this agency came across three such places. But the most alarming was the sheer lack of knowledge by hotel staff. One hotel offered a priest for the ceremonies. When we enquired where the priest came from, they, in complete innocence, gave us the email address of an English priest at anglicanpriests.org! Be warned. An anglican priest may not marry a Roman Catholic in a valid ceremony! As Mallorca is a Roman Cathiolic country, they do not differentiate between English Catholic and Roman Catholic, because in Spain, Spanish Catholics ARE Roman Catholics!
Finally STRESS
The main reason clients come to agencies is to remove the immense stress involved in organising a wedding. Pre-wedding nerves and disagreements cause many break-ups and serious arguments which can be prevented by using a reputable agency such as MALLORCA WEDDINGS.
Our final cautionary tale involves a couple who could not let go the reins and let the agents do their job! Not satisfied with the commitment of the agency to involve them at every stage, they still wished to do things themselves and instruct the agents to act on their decisions, expecting them to sort things out each time they made a mistake. Bride fought with groom, groom disagreed with bride, both took their anger out on the agent. Their stress levels were very high, and they ended up cancelling their wedding! Fortunately the story has a happy ending, the couple had learned their lesson, and replanned their wedding - this time using the agency to the full!
