Getting Married in Croatia: Advice From a Couple Who Did It!
When we decided on getting married in Croatia, advice from people who had done it before (or just gotten married abroad in general!) was invaluable. We want to return the favor by sharing our own advice and experiences! We got married in Split, Croatia in May 2019, and we couldn’t have been happier with our decision!
Here’s our best advice for getting married in Croatia!
Tip #5: Find a Company You Trust to Help
Tip #2: Get (Legally) Married in Advance, or Allow Lots of Time
Tip #5: Find a Company You Trust to Help
Planning a wedding from afar in a foreign language is too daunting a task to do alone! So when we decided to get married in Croatia, we got in touch with a bunch of different companies that offered wedding packages.
Of the 7 or so companies we contacted, 5 responded. 4 of those seemed unenthusiastic, and getting information from them was like pulling teeth. In some cases, they even gave us information that we knew was false.
One company, Promessi, was amazing. The woman running it wrote back promptly, warmly, and with complete and thorough advice. In fact, she advised us against getting married in Croatia given one of the specific details of our situation, even though it was going to cost her money.
Needless to say, that’s the company we went with--and we couldn’t have been happier! Whether you work with the same company or not, we strongly encourage you to find one that you trust and feel compatible with.
We’re not affiliated with Promessi in any way, but we loved working with them and would highly recommend them. Find them at this link or contact them at +385 91 56 68 171 (phone), info@promessi.com.hr, or ivana@promessi.com.hr.
Tip #4: Ask Lots of Questions
Getting married in Croatia when you’re from another country can be intimidating, especially if you haven’t been there before, so ask lots of questions.
The company you work with should be able to answer just about anything you’re wondering.
Here are some suggestions we have:
What’s included in the package?
What’s excluded from the package that we might want?
What extra fees should I expect?
Can I get legally married in Croatia? If so, what are the requirements?
If my wedding location is outdoors, what happens if it rains?
Will my wedding be in a public space (like a park) or a private space?
Can I choose the location for my wedding, or does it need to be in a specific place?
Getting married in Croatia: advice from a couple who did it!
Tip #3: Do Your Research
When we were deciding to get married in Croatia, we knew almost nothing about the country. We chose Split as our location mainly because that’s where the company that we clicked with was located, and it looked beautiful in the pictures.
We recommend doing a lot of research in advance, though. For example, when choosing our location, we were torn between Marjan Hill and Sustipan Park. Both were public spaces and would have strangers walking by, but some thorough research showed us that Sustipan Park tends to be more quiet, while Marjan Hill is generally more full of tourists. For us, that made the decision easy!
Tip #2: Get (Legally) Married in Advance, or Allow Lots of Time
As of 2019, United States citizens can get legally married in Croatia--but it takes about a month to deal with the paperwork, and you need to go to the embassy in Zagreb at the beginning of the process. In other words, if you can’t get to Croatia at least a month before your wedding, you may have problems.
I don’t want to get into too many details because the process can change and you should get the most detailed information directly from your embassy in Croatia. We were lucky enough to be able to spend over a month in Croatia, but please check well in advance to make sure you can fulfill the requirements.
One option our company suggested, before we decided to get to Croatia a month early, is to get legally married in your home country first, then have a symbolic ceremony in Croatia. If you do this, think of the legal marriage as basically just getting paperwork out of the way, and the Croatian marriage as the “real” wedding where your friends and family support you as you promise your lives to each other.
For getting married in Croatia, our advice is to do all of the research on paperwork before you book with an event planner.
Bonus Tip: if you’re from the United States and the company you’re considering working with assures you that you can just show up and have a legally valid wedding with no prior paperwork, this is a red flag. Several companies told us this, presumably to get our business, but the US Embassy in Zagreb confirmed that this is not possible (as of May 2019).
Tip #1: Enjoy the Process!
If you’ve chosen your company well, and trust the people you’re working with, remember that this is something they do every day and you don’t need to micromanage!
I can’t even tell you how thrilled I was to be able to leave the details of our wedding in our planner’s competent hands. Other than a few details (number of guests, general concept for the bouquet), I didn’t have to think about anything, and I loved it!
The result was better than I could have imagined. Ivana took care of the flowers, seating, music, photographer, and ceremony. Pretty much all we had to do was show up and get married.
You should have seen my Fitbit resting heart rate report. When we were planning our wedding in California, it spiked insanely high… and as soon as we decided to have it in Croatia and found Ivana, it immediately sank back to its usual healthy levels. Being able to enjoy the process of planning the wedding and getting married instead of stressing out over every detail was absolutely priceless.
Final Thoughts:
Our wedding in Croatia cost about 10% of what we would have paid if we had held it in California (although of course we also had dramatically fewer people). I don’t want to give exact numbers, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how affordable it is to get married in Croatia, especially if you’ve started to look into prices for getting married in the US.
Again, the company we worked with was Promessi, and we completely and wholeheartedly recommend them. Ivana took all of the stress out of the process for us. We’re not affiliated with Promessi in any way other than having loved the experience of working with them!
If we had to do it all over again, and choose between a big wedding at home and the smaller one we had in Split, we would absolutely do exactly what we did. For us, a small, beautiful ceremony in a park overlooking the sea with our immediate family was perfect. Of course we would have loved to celebrate with all our friends, but the day was stress-free, intimate, and deeply meaningful. Instead of stressing out about whether the chair covers were the right shade of gold, we got to fully focus on our promises to each other.