Dream Tarragona Wedding: Interview with our Brides

What a dream couple, we truly fell in love with Erin and Vanesa and are so grateful for this interview and photos from their dream Tarragona wedding.

Photography: F2 Studio

Describe your Tarragona wedding day in 3 words!

Joyful, unforgettable, perfect!

What was your favourite memory from your Tarragona wedding?

It’s impossible to pick just one! The whole day felt so magical. The ceremony itself was particularly special for us because we shared our vows with one another, and that was a really meaningful moment for us. We felt a lot of love not just from one another but also from all of our friends and family around us.

Why did you choose this venue for your Tarragona wedding?

We chose this area because Barcelona is our favorite city in the world, and it’s where we got engaged. Honestly, we couldn’t imagine getting married anywhere else! We were so excited to share the city with our loved ones. We really wanted our venue to reflect some of the parts we love most about Spain – the architecture, the scenery, the sea. The Castell took our breath away from the moment we first saw it, and we knew right away that was the venue for us.

What did you love most about your wedding dress? How and where did you find it?

Vanessa bought her dress at a bridal shop outside of New York City. It was simple, but elegant. It was also lightweight which came in handy for the hot weather!

Erin originally bought a different dress almost a year before the wedding, but then fell out of love with it and decided to buy a new dress just three weeks before the wedding! Fortunately, she found a seamstress who worked a miracle and got the dress ready in time. One of her best friends actually surprised her and bought the dress for Erin as a gift.

If you did it all again what might you change?

We would make the wedding last longer!

Tell us about the blooms. What was your favourite thing about your wedding flowers?

We loved the flowers! They were bright and beautiful with a variety of colors. We got a lot of compliments on them, and they felt very fitting for the venue. They were also versatile, so we were able to relocate some of the arrangements from the ceremony to use them for the cocktail and banquet as well. Funny story – we realized we forgot our bridal bouquets about one minute before we had to walk down to the aisle. Claudia probably set a world record running up the steps back to the get ready room to get them for us just in time! Just one more example of Barcelona Brides going above and beyond for us!

What is your advice for other couples getting married in Barcelona?

Step one: Hire Barcelona Brides as your wedding planners! From there, everything else will fall perfectly into place. Barcelona Brides will give you endless options to match your vision. They make the planning process fun so you can enjoy it rather than stress about it.

As a foreigner, planning a wedding from abroad can be difficult. Depending where you live, it is also hard to make multiple trips in a year. Make the most out of every trip you make to Barcelona for wedding planning purposes. For example, try to get your make-up or hair trial coordinated while there, try food for not just your venue but other restaurants you may want to have an event at, make an appointment to speak with the florist. Whatever you can get done during the shorter trips do so! Barcelona Brides helped us schedule everything which made it all a breeze. For everything else and when you can’t make it there, trust your wedding planner! They do this all the time and have your best interest at heart to make your day special.

What cultural aspects did you include in your big day?

Almost everything about our wedding and pre-wedding events felt very Spanish! We served Spanish food, wine, and cava. The venue itself was an old castle on the Mediterranean Sea. They even gave us a sword to use to cut our cake – not something we’ve ever seen done here in the United States – but a fun surprise for us and our guests! Vanessa is Puerto Rican, so we made sure to include some Puerto Rican music in our playlist for the reception. We also served mini hot dogs and hamburgers as party snacks at our reception as a nod to all of our American guests (turns out they liked the Spanish food better anyway!).

What song brings you back to the day and why?

Any song they played during our reception brings back fun memories! We love Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours) by Stevie Wonder because that’s the song we used for our entrance to the banquet. Vanessa singing Make You Feel my Love was an extra special moment for us. We also might be the number one listeners to 22Duo’s medley on YouTube. We were so excited to have them perform at our wedding! Listening to their medley brings us back every time!

We are so grateful for Erin and Vanesa’s review:

We cannot speak highly enough about Barcelona Brides! From start to finish everything was absolutely perfect. We started working with BB around a year and a half before our wedding. As Americans, having BB aid us through the planning process allowed us to have a Barcelona wedding that would have been very difficult if not impossible for us to plan on our own. We shared our wedding vision with them, and they provided us endless options to choose from so we could find exactly what we wanted. BB took all of the little ideas we had for our wedding and turned them into a complete masterpiece. When we weren’t sure which direction to go, they helped to guide us. (Their ideas were always better than ours!) All of our wedding events – our welcome party, rehearsal dinner, and the wedding itself – turned out even better than we ever could have imagined.

Throughout our time planning the wedding, we were also so appreciative of their responsiveness and the abundance of help and guidance BB provided. It was also a true pleasure getting to meet and spend time with the team. They treated us more like friends than clients, and we knew we were in great hands!

Our wedding was beyond anything we could have ever dreamed of and will be a memory we hold dear forever. Our wedding guests were so impressed with everything. We can’t tell you how many times we were told that this was the best wedding they’ve ever been to. Some notable compliments we received were that the wedding was “better than visiting the Sistine chapel,” and two of our friends told us they would have to get married in Antarctica to be able to top our wedding! There were so many compliments on the attention to detail as well. We owe all of that to BB.

The day of the wedding, Claudia and Maily were there until the very end, quickly adapting as it started to rain and making sure every moment went smoothly. We thought rain would be a disaster, but it was hardly a hiccup at all with our team’s quick thinking! We will never be able to thank BB enough for all of the time and hard work they put into making our wedding so special. Nothing will ever come close to how magical they made it for us. We were so blessed to have found such a wonderful wedding planning team, and we cannot recommend Barcelona Brides enough!