Planning a destination wedding in Portugal: a 12-month checklist

A wedding in Portugal from abroad is mostly a matter of order: a few decisions fix everything else, a few deadlines can’t move, and the rest fits around them. This checklist runs from about a year out to the week after the wedding. It assumes a wedding with guests; for something smaller, how to plan an elopement is shorter.

The dates that can’t move

12–18 months before: the decisions that fix everything else

• Choose how you will marry: civil in Portugal, Catholic, or legally at home with a symbolic ceremony here. It decides your paperwork and your ceremony’s hour. See getting legally married in Portugal, then the civil route, a Catholic wedding or a symbolic ceremony.
• Choose the region and the season. Lisbon & Sintra, the Douro, Comporta, the Alentejo, the Algarve, Madeira or the Azores — and the months that suit each: the best months by region.
• Set the budget and a rough guest count. Catering is charged per head, so the guest count moves the budget most: what a destination wedding in Portugal costs.
• Decide whether you want a planner. Most of the timelines below are planners’ own; with a planner, many of these items are theirs to run.
• Visit venues, or have them visited. Go at the hour your ceremony would be, and ask about a covered plan B: choosing a venue.
• Book the venue. Take a Vow Portugal puts this at 12–15 months out and warns that popular venues book more than a year ahead for May–September weddings.
• Catholic wedding? Ask the Portuguese parish now whether your date is free and whether the priest will marry you — a parish priest has no obligation to marry a couple from outside his parish.

10–12 months before: the photographer and the key suppliers

• Book the photographer as soon as the venue confirms the date — how to choose a wedding photographer goes through it. On Lens & Vows, Saturdays in May, June and September are the first dates to go, and you can send a request for any day from two days to three years ahead.
• Videographer, or not? Photographer, videographer or both helps you decide.
• Caterer, music and florist, if the venue doesn’t include them; a celebrant for a symbolic ceremony.
• Tell your guests the date once the venue is booked, so they can plan leave and flights.

How booking works here: you send a request, and you and the photographer talk in the site’s messages. A request alone doesn’t hold the day — when the photographer accepts, you pay a 30% deposit through us (card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or MB WAY in euros), and the date is yours; contact details are shared once it is paid. The balance you pay either straight to the photographer, on their terms, with no fee from us, or through us by card in up to 3 instalments plus a 5% payment-protection fee. The details are in how deposits and payment protection work.

9–6 months before: the paperwork window opens

• Civil in Portugal: write to the Conservatória for its document list. Find out what your country issues to prove you are free to marry and how long it takes — the nationality section of the civil guide has the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, France and Brazil.
• Order birth certificates. The US, Australian and German embassies tell their citizens to bring one issued within six months — so not too early.
• Irish citizens: apply for the Certificate of Freedom to Marry at least four months before.
• Catholic: start the Church file with your home parish about six months before; book the marriage preparation course your diocese requires.
• Symbolic: book the legal ceremony at home; check its notice period and how long the notice stays valid.
• Guests: share the hotels or room blocks, the nearest airports and how to get to the venue. Remind guests from outside the EU to check their passports (below).
• Plan the guest experience: a welcome evening, a day-after lunch, excursions — Take a Vow Portugal puts this at 6–9 months out.

6–3 months before: filing, design and the details

• Apply for the certificate of capacity to marry, timed so it is less than six months old when you file in Portugal; get apostilles and translations done in that order.
• File the civil process — two to four months before leaves room to fix a missing paper. Agree the time and place with the registrar, and ask whether you need an interpreter.
• French citizens: send the certificat de capacité à mariage application to the embassy in Lisbon at least two months before.
• Design and logistics: décor, ceremony structure, seating, guest transport between hotels and the venue (Take a Vow Portugal: 3–6 months out).
• Hair and make-up, outfits and fittings.
• An engagement session, if you want one — often the easiest way to get used to your photographer before the day: engagement sessions.

3–1 months before: the plan for the day

• Build the timeline around the light: ceremony, portraits, meal, dancing — the wedding-day timeline has sunset times by month.
• Write the family-photo list — names and groupings — and choose a relative who knows everyone to help the photographer gather them.
• Agree the rain plan: the covered space, the time you will decide, the portrait spots in bad weather. See the rain plan.
• Church wedding: get the parish’s rules for photographers and pass them on.
• Final guest numbers to the venue and caterer, by the date in their contracts.
• Check the Church file arrived. The Diocese of East Anglia aims for the papers to reach the other diocese about four weeks before the wedding.

The last two weeks

• Paying the balance through us? The last instalment is due 14 days before the wedding.
• Confirm times with every supplier, and send the final timeline and the family-photo list to your photographer and planner.
• Civil wedding: confirm the registrar, the time, the place, the interpreter and any witnesses.
• Watch the forecast and make the plan-B call at the time you agreed.
• Hand over: give someone else the phone that suppliers call on the day.

After the wedding

• The marriage certificate. Order the certidão de casamento; for use at home it may need an apostille (€10.20 in Portugal, October 2026) or, inside the EU, the multilingual standard form.
• Register the marriage at home if your country asks for it — France recommends a transcription and Brazil needs one for full effect; the UK and Australia don’t register foreign marriages, and Canada says a marriage in Portugal needs no registration there.
• Your gallery. Look through it carefully: it counts as accepted when you accept it, or automatically 14 days after delivery. A balance paid through us reaches the photographer only after acceptance.

What guests from outside the EU need to know

Portugal follows the Schengen rules. As GOV.UK explains them to British travellers, a passport must have been issued less than 10 years before the day you arrive and must expire at least 3 months after the day you plan to leave the Schengen area; visitors without a visa can stay up to 90 days in any 180. The EU’s new Entry/Exit System may also ask non-EU visitors to register fingerprints and a photo at the border. Guests of other nationalities should check their own government’s travel advice, and the EU’s Travel Europe site, before they book.

When you are ready for the first big booking after the venue, browse photographers or tell us about your day and see who is free on your date.