Stassi Schroeder: My Friends Will Complain About Attending My Destination Wedding—And That’s Okay
Basic Bride is a new wedding column from Vanderpump Rules star Stassi Schroeder. If you're looking for advice, stop right here. But read on if you want honest, hilarious commentary on the trials of planning a wedding that millions of people will watch.
I don’t want this to be an advice column, because the truth is, I don’t know what I’m doing. Planning a wedding—especially a destination wedding—is so much harder than I realized. So I feel like the best thing is to just be completely transparent and honest about everything.
There are a couple of reasons my fiancé, Beau, and I wanted to do a destination wedding. The first is that we wanted a smaller wedding. I've been to weddings with 400 guests and seen how the bride doesn’t get to talk to everyone. The whole night is a blur. I had only 50 people at my engagement party, and I don't remember who I talked to because I was so busy running around, making sure I had time with everyone. I wanted something more intimate for my wedding, because if we got married in Los Angeles, where we live, or New Orleans, where I’m from, we’d feel obligated to invite everyone we know. Beau and I don’t want to have a wedding where we’re meeting people for the first time—if one of us doesn’t know you, you’re not coming. And since a destination wedding is difficult for a lot of people to attend, it’s easier to cut down the guest list.
More than that, though, Italy has a lot of meaning for us. Beau has dual citizenship in Italy and family there, and one of our first—and best—trips together was to the country. We both love to travel, and that’s an ideal situation for me: to get married while traveling.
It was easy to say, “We want to have a wedding in Italy!” But then it was like, okay…where? Should we have it in his family’s hometown? Or near the water? What about a city? The more we talked, the more we realized that if we’re asking people to fly across the world, the least we can do is pick a destination that’s easy to travel to and has a lot of things to do. I’m not going to ask guests to go to some villa that takes a three-hour car ride and every restaurant closes early. Our guests are taking time off work and spending their money to come to Italy, so I want them to make a trip out of it for themselves. It’s really important they feel like it’s a vacation and get to fully enjoy themselves.
So that’s how we picked Rome. It has an international airport, and there’s so much city life to experience depending on what kind of traveler you are. If you want museums, there are museums. If you want to see historical monuments, walk the city. If you want to shop, there’s shopping. There are endless possibilities.
Everyone’s been nice to my face about having to travel for our wedding, which I think is typical. No one’s going to tell you, “Ugh, that’s not ideal.” They’ll just talk behind my back—and that’s totally fine! I want to put on my wedding invitation, “If you cannot make it, if this is too overwhelming for you, seriously, don't come. We’re okay with that! Let's go to dinner when we get back and celebrate privately. It is totally freaking fine if you think this is too much.”
The real challenge? That it’ll be filmed for Vanderpump Rules. When we went to Rome to scout locations, we took our wedding planners and our producer along. The issue is finding locations that are willing to film, which you’d think would be easy. But our first choice said no. It even affects the hotels. They have to sign off before I’m allowed to tell our guests where they can stay. Right now I’m waiting every single day to hear whether or not our venue has signed the Vanderpump Rules contract. Until then, we can’t start the actual planning. It’s at the point where both Beau and I said, "If we don't get this venue, we're just going to call it quits and go to the courthouse!”
Our venue, if the contracts go through, will be Villa Miani. What I love about it: We wanted an outdoor wedding that overlooks the city at dusk—at night you can see the whole city of Rome in lights. It’s so romantic. Again, we’re making people come all the way to Rome. Let’s give them a Roman experience!
As far as other activities, that’s something we have to plan with Vanderpump Rules in mind—because we have to be able to film it. People think that when you get married on TV, it’s like, “Oh, they just take care of it.” No, they do not take care of anything at all. It’s double the amount of hustle for us, and Bravo doesn’t pay for anything.
It’s frustrating at times: Beau and I are paying for the wedding ourselves. It’s our money, but I’m being told I can’t have my first choice in things. Sometimes I feel like, What am I doing this for? Why am I even going to film this? But at the same time, this is my life. I grew up on Vanderpump Rules. I started it in my early 20s. Now I’m in my early 30s, and all of my best friends are on the show. We’ve had the same crew for eight years—they’re like family to us. It’s my job, and my way of life, to show as much of my life as possible. I know that I’m lucky to have it all documented, and I’ll be able to share it with so many people once it airs.
So if I can’t get my first choice, then it’s fine. Beau’s on the same page as me: We don’t want to get too excited until we have something concrete. We’re constantly calling our producers and trying to figure out when we’ll have an answer. Until then, we’re both like, “Let’s focus on work and everything else right now.”
There’s definitely enough to focus on. Going on tour was something I didn’t really think through very well. I’m on a plane every single day, and then going from the plane to the hotel to glam and then to the venue. There’s no time to do anything. And I’m trying to write my second book. I don’t know when people expect me to get anything done at this point, and I’m definitely starting to freak out a little. Luckily, because we don’t have our venue yet, there isn’t anything I can be doing right now.
I’ll have to put a lot on our wedding planner, but I’m an efficient texter. She’s going to want to kill me by the end of this. I’m just way too controlling of a person to let wedding planners do whatever they want. I want approval on everything—literally everything. I’m a tad bossy. Honestly, as I’m writing this, I realize I’m going to have to take a chill pill and give our wedding planners more freedom. Ha!
I still think it’s worth it to do a destination wedding, though. If you’re somebody who loves traveling and wants to have a full experience for people, I think it’s really special. People for the rest of their lives will be like, “Remember that time we all went to Italy together?” I think it’s giving people the opportunity to travel who normally wouldn’t because they don’t have that push or reason to. I’m looking at this like, “I’m giving a gift to you guys, enjoy!”
Stassi Schroeder is an author and reality-TV personality. Follow her on Twitter @stassi. Her book Next Level Basic: The Definitive Basic Bitch Handbook is now available.
Hear more from Stassi on Glamour’s What I Wore When podcast.
Photographer: Nyra Lang; fashion editor: Shilpa Prabhakar Nadella; hair: Leon Gorman; makeup: Stephanie Peterson; dress: Vagabond, available exclusively at Lovely Bride (@lovelybride)
Originally Appeared on Glamour
