How to Hire a Celebrity for Your Destination Wedding

Tim and Shannon have decided to have their destination wedding at a Caribbean resort – and she had an extra-special request – invite her favorite celebrity!

Whether it’s a pro athlete, pop singer, or television actor, the process for hiring a celebrity for your wedding follows the same general path.

After careful consideration, Tim and Shannon made the decision to keep their destination wedding relatively small, inviting only a handful of guests and managing their budget to hopefully achieve one big goal: get Shannon’s favorite singer, who lives in Jamaica, to sing a song at the ceremony!

A couple thousand miles away, Alecia and Marco have similar ambitions for their nuptials – a wedding in San Francisco, with Marco’s favorite NFL player making an appearance at the reception.

Both of these couples have a similar goal, yet entirely different plans for their destination weddings, but getting a celebrity to make an appearance requires the same approach.

Hiring a Celebrity for Your Wedding Requires a Special Plan…

To get a celebrity to make an appearance at a wedding requires some special planning. Keep a few key things in mind, take care of some critical preparations, and ensure that contractual considerations are met. The step-by step-process may vary based on industry, level of celebrity, and other factors, but these are main points that couples must handle to hire a celebrity for a wedding ceremony or reception.

Get your wedding plans in order first!

Before you reach out, it’s important to have your proverbial ducks in a row. Being able to provide up-front, detailed information with your request is essential. Using the couples above to illustrate this point, imagine if Shannon reached out to the singer, but hadn’t yet determined the time or exact location of the ceremony. Without such information, the celebrity’s team can’t accurately assess availability, plan travel, and commit to making an appearance.

Alecia and Marco’s solution was to have a “floating” period of their reception as a placeholder. If the NFL star could make it, they had 30 minutes sectioned off for his arrival, meet and greet, and some photos. If the appearance didn’t fit into the NFL player’s busy schedule, the couple would simply extend cocktails and invite people to use the photo booth for a little bit longer before dinner!

By having details in order, as well as a backup plan in case a celebrity’s appearance can’t be negotiated, couples can reach out to potential guests with confidence. The more detail you can provide up front, the easier it will be for celebrities and their teams to consider the logistics and confirm an appearance.

Then figure out how to get in touch with the celebrity.

Through the power of social media, it’s possible that a DM on Instagram or a mention on Twitter can offer direct access (or at least access to a representative). In other instances, it may be a matter of contacting a publicist, submitting your request through a website contact form, or working your way through the ranks of a professional organization to find the right person to speak with.

Each celebrity’s team, camp, etc. is going to be a little different, but once you have a plan (or even some general ideas) about how to make contact with your would-be celebrity wedding guest, you can move on to hiring them for an appearance.

Plan special accommodations.

If you’re going to hire an A-lister to your wedding, you’ll need to have appropriate accommodations. This includes a green room (for the celeb to have a space away from guests), and providing amenities detailed by their team, management, or even a written rider they may send over.

Different types of celebrities will have different needs, but the key thing to remember here is professionalism. In Tim and Shannon’s case, making sure they have high quality sound equipment, a professional audio engineer to operate it, and an appropriate area for performance (including lighting and décor), are at the top of the list – since the celebrity is going to perform.

Other considerations may include security, transportation, professional photography, and so on. As a best practice, remember that these individuals are accustomed to a degree of quality and professionalism, and that’s what they’ll expect from you.

As you move forward into discussing specifics with management, be sure to ask about specific needs!

Be reasonable and professional.

It sounds like common sense, but with the excitement (and stress) of planning a wedding, anyone hiring a celebrity for their big day needs to keep expectations in check.

The famous person may be gracious enough to pose in photos, perform a song, or generally do what they do – but they’re also “at work.”

If Shannon asks her singer to perform more than was agreed upon, that could constitute a breach of contract.

Celebs – especially the higher profile ones – almost always have tight schedules. They’re attending for the reason you hired them, and that needs to be respected. Let them stick to their agendas, do what they came to do, and everything will go smoothly!

This same approach goes for the planning stages as well. Keep your requests reasonable. Understand that they may not be willing to commit to everything you ask for, and that their time, image, and reputation are valuable assets!

Put contracts in place.

Last but not least, a contract for the day is essential. Management and celebrity handlers will likely demand that all agreements are put in writing, but they help protect the people getting married too!

Pay close attention to the details of your agreements, and make sure you hold up your end of the bargain. To look at our example couples again, Tim will have to pay special attention to wire transfer requirements for international payment, and be sure to cover hotels, flights and other travel for the artist. Similarly, Alecia might have to make sure that photos are only taken during a designated time period, and pass that information along to both guests and photographers.

Contracts may also include details like what can be posted on social media, if certain staging or signage needs to be in place, security requirements, and even arrival/departure times.

While some of this will be discussed in the planning stages, the contract is the final word. Once the agreement is in place, you’ll have all the details in black and white – and everyone will know exactly what to expect.

If you plan to hire a celebrity for your wedding, keep these tips in mind as you get contact information and reach out. It’s a great way to add flair and seriously memorable moments to your big day, but it also needs to be handled with care!

For assistance in planning your destination wedding, Sunset Travel is here to help!

As experienced travel agents, the team at Sunset Travel & Cruise can help arrange any type of travel, and more for your destination wedding. Although we may not have connections to celebrities, we do have a direct line to the top destination wedding resorts and more, and can assist you in making the process easy and stress-free. Contact us today!