How We Planned Our Magical Lake Bled Wedding (in Only Six Months)
On August 19, 2026, we got married in Lake Bled, Slovenia.
When 2026 started, our families were already asking us if this was finally the year we'd get married. In January, Duygu and I separately Googled and had our own conversations with ChatGPT, searching for a magical fairytale wedding somewhere in Europe — without breaking the bank.
Funny enough, our separate research kept pointing us to the same place: Lake Bled, Slovenia.
Six months later, we were getting married there.
When we started planning, we found plenty of beautiful Lake Bled weddings online…but we didn’t know where to start or who to trust.
What we could have really used was the perspective of another couple who had actually gone through it:
Choosing the venues,
Planning from another country,
Bringing guests from abroad,
And figuring out all the little details along the way
So that's what we're sharing here: how we planned ours, what we learned, and what we'd want another couple considering Lake Bled to know.
Our wedding ceremony at Vila Bled’s private park
Why Lake Bled?
Lake Bled wasn't completely unfamiliar to us.
For years, we'd randomly seen photos of the lake and its little island popping up on our Chromecast, Google Nest Hub and TV wallpapers.
Out of curiosity, we checked how far it was from our home in Stuttgart.
About six hours by car.
Coming from Canada and the US, a six-hour drive wasn’t so daunting. If anything, it’s cool to drive 6 hours and drive through 3 countries.
Suddenly, this place we'd been admiring on screens wasn't just somewhere that looked beautiful. It was somewhere we could actually drive to.
Lake Bled had the mountains, lake, European charm and intimate setting we'd been looking for. So instead of doing more research from our couch, we decided to go see it ourselves.
February: Our First Planning Trip
We arrived in Lake Bled in February with one main question:
Could we actually get married here?
Our planner, Petra Čuk from Da Petra, helped us explore the possibilities.
At Vila Bled, we walked through the empty park behind the villa. There were no flowers, chairs or guests, but we could already picture ourselves getting married there.
We had found our ceremony venue.
The reception was harder.
We considered Bled Castle and Grand Hotel Toplice, with weather being one of our biggest concerns.
Then came Duygu’s clever idea that shaped the entire wedding:
What if we transported our guests across Lake Bled by traditional Pletna boats?
Our wedding started to take shape:
Vila Bled ceremony → cocktails → Pletna boats → Grand Hotel Toplice.
February 2026: Our first look at Vila Bled’s private park for our wedding ceremony.
August 2026: Our wedding ceremony setup at Vila Bled
Bringing Everything Together
Back in Stuttgart, the six-month countdown really started.
We built our wedding team, worked through accommodation and transportation for our international guests, planned the ceremony and reception, and made what felt like an endless number of small decisions from another country.
In June, we returned to Bled again for our birthday week. Yes, Duygu and I’s birthday are 2 days apart in the heart of June.
So we lined it up for another day of onsite meetings with Petra & our Lake Bled partners to plan, including our menu and wine tasting at Julijana Restaurant.
As TwoFoodiesOnAPlane, the food was obviously one detail we weren't going to leave to chance.
By July, most of the big decisions were finished.
Then came the details: music, seating, florals, speeches, transportation, Pletna timing, guest communication — and constantly checking the weather.
At some point, all we could do was trust our wedding partners and hope that Lake Bled’d weather would cooperate.
Wedding Week
Our guests started arriving from different countries, and suddenly everything we'd been organizing for months was actually happening.
The day before the wedding, we visited Bled Castle together.
Then came August 19.
Only a few hours before the ceremony, Mateja at Vila Bled made the call:
We were a “go!” for the park behind the villa!
And Lake Bled gave us blue skies.
Drone shot of Duygu and I rowing a wooden boat courtesy of Vila Bled before our wedding
The Day We'd Spent Six Months Planning
We got married in the scenic private park behind Vila Bled.
After cocktails on the terrace, we walked down the Vila’s majestic staircase to the lake where two Pletna boats were waiting for us.
Together with our guests, we crossed Lake Bled toward Grand Hotel Toplice.
Na zdravje! Cruising on our Pletna boats from Vila Bled to Grand Hotel Toplice (for dinner)
Dinner followed on the Julijana terrace, then speeches, golden hour, our dances, fireworks over the lake and finally the after-party.
Six months of planning somehow turned into one day.
And it went by incredibly fast.
What We Learned
If we could go back to February and give ourselves a few pieces of advice:
Visit Lake Bled before committing, if you can. Seeing all of the prospect venues completely changed how we understood them.
Think about the whole guest experience. Some of our favourite decisions weren't about the ceremony itself.
Have a rain plan you're genuinely happy with.
Choose people you trust. Especially when you're planning from another country.
There will always be another detail you could change. At some point, you have to enjoy what you've created.
Would We Do It Again?
Absolutely!
In six months, Lake Bled went from a place we'd been seeing on our TV wallpapers to the place where 36 of us came together from different parts of the world.
We're going to share more of what we learned here on TwoFoodiesOnAPlane — from our venues and vendors to Pletna boats, accommodation, food, weather and planning from abroad.
Six months before our wedding, we were trying to figure all of this out too.
Hopefully, sharing our experience makes figuring out yours a little easier.
If you have any questions, just DM us on Instagram @TwoFoodiesOnAPlane
