A Wedding Weekend in Cartagena: Everything Around the Ceremony

Updated: 21 September 2026 · Written by Marta Fernández, founder of CABÚ Viajes, local operator in Cartagena de Indias (RNT 215668). We contract the houses, the boats, the chefs and the transport directly with their owners — no agency fee.

In short: we do not plan the ceremony. We plan everything around it — the house the family sleeps in, the welcome dinner, the island day for the guests, the airport arrivals, and the person on the ground who holds it together. A planner designs the wedding; someone has to run the other three days, and in Cartagena that is nearly always the part that goes wrong.

What we do and what we do not do

The ceremony and the reception	Your wedding planner. Venue, design, ceremony, dinner, music, the timeline of the day itself. We work alongside them and never over them
The three days around it	Us. The houses, the welcome dinner, the island day, the recovery brunch, every transfer, and a local host on the ground for the whole weekend

Most couples arrive with a planner already chosen and no one responsible for the seventy people who land on a Thursday. That gap is what this page is about.

The weekend, day by day

• Thursday — arrivals. Guests land across ten hours on four or five different flights. Each group is met and driven; nobody negotiates a taxi outside the terminal at eleven at night with a dress bag. The couple's immediate family goes into a house inside the walls rather than into separate hotel rooms.
• Friday — the welcome dinner. A long table on a terrace or in a patio, a private chef, and a bar that stops when you say it stops. Held at a house, it costs a fraction of a restaurant buyout and everyone can actually hear each other.
• Saturday — the wedding. Not ours. What is ours: getting every guest to the venue and home again, and the house being calm while people get ready in it.
• Sunday — the island day. Private boats to Cholón or the Rosario Islands for whoever wants it. This is the day guests remember second only to the wedding, and it is the cheapest per head of the whole weekend because the boat is billed per boat.
• Monday — the slow brunch and departures. Staggered transfers out, and someone counting heads.

Where everyone sleeps

The usual shape is one house for the couple and the immediate family, and a small block of hotel rooms for the rest. A colonial house inside the walls that sleeps sixteen starts at around 600 USD per night, billed per house — for a family of twelve over four nights that is roughly 200 USD each for the whole stay, and it becomes the place where the weekend actually happens: breakfast, the pre-wedding chaos, the last drink on the rooftop.

Houses are contracted at the owner's price. Staff is separate and each role is its own line: a local host at 200–300 USD per day, a private chef per service with the market shopping billed at cost, and a driver and van per day. There is no percentage of your spend anywhere in the quote, which matters more at a wedding than at any other kind of trip, because the spend is large and a percentage-based operator has an interest in it being larger.

What a welcome dinner and an island day actually cost

Component	Price	Billed
House inside the walls	From about 600 USD per night, sleeps 16	Per night, per house
Private chef, welcome dinner at the house	Per service	Market shopping separate, at cost
Local host running the weekend	200–300 USD per day	Per day, its own line
Private boat, island day	850–3,800 USD by size: 850–1,500 for a 36–40ft up to about 12; 1,500–2,500 for 45–50ft for 15–20; 2,500–3,800 above	Per boat. National park tax paid separately at the marina, per person
Driver and van, transfers	Per day	Per vehicle

For a wedding of seventy, the island day is normally three or four boats running in parallel — which is why it is worth booking early: the good boats go first in December, January and Easter.

What goes wrong at Cartagena weddings, and what prevents it

• Nobody owns the arrivals. Seventy guests on scattered flights is a logistics problem the planner is not staffed for and the hotel will not take. One person with the flight list and the drivers solves it.
• The island day is booked on the last morning. If the port refuses clearance for sea conditions, the day is gone. Put it before the wedding or on the Sunday, never on the departure morning.
• The boat is not what was shown. In Cartagena "yacht" is used loosely — most of the fleet is a 36 to 48-foot speedboat. Ask for length, make and legal capacity in writing. We wrote the whole honest version here.
• The quote is one number. A weekend quoted as a single figure cannot be compared with anything and cannot be reduced. Ours is itemised line by line, so a family can cut the second boat and keep the chef.
• One person is fronting the money. Each guest or family can pay their own part separately and receive their own receipt. Nobody is left chasing a group chat for transfers.

Frequently asked questions

What usually goes with the weekend

• The staffed villa: what it costs, what "staffed" means line by line, and which zone suits which group.
• The private boat charter: real prices by size, and the four things to verify before you charter.
• The local host, day by day, at 200–300 USD per day as its own line.
• Nonstop flights from the US, every route verified — useful for the save-the-date.
• Who we are and how to verify any operator before paying a deposit.