Somewhere between sending your save-the-dates and actually getting married, one of you becomes the unofficial Bali help desk. Your cousin wants to know if she needs a visa. Your father has read something worrying about a tourist tax. Someone asks whether the airport is near the hotel, which turns out to be a much harder question than it sounds.
This page exists so you can stop answering all of that. Send it to everyone on your guest list and let it do the work for you.
Three things need checking, and they take about ten minutes in total.
The passport. It has to be valid for at least six months from the day you land, not from the day you fly home. This is the single most common reason people get turned away at check-in, and it is entirely avoidable. Anyone whose passport expires within the next year should look at it now rather than in February.
The visa. Most Western passport holders can use a Visa on Arrival, which costs IDR 500,000 and covers thirty days. It can be extended once, by another thirty days, at an immigration office. You can buy it when you land, or apply online beforehand as an e-VOA, which lets you skip one of the two queues at the airport. After a long-haul flight that is worth more than it sounds. Rules do vary by nationality, so check the official Indonesian immigration site for your own passport rather than trusting a friend who went last year.
The tourist levy. Every foreign visitor pays IDR 150,000 once per trip. It is separate from the visa, and children pay the same amount as adults, with no exceptions for babies. Pay it in advance through the official Love Bali portal, screenshot the QR code, and keep it somewhere you can find without wifi. Guests who arrive without it end up at a counter instead of at their hotel.
One more piece of advice that has nothing to do with paperwork: arrive at least two days before the wedding. Jet lag from Europe is brutal, and if a suitcase goes missing it usually catches up within forty-eight hours. Nobody wants to get married surrounded by guests wearing whatever an airline handed them in a plastic bag.
Bali looks small on a map. It does not behave small.
The airport sits in the south, and everything is measured from there in driving time rather than kilometres, because traffic decides. Roughly, and on a day when the roads are kind:
Those numbers stretch considerably around sunset, which is exactly when everyone wants to be somewhere. A guest who books a beautiful hotel in Ubud for a wedding in Uluwatu will spend close to four hours in a car on the wedding day, and will not enjoy either end of it.
So the rule for guests is simple: stay near the venue, not near the airport, and not wherever looked best on Instagram. Book early, too. The good places in each area fill up months ahead, and during Bali's dry season they fill up faster than that.
Guests almost always underestimate the humidity. It is not the temperature that gets people, it is the fact that the air does not dry anything out.
Natural fabrics are the whole trick. Linen, cotton, silk. Anything synthetic, and anything with a full lining, will be regretted somewhere around four in the afternoon. For men that usually means an unlined jacket or, honestly, no jacket at all. A wool suit in Bali is a form of self-punishment. If the couple has said the dress code is relaxed, believe them.
Shoes are the other thing nobody thinks about until they are standing on grass. Most ceremonies here happen on sand, lawn or stone, and stiletto heels sink into all three. Block heels, wedges and flats work. The elegant option is to bring the delicate pair in a bag and change once the dancing moves onto a proper floor.
White belongs to the couple unless they have specifically said otherwise. And bring one light layer for the evening, because cliff venues get genuinely windy after sunset and jungle venues cool down and fill with mosquitoes at the same time. Repellent is not glamorous but it is the difference between dancing and scratching.
The currency is the Indonesian rupiah. Cards work at hotels, restaurants and larger shops across the south, but cash is still what you need for drivers, markets, small warungs and temple donations. Use ATMs attached to actual bank branches rather than the standalone ones in convenience stores, and be sceptical of any money changer advertising a rate noticeably better than everyone else's. That rate is usually the point of the scam rather than an accident.
Tipping is not compulsory in Indonesia, and nobody will chase you for it. It is normal and appreciated, especially for drivers who have waited around for hours.
On gifts: for a destination wedding, a bank transfer or a contribution to the honeymoon is almost always more welcome than an object that has to survive a flight in a suitcase. Guests who feel odd about sending money should ask the couple directly rather than guessing, because the answer is usually a relieved yes.
Do not ride a scooter in wedding clothes. It sounds obvious written down. It is not obvious at four in the afternoon when the traffic has stopped moving and someone decides they can make it.
If the couple has arranged a shuttle, take it, even if it leaves earlier than you would like. It leaves early for a reason. If there is no shuttle, book a car and driver for the whole day rather than a ride at each end. A driver will wait, will know the back way in, and costs less than most people expect. Ride-hailing apps work in a lot of Bali but not everywhere, and there are areas where local transport co-operatives make pickups difficult.
Whatever the plan is, leave earlier than feels reasonable. Sunset is fixed and the ceremony is built around it. There is no version of the day where the light waits.
The first is that ceremonies happen constantly here. Balinese village temples hold their own anniversary celebrations on a 210-day cycle, which means roads close, processions form, and an ordinary Tuesday turns into something extraordinary with no notice at all. This is not a problem to be managed. It is one of the reasons people fall in love with the island. Just build a little slack into any journey.
The second is Nyepi, the Balinese day of silence, and it is the one date that stops everything cold: the airport shuts for twenty-four hours, hotels will not check anyone in or out, and nobody leaves their accommodation. If your wedding falls anywhere near it, your guests need to know well before they book flights. We wrote about that separately, along with the other dates on the Balinese calendar worth planning around.
Copy this part and send it. It covers most of what people will ask.
Everything beyond this list is our job, not your guests'. If you are still deciding on dates, timing or how to move sixty people around an island for one afternoon, that is the part we do every week. Tell us about your day.
Your wedding in Bali should be nothing short of magical — and it all starts with a conversation. Tell us about your vision, and we’ll make it real.
