Spain's most cosmopolitan corner, where Barcelona's design sensibility meets the coves of the Costa Brava and the stone masia farmhouses of the Empordà wine country inland. A Catalan wedding can be as sharp and urban or as rustic and coastal as you like, with world-class food a given either way.
Spain has had full marriage equality since 2005, so a wedding in Catalonia is legally binding for every couple, with no asterisk. The practical catch is residency. A Spanish civil marriage usually requires one partner to have lived in Spain for about two years, so most foreign couples, whatever their orientation, marry legally at home and hold their ceremony here. A Catholic wedding is the exception and skips the residency rule.
It splits between two moods. Inland, in the Empordà, couples take a masia, an old stone farmhouse, and hold a rustic wine-country weekend not unlike Tuscany with a Catalan accent. On the coast and in the city, it turns sharper and more design-led, with Barcelona's architecture and restaurants setting the tone. What holds across both is the food, some of the best in Spain, and a long, late Mediterranean night.
Three corners of the region pull in slightly different directions. None is more correct than another; they are simply moods. The three below are the ones worth knowing first.
We are mapping Catalonia sub-area by sub-area, from the Empordà to the Costa Brava to Barcelona. Be first as each one opens, with the honest legal notes that come with it.
The quiz reads your taste and points you to the regions, and the kind of ceremony, that fit you.