CM Weddings

CM Weddings doesn't lean on a 5-star badge or a wall of client logos to prove it has been at this a while. Its homepage carries 19 testimonials, every one signed with a real couple's first names rather than an initial, and several tell you exactly how the relationship started. Annemarie and Daniel say plainly that "after a meeting in Zurich it was clear to us that we would be happy to rely on their support." Claire and Daniel, who planned their wedding over 8 months while Claire was living in New York, describe a day where "culturally, they perfectly weaved the American wedding traditions into the Swiss." Migle and Matthias mention doing much of their own planning over Skype calls, which dates the relationship to before video calls became the default way of working with anyone from a distance. None of it reads like template testimonial copy. It's specific enough to check, and specific enough that a couple deciding whether to email Claudia Easton and Marlene Haberer can read what 19 other couples actually said, rather than a hand-picked pull quote.

Claudia and Marlene are the entire visible operation. The site names no associates, no coordinators, no second team; every quote, every bio and every "we" on the site points back to the pair of them. Their current "Who We Are" page keeps both bios short: Claudia calls herself "a hopeless aesthete" with "a strong imagination," Marlene describes herself as "a planner and organized person by nature." An earlier version of the same page, still live at a separate address though no longer linked from the main menu, adds a credential the current one drops: both trained and were certified as wedding planners through a Swiss programme they name as VUSH/SAWI, with Marlene's own words placing that certificate as "the start of founding CM weddings." The homepage puts a figure on the tenure without naming a year: "more than a decade of expertise."

The portfolio page lists 12 weddings, 10 of them tagged with the couple's own names and 2 given a theme instead of names: "Bold City Wedding" and "Ibicencan Dream," the second pointing to Ibiza rather than Switzerland. That matches a line on the homepage itself, which says the pair design weddings "in Switzerland and abroad." Nothing on the portfolio page names a venue, a region or a guest count for any of the 12, so a couple can see that CM Weddings works outside Switzerland but can't tell from the site alone how often, or where.

One process in 3 steps, not a menu of packages

The services page doesn't offer a choice between full planning, partial planning or day-of coordination as separate products with separate price points. It describes one continuous process broken into 3 numbered steps that every client apparently goes through in order. Step 01 is an "initial consultation" framed as a compatibility check as much as a sales call: "we're sure you want to know who you're going to trust with planning your big day." Step 02, "Design and Planning," is where the actual planning work sits: moodboards, a written concept, vendor sourcing and negotiation, and what the page calls being "the contact person for all suppliers and providers needed." Step 03, "day of coordination," is the wedding day itself, described as CM Weddings staying "mostly in the background" so a couple isn't tracking timings or chasing a late course themselves. There's no indication anywhere on the site that a couple can buy step 3 alone without steps 1 and 2, the way some planners sell standalone month-of coordination. On this site, coordination reads as the last phase of one engagement, not a separate purchase.

The word the site hides from itself

Each of the 3 steps carries a line reading "investment:" followed by a blank space where a figure would normally sit. Looking at the page's own underlying code explains why: a stylesheet rule targets exactly those elements and sets them to invisible, with a comment left in the code that reads "hide the word investment." So the site was built with a place for pricing and then had that place switched off, rather than never building it at all. Whatever CM Weddings charges for any of its 3 steps isn't published anywhere on cmweddings.ch, and neither is a package count, a retainer structure, or a percentage-of-budget arrangement. A couple gets no sense of cost until they've already made contact.

The closest the site comes to a number is buried in the contact form rather than on the services page. Its enquiry form has a dropdown field labelled "BUDGET," and the first option in that list isn't a budget bracket at all but a piece of guidance dressed up as one: "we suggest a mininum budget per guest of CHF 1'500" (the typo is the site's own). The remaining options are total-wedding bands a couple can pick from: CHF 80'000 to 90'000 at the low end, climbing through several brackets to CHF 500'000 and up. Read together, that's the only concrete cost signal CM Weddings publishes anywhere: a per-guest floor and a set of total-spend tiers that start around CHF 80'000, both stated only inside a form field a visitor has to open to see.

Press coverage you can actually look at

The press page splits into "Digital Features" and "Print Features," and 2 of the images on it are worth opening rather than skimming past as logos. Under Digital Features sits a screenshot of an actual Vogue Australia web page, its own masthead and navigation bar visible above a wedding photo shot against a Swiss lake and mountain backdrop. Under Print Features sits a Tatler cover, the UK edition, dated November 2023. Several other publication logos and a handful of unlabelled magazine covers sit on the same page, but without opening each one there's no way to confirm which title or issue they belong to, so this listing only names the pair that were checked directly.

English by default, and quiet on the paperwork

Every page checked on cmweddings.ch, from the homepage through the services, portfolio, press and contact pages, is written in English only. No language switcher, no hreflang tag and no secondary-language version of any page turned up anywhere on the site. For a couple who doesn't read German, that's a meaningful difference from a planner whose site is German-first with an English page bolted on: here English is the only language the business presents itself in, not a translation layered over the primary one.

What the site says nothing about is the Vorbereitungsverfahren, the civil paperwork step a couple who isn't a Swiss resident has to clear before marrying here, including apostilled documents, certified translations and a registry appointment. None of the 3 service steps mentions it, and neither does any other page checked. A couple planning from outside Switzerland won't find that question answered on the site itself and would need to raise it directly in that first consultation.

Verdict

CM Weddings reads as a genuine, small, established Zurich operation built around Claudia and Marlene themselves rather than a business that has scaled past them. The testimonials carry real names and specific stories rather than star ratings, the press page holds up to a second look, and the 3-step process is described clearly enough that a couple knows what they're buying at each stage even though they don't know what it costs. The gap is the same one that runs through almost every line above: nothing about price, minimum spend beyond a per-guest suggestion buried in a form field, or how many weddings CM Weddings takes on in a year is stated anywhere you can read before you write to them. For a couple comfortable enquiring first and budgeting second, that's a minor hurdle rather than a red flag; for one who wants a number before they'll pick up the phone, it means the first email has to ask the question the website won't answer.