Das Heiratsatelier

Das Heiratsatelier's homepage headline claims to be an "Exclusive Wedding Planner in Basel, Zurich, Lucerne, and worldwide." Its footer widens that to 6 named regions: Basel, Zurich, Lucerne, Geneva, Bern and Fribourg. That's a broader, more specific claim than the single-city framing most Swiss wedding planners publish, and it's copy the business chose to write, not something read into it. What isn't there is any local evidence to back it up: the Location Scouting page describes venue types (a castle, a lakeside villa, a fine estate) rather than a single named property, the gallery is an unlabelled photo grid with no captions, and none of the 6 published client testimonials name a city or a venue. The reach is stated plainly. It just doesn't come with a single concrete example anywhere on the site.

Behind the brand sits a single owner-operator, Lisa Dätwyler, trading through her own company, AES-Atelier Events & Services GmbH, registered at Schlossgasse 5 in Binningen, a suburb of Basel. She trained as an IHK-certified wedding planner in 2018 and has run the agency since 2019, after a career spanning business administration studies, executive roles in aviation and healthcare, and a stint as personal assistant to the owner of an international holding company. Her own wedding, which she planned in 2017, is the story she tells for the career switch, and she's since lived for extended periods in the USA and Japan.

6 products, one of them not for couples at all

The offer is not one all-purpose planning service. It's 6 separate, individually named products, and the site keeps them distinct rather than blurring them into a single package.

Full Service Wedding Planning is the all-inclusive tier: finding the venue, getting quotes from every essential supplier, coordinating with them, building a colour concept, a budget plan, a timeline, an individual checklist, a day-of schedule with a bad-weather backup, and managing the guest list and RSVPs. She's on site on the wedding day as part of this package.

Wedding Day Coordination is sold separately, for couples who plan the wedding themselves and want someone running the day. Final plans get discussed roughly 4 weeks out, and a detailed schedule goes to most of the involved suppliers about 2 weeks before the event. On the day itself, she's actively working for an average of 12 hours and clocks over 10,000 steps, by her own count.

Location Scouting is its own line item with a published flat price: CHF 1'500. For that, she builds a long-list of 4 to 6 venues that fit the couple's criteria and budget, prepares detailed presentations of the top 3 or 4, checks availability, holds the preferred date provisionally, and hands over an overview of facilities, menus, infrastructure and prices for each.

Destination Weddings covers weddings abroad and weddings in Switzerland for couples who live elsewhere; for the latter, she brings them to view locations over video call rather than requiring a trip. The page promises full-service planning from venue to ceremony to on-site suppliers, plus support for elopements and secret weddings on request.

Final Touch is a review session for couples who've planned their own wedding and want a professional second look: 2 to 3 hours of work together at Schloss Binningen or in Basel, coffee and snacks included, for CHF 350.

Wedding Planner Coaching is the odd one out: a 2-hour session, also CHF 350, aimed at people who want to become wedding planners themselves, not at couples planning a wedding. It sits on the same offer page as the other 5, but it's a different business entirely, closer to a mentoring product than a wedding service.

What it costs, and how

Only the 3 smallest, most bounded products carry a published price: CHF 1'500 for Location Scouting, CHF 350 for Final Touch, CHF 350 for the planner coaching session. Full Service Wedding Planning, Wedding Day Coordination on its own, and Destination Weddings all go unpriced on their own pages.

The FAQ fills in how the big one works: "I charge based on hours worked, so you only pay for the services you use," with a rule of thumb that a complete wedding planning service runs to roughly 10 to 15 percent of the wedding's own budget. That's an hourly rate guided by a percentage estimate, not a flat package fee and not a stated minimum spend, and the site never publishes either. The first conversation, about 1 to 1.5 hours, is free; if she has to travel a long way for it, she says she "may charge only the travel expenses," with no figure attached to that either.

Booking window, the language gap, and what the site leaves out

She recommends booking 1.5 to 2 years ahead, especially before a venue is chosen, and says her calendar fills up fastest for spring and summer weddings, though the site never publishes how many weddings she actually takes in a year. She's also delivered a full wedding, by her own account, on under 6 weeks' notice. Once booked, contact runs by email, phone, WhatsApp and regular video calls; she says she aims to reply to a first enquiry within 24 hours. She carries business liability insurance and will also take on birthdays and corporate events on request.

The site runs in English and German only. There's no French or Italian version anywhere in its own sitemap, which is a real gap given the footer names Geneva and Fribourg, both French-speaking, among the regions she covers. On the English side, the fit for this tenant's reader is genuinely good: the destination-wedding page is written for couples living abroad, the FAQ answers a same-sex couple's question ("Absolutely! All couples are welcome") and a Swiss-American couple's question about building sightseeing into the schedule for USA guests, and one of the published references thanks her by name for "this special German-Mexican wedding." Her own intake questionnaire asks whether a couple wants a civil wedding, a free (symbolic) ceremony or a church wedding, 3 distinct options, though nothing on the site says whether she coordinates with a Zivilstandsamt directly or leaves that step to the couple; a foreign couple working through Switzerland's civil paperwork will need to raise it with her directly rather than read the answer on the page.

Verdict

What's on the page is specific and checkable: 6 named products, 3 of them priced outright, an hourly-plus-percentage model for the rest, real timelines for the day-of coordination, and a founder with a stated certification year and a company registration to match. The newest dated testimonial is from August 2024 and the blog's newest referenced event is a wedding fair in January 2023, so recent proof of activity is thinner than the site's front page suggests, though nothing on it reads as closed or paused either. For an English-speaking couple planning from outside Switzerland, particularly one weighing a Basel-region wedding, this is a planner whose products, prices and process are unusually easy to check against her own site before the first call, with the civil paperwork question being the one thing worth raising early rather than assuming.