Flight
Istanbul is a big city of over 20 million people divided into 2 continents, Europe and Asia (Anatolia). There are two main airports, Sabiha Gokcen (SAW) and Istanbul Airport (IST). IST is on the Europen side. SAW is on the Anatolian side. You can fly to both airports easily from all around the world. However, we highly recommend Sabiha Gokcen Airport as it is closer to our venue. You can prefer Pegasus Airlines and AnadoluJet for flying to SAW and Turkish Airlines for flying to IST. There are flights both from Basel and Zurich. If you are up to a nice and warm late summer holiday in Turkey, we recommend checking Antalya, Bodrum, and Dalaman Airports where you can easily access many seaside Aegean/Mediterranean holiday towns. Feel free to contact us for further tips (and many other non-seaside recommendations). :)
Hotel
For a longer visit, we recommend that you stay in Istanbul for a couple of days to explore the city. In that case, we recommend staying in the historic old town or one of the various city centers on the European side. You can alternatively stay on the Anatolian side and still take a ferry to the European side. There are numerous ways of crossing the Bosphorus. For a shorter visit, if you are planning to come only for our wedding, we recommend staying on the Asian side, particularly around the "Bagdat Caddesi" neighborhood. You can check hotels and B&B's on booking.com or airbnb.com, but we recommend checking out the websites of places as they usually offer cheaper prices.