You live somewhere else and you want to get married here. That’s a wedding plus a good deal of logistics — paperwork, flights, beds for everyone, and three days your guests will remember as much as the ceremony itself.
What’s included
Venue, suppliers, budget and design work the same way. What follows is what changes when you’re arriving from abroad.
What each of you needs, from where, and by when. I keep the calendar so nothing is discovered too late to fix.
I visit and film the shortlist for you. Most couples choose from video and see the place for the first time on their own visit.
Room blocks near the venue at several price levels, so nobody has to choose between a suite and a two-hour drive.
Airport transfers, shuttles to and from the venue, and a car for the two of you. Nobody drives home after dinner.
The evening before and the lunch after the wedding, both booked and organised — not a list of suggestions left to your guests.
Ceremony readings, menus and signage in both languages, and an interpreter for the civil rite where one is required.
The shape of it
Your guests are taking time off and buying tickets. Three days is what I plan by default: a welcome dinner, the wedding, and a long goodbye. It changes the whole thing — for them, and for the two of you.
Day one
Transfers from the airport, keys handed over, a note in every room with the three days on one page. In the evening everyone sits down together for the first time — which is when the two families actually meet, and it takes the edge off tomorrow.
Day two
The day itself, run by me from early morning to the last song. Everyone already knows each other by now, and it shows in the room.
Day three
A late lunch, slow, by the sea if we can — then transfers back to the airport for whoever is leaving. Half your guests will tell you afterwards that this was their favourite part.
Paperwork
Getting legally married in Italy as a foreign couple is entirely possible, and it is mostly a question of doing things in the right order, early enough. What you need depends on your nationalities, on where you live and on the town you marry in — which is why I don’t publish a checklist here. Yours would be wrong.
What I do is tell you, in the first weeks, exactly which documents you’ll each need and when to start. I deal with the town hall, book the appointments and arrange translations and legalisations. You do the part only you can do — requesting your own papers at home — and I keep the calendar so nothing arrives too late to be fixed.
Legally binding in Italy and recognised at home. Held in a town hall or in an approved venue.
Catholic and other denominations, each with its own requirements and its own timeline. Started earlier than the rest.
No legal weight and no constraints on where it happens. Many couples marry quietly at home and keep this one for the day itself.
Questions
Once is usually enough, and some couples come no earlier than the wedding week. I visit venues and suppliers on your behalf and send video rather than photographs, because photographs flatter and video doesn’t.
If you do come, we make the trip count: two or three days of venue visits, a tasting and the meetings that are genuinely better in person.
Scheduled calls at an hour that suits you rather than me, and a shared folder with every quote, contract and decision in it, so you can read at midnight your time and reply when you like.
I write in English and I deal with the suppliers in Italian. You never have to negotiate in a language you don’t speak.
Almost certainly yes. What it takes depends on your nationalities and on where you live, and it’s the first thing we sort out — before the venue, before the date.
Some couples choose to complete the legal marriage at home and hold a symbolic ceremony here instead. It’s a perfectly ordinary choice and it makes the planning simpler.
No. Signage, menus and the ceremony are prepared in both languages, and the suppliers I bring to a destination wedding are used to working with English-speaking guests.
What matters more is the practical side: where the bus leaves from, what time the welcome dinner starts, when the lunch is the day after. That’s what the note in every room is for.
No. Sicily is where I’m based and where I know every road, but I plan weddings across southern Italy and abroad. Where I don’t already know the suppliers, I go and meet them before recommending anyone.
Twelve to eighteen months out is comfortable. The good venues for summer Saturdays go a year ahead, and paperwork from abroad takes longer than anyone expects.
Less time than that isn’t a refusal — it just narrows the choice of dates and places.
Investment
From €5,000
Planning fee. Venue, suppliers, stays and transfers sit in your own budget.
Guest numbers, how much of the three days is built out rather than left loose, whether the venue is one I know or one I have to go and find, and how much of the paperwork runs through consulates rather than a town hall an hour from me.
The quote is written, and it separates what you pay me from what you’ll spend on the wedding itself. No percentages, and no commission from anyone I recommend to you.
How pricing worksFrom a couple
Simona helped us plan a three-day wedding weekend in Sicily remotely, while we both live in New York. From the first call she was fantastic.
