Nobody warns you about the drive.
This is not a guide to the paperwork. The paperwork changes, it depends on your nationality and on the comune you marry in, and anybody who tells you otherwise on a photography website is guessing. Ask a planner or the town hall, early.
This is the other half: how an Italian wedding day actually runs when everybody has flown in for it, and what tends to catch foreign couples out. I am in the room for all of it, which is the only reason I am qualified to write any of this.
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[ 01 ]
It is not a day, it is four
Almost every foreign wedding in Italy turns into a long weekend. People arrive on Thursday, there is a dinner on Friday, the wedding is Saturday, and half the guests are still there on Sunday eating lunch.
Decide early which of those days you want photographed, and be honest about it. The welcome dinner is often the loosest and best of the four. The Sunday lunch rarely needs a photographer at all.
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[ 02 ]
Distances lie
Forty kilometres in Puglia is fifty minutes. Fifteen kilometres on the Amalfi Coast can be an hour. A map does not know about the coach that cannot make the turn, or the single lane road with a bus on it.
Every schedule I have seen written from abroad is optimistic by about forty per cent. Build in the gap on purpose, because it will happen whether you plan it or not.
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[ 03 ]
Dinner starts later than you think
An Italian wedding dinner is long and it is the centre of the evening, not an interval before the dancing. Four courses is normal. Nine at night is a normal start.
Guests coming from countries where dinner is at six and the band stops at eleven should be warned. It is the single most common thing that surprises people.
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[ 04 ]
Hire local, and hire early
A planner who works in the region is worth what they cost, and the reason is not taste. It is that they know which comune answers the phone, which supplier disappears in August, and which road will be closed for a festival.
Nearly half of foreign couples marrying in Italy use one. Of the ones who do not, the ones who cope are the ones who came often enough to already know the place.
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[ 05 ]
What to decide before anything else
- Civil, religious or symbolic. It changes the paperwork, the venue and the timing.
- The region. Not the venue, the region. Everything else follows from how long the drive from the airport is.
- The month, before the venue. See the availability, then choose.
- How many days you actually want to be photographed.
- Who is dealing with the town hall. Somebody has to, and it should not be you from another continent.
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[ 06 ]
What nobody tells you
The parts of the day your guests remember are almost never the parts on the schedule. It is the hour on the terrace when nothing was planned, the walk back from the church, the moment everybody took their shoes off.
Protect those hours. Do not fill them. They are where the photographs come from too.
- Do we need to speak Italian?
- No. Everybody you hire in this business works in English. It helps to have one person on the ground who speaks Italian, and that is normally the planner.
- How early should we start?
- Eighteen months if you want a specific venue in high season. Twelve is comfortable. Under six months is possible outside summer and narrows the field fast.
- What about the legal paperwork?
- Genuinely not my field, and I will not improvise on it. Your consulate and the comune where you marry are the two sources that matter. Get that settled before you book a venue, not after.
- Is Italy expensive for a wedding?
- It is not cheap, and it compares well with the equivalent at home once you stop converting every figure. Where couples overspend is transport and multiple days, not the venue.
- Will our guests actually come?
- More than you expect, and they will stay longer than you expect. Plan for people arriving early and leaving late rather than for a single day.