Wedding in Italy

FlowerDaisy

Hello Everybody
My Fiancee and I are thinking of getting married in Italy.
We don't really want to hire a wedding planner as we believe we ca do everything ourselves, I mean it gets more exited when do do it yourself right?
Anyway we don't wont to get married in big cities but are planning to find the perfect small town. Finding the reception venue and everything shouldn't be a problem with internet but the church might be an issue.
Do you advice me to pick a place in Italy fly over there and physically find the right church? I mean in small towns how do you find the priest and especially how to deal with him if he doesn't speak English?

Thank you

Peregrinus

FlowerDaisy wrote: »

Hello Everybody
My Fiancee and I are thinking of getting married in Italy.
We don't really want to hire a wedding planner as we believe we ca do everything ourselves, I mean it gets more exited when do do it yourself right?
Anyway we don't wont to get married in big cities but are planning to find the perfect small town. Finding the reception venue and everything shouldn't be a problem with internet but the church might be an issue.
Do you advice me to pick a place in Italy fly over there and physically find the right church? I mean in small towns how do you find the priest and especially how to deal with him if he doesn't speak English?

How's your Italian?

If excitement is what you're looking for, then organising a function in a small Italian town without local help if you don't speak Italian will supply it in abundance. Not just excitement, but confusion, and a sense of crisis. With the odd dash of panic to spice things up.

If you don't want to use a wedding planner then, yes, you're going to have to go over there yourself, scout out locations, check availability, make bookings. Getting married in a place you have never seen is not advised, unless you really don't care about the environment and atmosphere in which your wedding is celebrated. If you don't speak Italian, bring a friend who does - seriously. And keep your wedding plans as simple as possible - the less detail you need to specify, the less trouble you will have and the less there will be to go wrong.

skallywag

Agree with the above, do not anticipate an adequate level in English in a small Italian town. You are either going to have to be proficient in Italian or have someone with you who is.

xalot

You will definitely need someone who speaks Italian to help you with the paperwork - we had to go to a different town to the area where we got married to sort this out and would never have been able to do it without assistance.

I agree that sourcing the villa and church is fun to do my yourself. We made a holiday out of looking at different places, in the end we went with a self catering villa and our caterer doubled as our wedding planner. We only had to pay her €400 and she sorted the church, musicians and all the paperwork for us. We set up our own website with all the information for guests which was useful for them.

Dedicated wedding forum sites will have good sections on getting married abroad and you might find them helpful to take a look at. I wouldn't worry about finding a church, no more than Ireland, every town in Italy has at least one!

Carlos Orange

I was in a town (~50K people) for a wedding this summer and the level of English was pretty poor. I imagine organising a wedding in a picturesque village with no Italian would be a challenge (which some people love).

JanaMay

Narrow it down to one region. Make sure there are cheap, frequent flights and cheap local accommodation.

Have you looked into the paperwork you'll require? Do you know how small-town Italian weddings usually pan out? Will you be able to find a decent (local) band who'll know what music an Irish wedding party would enjoy? Do you mind if your wedding service is in Italian?

Wedding planners are expensive, but sometimes necessary. You might be able to find one you can liase closely with...that won't take the excitement out of the planning but might be good to have 'on the ground'.

And as others have said, if you coose not to have a wedding planner and don't speak Italian, bring someone who speaks it well.