Search “elope in Italy” and you’ll find a lot of local wedding planners selling a lot of different packages. This is great if you want a easy experience, but you won’t necessarily have much room for personalisation or be able to make your wedding feel particularly unique.
Its surprisingly difficult to find concreate answers about how much a wedding in Italy actually costs, what the paperwork really involves, or what happens when you tell an Italian venue you want forty guests and a drag queen officiant.
So we asked someone who’s been doing this for thirty years. Alessandra Ferretti has planned weddings across Italy since the nineties – cathedral affairs with three hundred guests, and elopements where the only witnesses were two strangers pulled off a mountain path.
Does an Italian wedding have to be a big traditional production?
No, and I’d say most of what I’ve enjoyed doing in the last ten years haven’t been! There’s an assumption that Italy means a certain kind of wedding – long tables, three hundred guests, a church, a five-course lunch that ends at midnight. That exists and it’s lovely if you want it, but I’ve done a ceremony for two people on a rock face at 6am before! I also did a one where the couple wore black and the music was all doom metal!
The country doesn’t care what kind of wedding you have. The infrastructure does so you need people who won’t flinch and will be able to advise you through it..
What do you mean, people who won’t flinch?
Suppliers who’ve done it before. If a couple tells me they want a non-binary officiant, or no bouquet, or to be married by their friend rather than a celebrant, the question isn’t whether it’s allowed. The question is which venue, which photographer, which caterer will treat it as normal rather than as something to be managed. I’ve worked with the same handful of people for years precisely because of that. They don’t ask why, they ask what time.
Where couples run into trouble is booking directly with a venue that’s never done anything but the standard version. Then you spend the whole planning process explaining yourself, and by the time you arrive you’re exhausted.
Let’s talk money, because nobody publishes numbers… How much does it cost to get married in Italy?
They don’t, and it’s the single most frustrating thing about this industry!
An elopement in Italy (two people, a celebrant, a photographer, somewhere beautiful, dinner afterwards_ sits somewhere between €3,000 – €8,000 depending on the location and the season.
A small wedding (20-30 guests) is generally between €12,000 – €20,000.
A mid-sized one (50-60 guests) runs €20,000 – €35,000.
Those aren’t exact quotes, and of course there are variables, but I’d rather say them out loud than have someone spend four months imagining a number and then get a shock.
What about the all-inclusive Italian wedding packages you see advertised?
They’re not a scam, but you need to know what you’re buying. A package makes sense when it’s bundling things that have to be coordinated anyway such as the venue, celebrant, photographer, flowers, licence paperwork etc. Buying those separately from four different suppliers who’ve never worked together is how weddings go wrong.
But it stops making sense is when the package includes things you don’t want and can’t remove like a three-tier cake, a bouquet, and a particular photographer or videographer, and none of it was anything you’d have chosen off your own back.
My rule when couples ask me about Italian wedding packages is simple: ask what comes out if you don’t want it. If the answer is nothing, it’s not a package, it’s a menu you’re not allowed to order from.
Can we talk about the paperwork? What documents do people need to organise to get legally married in Italy?
This is the part that decides your timeline, so it needs deciding first, not last! To marry legally in Italy as a foreign national you need documents prepared in advance, legalised, and usually translated by a certified translator. What exactly you need depends on your nationality and where the ceremony happens – some town halls are considerably easier than others.
For British citizens it’s a Certificate of No Impediment, issued 28 days after you give notice at your local register office. It has a validity window, so it has to still be valid on your wedding day. Americans need t get a sworn declaration at a US consulate in Italy, then legalised by the local prefecture.
Plan on three to four months for documents to be sorted out if you’re doing it legally.
Is there an alternative?
Yes, you could get legally married at home and treat the Italian day as a symbolic ceremony. I’d say more than half the couples I work with now do this, and almost none of them regret it. Same venue, same photographs, same three days, no administrative risk, and you can be married by whoever you want – your sister, your best friend… Legally it means nothing in Italy, which is precisely why nobody can object to it. Your guests cannot tell the difference and generally never ask.
Let’s talk locations. Where should somebody look if they want an Italian wedding that doesn’t look like everybody else’s?
The Dolomites. Limestone peaks at three thousand metres, alpine lakes, and about twenty minutes of light at sunrise that turns the rock pink. Proposing in the Dolomites has become a thing in its own right – people come for that first and the wedding conversation starts afterwards.
The catch is the schedule. A sunrise ceremony up there means a 4.30am start, and some of the best positions need a cable car that doesn’t run until 9am. It’s also really cold at dawn even in July. None of that is a reason not to do it, but you can’t improvise it.
The Ligurian coast, the Cinque Terre in particular. Perfect if you want something small and dramatic. There a no cars so your guests will travel by train or boat. The coastline is a protected national park so there aren’t a lot of properties available for events.
Lake Como, which I know is the obvious one, but hear me out. Everyone pictures Como as the grand version, and it can be that but it’s also the easiest place in Italy to do something small and beautiful. Almost nobody talks about it that way.
You can take a boat out and be alone on the water within 15 minutes. There are villas that will host 12 people as happily as 200. A Lake Como wedding for a small group, done in October when the crowds have gone, is one of the loveliest things I know how to organise and it costs a fraction of the version everyone imagines.
Is there a best time of year to get married in Italy?
It isn’t even close – September and early October. The crowds thin out, its not as hot and the light in the late afternoon does that amber thing. Late April through early June is the second best, its more colourful but there’s slightly more rain.
I would avoid July and August. They are hot, crowded and its expensive everywhere. Winter is quiet and cheap, and honestly underrated for small weddings, although a lot of venues close for the season.
Alessandra Ferretti plans weddings, elopements, proposals and vow renewals across Italy with Kiss Me Italy, covering Venice, the northern lakes, Tuscany, the Dolomites and the Ligurian coast.