Before you get all unnecessarily impressed, I don’t speak Italian. Sorry. I do wish I did actually. Such a beautiful language, but it was French or nothing at my school. Anyway, I digress.
I wanted to share our wedding with you guys. THE most amazing day of my life so far and one I would pay good money to re-live. Although I’m not sure it would be so wonderful if it wasn’t a one-off, so perhaps it’s good that it just stays as a perfect memory.
Mr M and I are not religious, so when we started to look at venues shortly after we got engaged, we were looking at non-church settings and nowhere really floated our boat. There are some gorgeous venues nearby our home, but we knew someone who had got married in nearly every one, which kind of made them ‘belong’ to that couple, and we wanted something that was ours.
In my usual obsessive manner, I probably read nearly every wedding website, blog (Rock My Wedding was my all-time favourite – gorgeous blog), magazine etc and it was while reading the real wedding features on one of the sites, that I saw the most amazing wedding at a villa in Florence. I was so mesmerised by the stunning images, that I commented to ask where in Florence the setting was. And to my surprise the wedding planner replied.
I told Mr M about it when I got home and he did a bit of ‘I told you so’. He had suggested getting married abroad in the past and I had always dismissed it as I had an image of getting married on a beach next to people you’d never met before sunbathing and watching. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some beautiful beach weddings before, but I’m quite shy in public, so that wasn’t for me.
Weirdly, we had a holiday to Florence booked a few months later, so I’d got in touch with the planner, but to my dismay, the cost of that villa was 60,000 Euros for just the accommodation. Way out of our budget.
I’d already given up the Florence dream. But ever the practical one, Mr M said I should ask if he had anything more in our budget. And he did!
During our stay in Florence, we got on the train to a little town called Orvieto to meet the wedding planner and view a potential venue. As we got on the train, there was an earthquake. Yes, a real one. And if I’d been superstitious, I would have thought it was a bad sign, but luckily I’m not.
We arrived at Orvieto, met the planner and were taken about a five minute drive outside the pretty town of Orvieto to a small hotel called Inn Casa. Nestled on the side of the hill, amongst rows of vines and bathed in beautiful sunshine, we were sold pretty much from the word go. It was the perfect size, we could get married in the town hall nearby, which is absolutely beautiful. After a tour and some samples of the most delicious food, I was ready to sign on the dotted line. They had a space exactly a year from then – May 25th, which was a Bank Holiday in the UK, and if it was anything like that day, Italy would have the perfect weather for a wedding – clear blue skies, warm sunshine and not a breath of wind.
We agreed in principle and would finalise things once we got to the UK. We were then taken to look at the town hall where the ceremony would take place. I don’t use this word lightly, but it was absolutely breath-taking. If you went to our local town hall in the UK, you’d find drab furniture, worn carpet and very little to stick out in your memory.
Orvieto’s town hall sits above an old theatre with gilded boxes and seating, hand painted frescoes on the ceiling and stunning natural wood flooring. It was so romantic. We went up the old stone spiral staircase to the ceremony room and were greeted with much the same level of beauty. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, but safe to say we were sold!
I’m breaking this post up into a few parts, as I don’t want to bore you all with a never ending essay. So look out for the the next installment!
