I am marrying an Italian man in Italy, which has definitely brought its fare share of legal work. He is in the U.S. on a work visa and we will live here (that is until we want to retire in Italy!), but for us to get married legally in both countries we have spent more time in consulates and city government offices in NYC than we have planning the fun details!
 In case any future brides are going to marry an immigrant (especially if you are marrying them OUTSIDE of the U.S.), I would like to give you a briefing of the procedure ahead of you:
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 From flickr.com In Artimino, the church is probably the equivalent of three NYC blocks from the castle. So, it seems odd to have a method of transportation just to bring us to the church and then to the castle for the reception. However, there were a few things that factored into our decision to have some alternate method of transport.
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 pingg.com Planning a destination wedding can be very tedious, and one of the most important things is to keep your guests informed. There is A LOT to inform them about, however, and new things seem to pop up over and over again. I don’t think it is possible to include everything in your invitation and I also don’t think you can count on all of your guests checking your wedding website all of the time to stay on top of your breaking wedding news.
The best thing to do is send occasional emails to all of your guests with news and updates – it also gets everyone excited about their own vacation!
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 From current.com We are getting married in a traditional Italian Catholic wedding ceremony. Although, I was raised protestant, to be married in a church in Italy, I had to go through the hoops to have a Catholic wedding. It was one of the most intense procedures I have had to endure throughout our engagement – marriage classes, meetings with the priest in NYC, mailings back and forth with the Archdiocese in Italy, etc. I am excited that we have finished everything, though, and we have the blessing to be married in the small church in the village of Artimino, in Tuscany.
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At least half of my wedding guests have to fly across the Atlantic to come to my wedding…I didn’t make it easy on them. That’s a high ratio of traveling guests and a big headache if you like to control everything the way I do.
 When I knew I would be requiring so many people to fly, I asked around and researched what other destination brides do. I found out that having a travel agent who can handle all of your guests’ travel plans is helpful. So, I organized with a travel agent I know to help all of our guests get their flights and their pre or post wedding plans organized in Europe. She was very sweet to simply agree to charging everyone the agency booking fee and not request anything else from me.
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Being that we’re getting married in Artimino, Italy where they have their own olive groves and vineyards, I wanted to do something special and relevant for our wedding favors. They make their own olive oil every season and bottle it for sale, so I thought there might be a way for me to make small bottles of olive oil to put at each place setting.
I began scrambling around looking for the perfect bottles and ways to label them so that our guests would know they were their favors. In case you would be interested in doing a similar project, I found a great website: Specialty Bottle. This site has every bottle you could ever need. I also found a great label website: Online Labels.
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I am marrying an Italian in Italy, and we are counting on at least half of our guests to be Italian. I am more surprised (in a great way) about the number of Americans who are making the trip to celebrate with us! With a bicultural wedding, there are many things to consider: one being the registry. I needed to learn how they do registries in Italy for our Italian guests and make another one for our American guests.
 From italianamericanactor.com
Being that I am asking my guests to not only come to my wedding, but hop on a trans-Atlantic flight to Italy to attend it, I felt the need to make our invitations pretty impressive and appealing to the potential travelers. The question was – how to do this in my usual simple, classic, minimal, and elegant style?
 vellum overlay
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Being that half of our wedding guests are in Italy and the other half are all of the U.S., I knew I needed to create some sort of a communal forum to post information in both Italian and English for travel plans, registry, accommodations, wedding weekend schedule, etc. Creating a wedding website was the perfect solution!
 weddingwire.com Luckily, I found WeddingWire – a bride’s dream come true. It gave me the ability to create our wedding website, create a guest list (complete with addresses and a seating chart), search for ideas, and search for wedding vendors (only downfall – they don’t have any vendors in Italy).
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The impossible happened last night…I broke down. I think it is important to share this with all you buds because I have always heard about brides breaking down in the planning process, but I was sure this would never happen to me. Luckily, I think it was on a reasonable scale and Cotton Dude was amazing.
 flicker.com What led up to my breakdown was the planning of everyone’s travel plans, final head count questions, vendors who won’t get back to me, and budgeting. I have my wedding pretty well planned, but my invitations were just sent out a couple of weeks ago. Side note: for a destination wedding, it is important to send out the invitations in plenty of time for your guests to book their travel plans. This has opened a flood gate of questions and nervous travelers from the States.
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