How I Planned My Dream Wedding

There are so many ways to get married—go to city hall and don't tell anyone, or have a massive blowout party with 300 guests...and absolutely everything in between.

My husband and I first had a teeny tiny wedding at city hall, just with our two witnesses. It was an awesome day and really special, but I still wanted a party and a special time to celebrate with our friends and family. It boiled down to 3 top priorities:

• Quality time with family and friends

• Blending traditions from our 3 cultures

• Focusing on sustainability

Our wedding focused on being meaningful, multicultural, and eco-friendly. And these also happen to be the core values of Maris Events. 😊

Quality time with people we ♥️

If you ask me what my love language is, I'll tell you it's quality time. My family and friends are stretched across three continents, which makes time with them all the more important to me. That's why I envisioned a week-long vacation with all the people dearest to us, where we'd have the time to catch up, have fun, play games, dance, reminisce, and eat delicious food. Asking people to spend a whole week of their time and money to celebrate with you is a bold move, and we were shocked by how many people were willing to do this for us, and how much they loved the week together. 😊

For our venue, we chose a vineyard in Tuscany. With friends and family scattered far and wide, it was initially hard to narrow down where we wanted to have our wedding, but we finally settled on the northern half of Italy for three main reasons: we could be relatively sure it'd be warm and sunny (Germany is less reliable in the weather department), it's an enticing destination for the guests that had to travel far, and it's train/bus/driving distance for the guests coming from Germany.

We booked the two beautiful villas at the vineyard and filled them up with our close friends and their partners. Our parents and immediate families stayed in other villas or apartments in the area. To maintain our focus on quality time, and keep costs manageable, we only had about 40 guests for the wedding.

We made a very conscious effort to enable new friendships to form, but also give people who know each other well the space and time to enjoy being together. Here are some ways we encouraged co-mingling at our wedding:

• mixing up room and seating assignments so people always had a mix of new people we thought they'd hit it off with, and familiar faces to help maintain a level of comfort

• conversation cards in English and German scattered on the table during the wedding

• family-style main course at the wedding to recreate a Thanksgiving dinner vibe

• cooking a group dinner when all our guests arrived at the villas and playing a game where each person wrote down a (very) random fact about themselves, and the group had to guess who it was about. Highlights included:

• I won a world championship

• I was in a hotel when it was surrounded by police to take down a drug lord

• I got arrested on my 21st birthday

• I once had to hitchhike home because my car was blocked by a road full of zebras

• I have two pet pigs

• My mom hosted a beautiful bridal breakfast in lieu of a traditional bridal shower, with various activities to get all the women mingling. This happened early in the week and included four generations of women from five different countries, and was a great way to break the ice and allow people to get to know each other.

• My friends planned a super sweet teenage-themed slumber party, and Simon's friends took him out for a "tipsy tour" through Florence. It was hard not to make new friends like that.

• lots and lots of yard and pool games

• It also ended up being a blessing that we had two houses next to each other, rather than one big house, because that meant people could choose to hang out at the "party" house, or the "chill" house.

Blending Traditions & Making it Our Own

I am German-Italian-American and my husband is German. Our friends and families are from different regions and different countries and are all used to different ways of celebrating a marriage. We incorporated the wedding traditions that we liked the most and did our best to make our festivities multi-lingual and inclusive by verbally translating most of the things that were spoken or printing out a written translation.

From USA

• We chose to have bridesmaids and groomsmen, but did not stick to all the conventional rules on how to choose them. Our siblings, for example, were incorporated into the celebration by carrying rings and giving speeches.

• The wedding was in the evening with a classic reception of dinner and dancing. German weddings are often all-day and all night affairs, spanning from as early as 10 am to as late as 6 am the next day, and Italian weddings are often held around lunchtime. But to compensate for the heat, we opted for the time that's common in the U.S.

From Germany

• The night before the wedding we had all our guests over for Polterabend. Normally, in Germany, the Polterabend is a huge blow out party where porcelain is smashed and the new couple picks up the shards together. We did things a little differently, hosting an apericena, a casual Italian dinner with heavy appetizers, games, and performances from friends.

• It's common in Germany to fill time in the afternoon of the wedding with musical performances and skits from friends and family. Since our wedding was not going to be the typical 20-hour affair, we moved the performances to the night before. Highlights included:

• a live performance of a script my middle school friends and I had written

• an epic visual presentation of how my husband and I met

• a musical performance from me, where I rewrote the lyrics to the fan song for my husbands favorite soccer team to be about us (yes, it was insanely cringey)

From Italy

• The food—of course. We leaned into the local, traditional Tuscan foods and had a nod to my Sicilian heritage with dishes like pasta with pistachio pesto and eggplant parmesan at the wedding dinner.

• The cake was millefoglie, which is typical for the area, and although I'm normally a die-hard chocolate dessert girl, I was blown away by how delicious it was.

• Confetti are colorful candied almonds that are traditional favors at Italian weddings and baptisms. My mom prepared these as favors for the women at the bridal breakfast. Each favor contains exactly 5 confetti to symbolize health, prosperity, happiness, longevity, and fertility.

Focusing on Sustainability

Wedding Planner

Believe it or not, I hired a wedding planner! First off, having a day-of coordinator is essential, even if you plan the whole thing yourself. But, since sustainability was a focus, I needed some help finding vendors in Italy that aligned with that vision. We hired the wonderful Cecilia from Righe & Pois who had a network of vendors that made it easy for us to plan a natural wedding.

Venue

• Podere di Pomaio is an organic winery outside of Arezzo, Italy, and we chose this both as the wedding venue and the place to stay for the whole week. It is gorgeous and tranquil, and the staff are extremely welcoming. We truly loved it!

• The villas on the property have geothermal heating and cooling and we learned there that a wine cellar that doesn't require air conditioning is a rarity nowadays. Because of the stone on the property, Pomaio has a wine cellar that maintains a consistently cool temp all year and doesn't require any energy to cool.

Clothing

• I bought my dress second hand on Stillwhite.

• Simon is very tall, so we ended up buying something new for him, but it's a suit he can wear many times again (unlike a wedding gown).

• We strongly encouraged the bridal party, family, and other guests to wear something they already had for the wedding, or buy something used. The bridal party was mostly able to achieve this because we only had very loose guidelines about styles and colors.

Jewelry

• The wedding rings were made out of gold jewelry that I already had.

• The "engagement ring" (which wasn't really an engagement ring, since this practice is uncommon in Germany) was inherited from my grandma. I found a jeweler that would remake the ring with the same gold and gemstones, since the original design was too clunky for my taste.

• All the other jewelry that I wore during the week were pieces that I already owned.

Food

Delicious and high quality food was a really high priority for us. Our wedding planner connected us with Zenzero, a caterer that aligned exactly with our philosophy.

• almost exclusively local and organic foods

• simple, but absolutely delicious local dishes

• hopefully minimal plastic packaging on the backend (but I'm not actually sure about this)

Flowers & Decorations

• We had minimal flowers: only two arrangements for the ceremony and bouquets and boutonnieres for the bridal party. These were from a florist that works with our wedding planner to source local and fair trade flowers. There was no floral foam, nor were there any other single-use plastics used for the flower arrangements.

• For the tables, we opted for potted herbs, which looked gorgeous and matched the setting. The pots were rented and returned at the end of the night, while the plants were given to guests to take home. Any that remained were gifted to the venue for them to plant in their herb garden.

• With such a beautiful setting we didn't need any decorations. For the tables I simply repurposed old corks as place card holders and I'll be recycling them at my local natural foods store.

Paper Goods

• our best friend painted the artwork for our invitations, etc. (not necessarily a sustainability aspect, but a nice touch of personalization)

• I designed all the paper goods myself on Canva and got them printed at a local print shop that happens to focus on sustainability. They only use recycled paper, biodegradable ink, and on the back end they reduce waste by using compostable and reusable ink cartridges.

There is certainly so much more we could have done to reduce the impact of our celebration. And travel was the biggest environmental shortcoming of our event. However, my philosophy is that being more conscious of our impact should not be an all or nothing approach. I'd love for all the weddings I plan to be completely zero waste and use 100% local goods, like those that take place at Round the Bend Farm, in Massachusetts. But if I can be the reason why each event I plan has a few aspects that are better for the environment than the default way of doing things, I'm glad to know I'm helping to change things bit by bit.

Takeaway

My husband and I made a big effort to make our celebration meaningful and enjoyable for everyone and we think this thoughtfulness paid off.

I believe in celebrating your relationship however makes most sense to you as a couple. The opportunities are truly endless, and I'm there for you to consult and help make your dream celebration become a reality!

Book a Consultation

📷

Photo credits goes to our wonderful photographer Lucrezia Senserini @lucreziasenserini.fotografa

She captured the day in a laid back, authentic, and gorgeous way!