Real Wedding – Andrea and Joseph
If you enjoyed watching The White Lotus, you will no doubt have fallen in love with Sicily.
Welcome to the beautiful Sicilian wedding of Andrea & Joseph.
A fleeting meeting in 2013 led to an intimate proposal in 2018. With a yes under the hat, Andrea & Joseph jetted off to Spain to pick out a very special engagement ring.
Booking
The next step was to book the wedding and having visited Sicily the year before, they both strongly agreed that this was the destination for their special day. They started to do their research and found destination planner Adriana of Dazzled Italy.
“We got in touch with Adriana, our planner, and flew out to see her and some venues as part of a holiday in the summer. Adriana was amazing, she spent most of the week with us driving us around to various castles and villas all across the island! We were spoiled for choice!”
Eventually, a venue near Taormina was selected after careful consideration.
“We decided we would get married in June 2020, but of course Covid hit that spring and we were forced to cancel. We rescheduled for the following June but were forced to cancel again due to Covid! We finally were able to get married in September 2021”
The Big Day
“We had a spectacular day. From start to finish everything went exactly as we’d wanted.”
Andrea stayed with her parents in a villa outside of Taormina the night before and Joseph had stayed at their hotel, Hotel Caparena in Taormina, with all of the guests.
They started the day separately and met at the top of the aisle that afternoon.
They got married in a beautiful church in a town called Acireale. Andrea & Joseph took a vintage Fiat car straight to the venue after the ceremony. The wedding venue was the spectacular Vila Fago, a beautiful countryside villa with surrounding gardens and panoramic views of Mt Etna.
“Joseph and I took a walk through the gardens first for the photos and then met our guests again at the entrance to the venue. We started the night off in the section of the gardens closest to the villa with lots of finger food starters and lots of bubbles and wine! The food was the last word, I couldn’t actually tell you how many different options there were, or even how many different stands with different types of food! It was amazing and everything was cooked to perfection. Everyone mulled around, chatting, eating and drinking. It was so relaxed and really gave us a chance to see everyone.”
Guests were gifted with Sicilian favours which included Pashminas and Sicilian olive oil.
“Adriana sourced/organised these for us, right down to finding the 70 tiny bottles and making 70 tiny little greeting cards, hand pouring the olive oil, and hand tying the greeting cards to the bottle necks with twine. They turned out beautifully and our guests loved them.”
After dinner there was a cocktail bar, cake cutting and the first dance.
“Joseph and I both have two left feet so we’d taken a few dance lessons in the lead up to the day and managed to muddle through ok, I think!”
Honeymoon
The beauty of getting married abroad is that you can extend your stay for honeymoon. The newlyweds had their honeymoon in a different part of Sicily called the Aeolian Islands, a beautiful small island chain just off the north coast. They drove there after the week of their wedding and got the ferry.
“It’s an incredible place, very peaceful with paradise views and perfect to wind down after the hectic week of the wedding.”
Parting Advice
“If you are getting married abroad, we would highly advise getting a good wedding planner. We would have been completely lost without Adriana and she gave so much of her time and good taste to us. If you’re getting married in Italy, we wouldn’t look further than her. Other than that, we would just say try not to stress too much, it’s your day and for you to relish and remember; everything else will fall into place.”
Suppliers
Planning: Dazzled Events Italy
Gallery
