We met in the city of eternal love: Rome. Bonnie was an English teacher and Luca worked at a multinational company where she was teaching. After some clever matchmaking by colleagues, we started dating. A few months later we moved to the fabulous isle of Sardinia together and 4 years after that, we had our own Italian wedding ceremony in Florence, in the historic Old Palace.
Our close family and friends stayed at a local farmhouse for 2 days of celebrating Italian style, and everyone still talks about our wedding in Tuscany, after more than 20 years!
We both come from wedding planning backgrounds and we have worked together on events all over Italy: Tuscany, the Amalfi Coast, Lake Como, Portofino …. just to name a few places!
But when it came time to move on from planning destination weddings, we just couldn't let go of all the joy we bring home after every event. We wanted to keep seeing the smiling faces and tears of joy in couples getting married in Italy, so we decided to focus on the one part of the wedding day dedicated to that very moment of true love: The Ceremony.
I grew up in Rome and as an Italian, I am really proud when couples choose my country to celebrate such an important moment in their lives. I am surprised at how far people travel to get married, although I cannot blame them for choosing Italy!
I have been officiating weddings in English and Italian since 2006 and each one is very special to me. I always begin our relationship by setting up an online meeting with you to talk about your vision for the ceremony and most of all, I want to make sure you are comfortable with my voice, my personality, and my pizza English!
I am happy to give you tips on how to set up the wedding ceremony area. For example, we may need a small table for a unity candle or for certificate signing, or you may need a p.a. system for readers. I can help you with those extra details you may not even think about since it's your first time getting married.
I am also happy to perform any special rituals or cultural rites such as handfasting, unity candle lighting, wine box sealing, etc. I have officiated many interfaith ceremonies, too, working closely with clergy to create a meaningful symbolic and religious ceremony all in one.
I am an ordained wedding officiant from California and I have lived and worked in Italy most of my adult life, so I speak and write Italian fluently. At college I majored in Comparative Literature in the Italian and French department where I studied all the Italian classics, which must have triggered my passion for writing love stories ♡
I write each and every ceremony from scratch and customize the script based on feedback from our meetings and a questionnaire we send you. In short, each wedding ceremony is unique!
I set up a ceremony guide which outlines the parts of a traditional wedding ceremony. We give you access to our collection of inspirational material and samples from ceremonies we have performed in the past so you get an idea of how other couples have put together their own ceremony.
We walk you through the process step by step, creating a script made up of the words you want to say to each other, the feeling you want your guests to have, and the mood you want to kick off the rest of the wedding day.
We are all-inclusive officiants, every couple is special to us. We are more than happy to perform special observance such as lighting a unity candle, sharing salt, sealing vows in a wine box, or anything that may be part of your cultural heritage. Additionally, for more spiritual couples we are happy to conduct interfaith ceremonies or add readings and wording with religious meaning.
When we are off-duty as wedding celebrants in Italy, we volunteer as puppy raisers for the National Guide Dogs for the Blind Training School in Florence.
Our breeder Googie had 3 litters, which means we were in charge of all the puppies from each litter for the first 60 days after birth - that's a lot of puppies in the house! Some of the puppies become guide dogs for the blind and are assigned to the visually impaired as young as 14 years old. Some puppies became pet therapy dogs who visit local assisted living facilities, the Meyer Children's Hospital in Florence, and the Florence Center for Autistic Children.
Dogs are our best friends, just like our partners in marriage!