About our blog…

As photographers and videographers we have the privilege of of being part of so many wonderful weddings and special events. It would be very hard to argue that our job isn’t fabulous. We come to know so many lovely people during the preparations for and the realization of one of the happiest events in their lives. We visit some of the most luxurious, beautiful and unique houses, hotels, villas, castles and event structures in some of the most breathtaking backdrops. And we have the opportunity to travel the marvelous, magnificent and diverse country that is Italy. All in all, not a bad day’s work!

Italian Wedding Blog

During our many wedding travels and experiences we have gathered so much knowledge and so many wonderful ideas and inspirations. This blog was born out of our desire to share the things we have seen and learned and to pass on the fabulous plans and ideas we have discovered along the way. A massive part of the credit for the information contained in this blog must, of course, go to our lovely brides and grooms who have been the inspiration for – and the subject of – the articles and ideas with which it is filled.

We have developed an absolute passion for all things ‘wedding’, and particularly all things ‘wedding in Italy’ and this is, again, thanks to those wonderful couples we have met over the years. The wedding world is highly addictive. It’s hard not to be drawn into that enveloping sensation of joy, anticipation, excitement, preparation and, finally, contentment. It would be impossible not to want to share such fabulous experiences as we have had!

Italian Wedding Blog

So whether you’re planning or considering a wedding on the Amalfi Coast, in Rome, in Tuscany, on one of Italy’s islands or lakes, or anywhere else in this breathtakingly beautiful and appealingly diverse country, we hope that the thoughts and meanderings, the ideas and inspirations and the knowledge and information contained in the virtual pages of this blog will prove enjoyable, interesting, motivating and useful.

We hope visiting this blog proves to be a fun and valuable experience and we look forward to hearing any comments, ideas or requests you may have.

Wedding Blog for weddings in Italy

 

It’s fair to say that every bride wishes to look like the very best version of herself on her wedding day. Your wedding dress should look and feel like the most fabulous dress you have ever worn…and will ever wear!

The style of your wedding dress is definitely one of the most important factors to consider and it should emphasize and enhance your good points while cleverly disguising and drawing attention away from the parts of you that you like less.

…think about your skin tone!

When choosing the colour of your wedding dress, your most important consideration should be your skin tone. As an olive skin-tone who looks awful in white along with a surprising number of other colours, I know how important colour choices are. Warmer colours such as shades of pale gold, pink or blush often work much better on paler skinned brides than a ghosty white.

…think about your venue!

When you begin thinking about your wedding dress, consider  whether your venue is traditional or modern, formal or relaxed. Most brides prefer not to put practicality before preference but you may also want to think about the events of your day.

If you’re marrying in church, please remember that in countries like Italy, churches have, often stringent, rules and regulations regarding dress, both for the bride and for her guests.

…think about the time of year!

If you are marrying abroad the heat at your chosen time of year is a very important factor, you don’t want to feel uncomfortably hot or have difficulty moving on a summer’s days.

Good luck to all those intrepid girls heading out to find their dream dress…enjoy the experience, it’s one of the most fun preparations you’ll make for your wedding day!

 

Once upon a time, a wedding gift registry was a truly valuable thing, but nowadays, when most couples either already live together or have their own houses, and have pretty much everything they could possibly need, a list of wedding gifts can be quite difficult to put together. After all, what on earth do you buy the couple who has absolutely everything…including a toaster and a casserole dish?

If you’re planning or considering a wedding, whether at home or abroad, you will, no doubt, have realized that they’re fairly expensive events. Naturally, I believe wedding photography is a wonderful investment and will be repaid countless times over other years as you look at your wedding photographs and bring back lovely memories.

If anything your wedding album and the photographs it  contains will increase in their value to you as you come to cherish them more and more. However, at the wedding planning stage, photography can be one of those elements that is sidelined because of the cost implications.

If you’ reconsidering a core wedding photography service, that fits within your wedding budget but would dearly like to add extra elements or option to your service, then why not add these options to your wedding gift list and allow your guests to buy these for you.

By adding these elements to your wedding gift list, you give your family and friends the opportunity to buy you a gift that you will cherish forever and a gift that will truly keep giving you happiness throughout the years! Although it won’t toast your bread for you!

For those of our brides and grooms considering adding photographic elements to their wedding gift registry, please contact us at info@alfonsolongobardi.com

Traditionally a wedding day is perceived as being predominantly the bride’s day. Generally, grooms tend to prefer to take a less prominent role during the day as a whole, insisting on less fuss.

Her wedding day is an extremely important event in a girl’s life and as the bride is frequently much more involved in the planning and creation of the day, for many brides the day of the wedding is also the realization of all of her dreams and hard work. So, it’s only right that much attention is focused on the bride.

The bride and groom have quite different perspectives on – and approaches to – their wedding day and it’s probably during the getting ready stage that the differences between the boys and the girls are most apparent.

Many grooms believe the getting ready stage is all about the bride and her preparations.  And, whether to limit the prominence of their role, due to reticence or simply because they feel they are less interesting photo-fodder, grooms often opt not to capture ‘getting ready’ photographs.

It’s also worth remembering that these are important moments at the beginning of the groom’s wedding day that the bride will never otherwise see. A bride likes to see how her groom’s day began and it’s wonderful for the couple to be able to sit together after the wedding and reminisce about their thoughts, emotions and actions during those crucial pre-wedding moments.

Getting ready photographs capture not only the moments and the details of your preparations, but they also capture the mood and sentiment of the day, the sense of nervous excitement and anticipation, the moments of fun, laughter and high emotion between the bride and groom and those special people they have chosen to be with them while they get ready.

When marrying in a hot setting such as Italy, it’s always tempting to soak up the sun in the days before your wedding.A healthy, sun-kissed hue can look very attractive and appealing.However, too much of a tan can look a little unnatural, especially when you look through your wedding photographs at a later date…particularly for a bride, dressed in white, ivory or another very pale shade that can exaggerate the depth of your sun tan.

As for tan lines  the enemy of strapless dresses  as the digital retouching guide on our website explains, nowadays, retouching software and techniques allow photographers to edit, enhance, correct and manipulate images.

So, you would, quite rightly, think that removing a bathing strap mark or tan line, wouldn’t be such a problem, alas that’s not always the case.

Lines and marks can offer differ greatly from the tanned areas surrounding them and retouching these areas to the same colour as your tan can create a very unnatural finish.

Our recommendation would always be that natural is best, so to try to avoid strap marks and tan lines where possible and where not we will create as natural and even a finish as possible!

So, to tan or not to tan…as usual there’s no right answer, just one piece of advice…

everything in moderation!

A wedding video is the movie of one of the most wonderful and significant days of your life.

It is a dynamic representation of all of those wonderful moments and emotions of your big day capturing a bride’s nervous ceremony entrance and groom’s amazed reaction, the tears that fall as you recite your wedding vows, and the laughter of your guests as they celebrate with you.

Your wedding video will allow you to relive the wonder of your wedding day, whenever and however often you wish. It is a priceless and everlasting testament to an unrepeatable event that you will be able to enjoy and share with family, friends and future generations, throughout your years together.

A wedding video allows you to relive your wedding day whenever you wish and as often as you wish. It’s a living testament to the many precious moments and events that make up this amazing and unrepeatable day in your lives.

Positano Wedding Photography

Our wedding videos perfectly blend documentary and cinematographic videography styles to create a final wedding movie that tells the story of your day as it unfolds, capturing the high emotion, drama, and atmosphere of this amazing event.

Our fabulously talented videographers and editing team use a mix of artistic camera work and creative editing to create a movie of your wedding day with true ‘wow’ factor accompanied by the perfect mix of music and original audio from the day.

For an example of our video style

Not many brides and grooms can boast of an improvised big band session during their wedding day…but Helen & Matt can!

The couple married in enchanting mountain-top village of Ravello, on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, earlier this year and had quite a unique and fun wedding day surprise.

Helen & Matt’s wedding coincided with the beginning of the Ravello Festival, an annual summer festival of music and the arts held in the town. The first festival was held in 1953 and was originally dedicated to the German composer Richard Wagner.

Over the years the festival has grown and developed into an almost two-month long presentation of a wide variety of music featuring large orchestras, chamber groups, jazz, art shows, dance, photographic exhibits, discussion groups and the chance to meet and talk with the featured artists, many of whom are of internationally renowned.

A theme is given to each year’s festival. The year’s festival is based around the theme of ‘Il Domani’ or tomorrow, the sense of the future. And what more appropriate theme to Helen &  Matt who began their future together on a memorable May day with their wedding ceremony at the pretty Ravello town hall then celebrated with their family and friends at the beautiful Liberty-style Villa Eva.

During photos of the bride and groom alone together around Ravello and against some of the town’s lovliest and most suggestive backdrops, a light shower caused the couple to take shelter alongside the members of a brass band who were performing at the Ravello Festival and who decided to serenade the happy couple.

Helen & Matt were delighted to perform an spontaneous first dance for the band and for the enthralled spectators who gathered to enjoy the improvised event!  As Helen says, ‘People actually thought we had paid for the band! Ha ha! We were so so lucky to be in the right place and the right time when they appeared. They are some of my absolute favourite moments of the day as I just couldn’t stop laughing! Especially when Matt insisted we marched around the square with them and danced at the top of the church steps. We caused quite a scene.

The Villa Antiche Mura  sits elegantly on a cliff edge, overlooking the sea, the bay of Naples and Mount Vesuvius, just outside of the centre of Sorrento. Within perfect walking distance of the centre of Sorrento.

This beautiful villa sits in pretty, tranquil gardens and offers two extremely large terraces with stunning panoramas, the villa it self has a beautifully-decorated, refined interiors, in particular the indoor dining room.

Villa Antiche Mura perfectly blends the elegance and charm of a luxury venue with the welcoming atmosphere and feel of being in your own private, and exclusive, villa. The villa’s two terraces,  are perfect not only for aperitifs, dinner and dancing but also as the ceremony setting for wedding  ceremonies.

Exchanging wedding vows against the beautiful panorama of the Sorrentine Peninsula is a truly unique and unforgettable experience. The villa itself is a stunning template that can be tailored to you to ensure you have a unique, unforgettable and perfect wedding day.

Couples can personalise every aspect of the Villa Antiche Mura to make your charming wedding reception in Sorrento a day to remember!The delicious and creative menus offered at the villa also include a beautiful, customised wedding cake created by the in-house pastry chef.

And after the sun sets, as it so spectacularly does, filling the sky with the most wonderful orange then amber light, in the very evocative atmosphere lit by candles and lights in the trees, you can dance the night away to pre-recorded music or the sounds of a live band or deejay.

Charlotte and Ben celebrated their dreamy wedding day in Sorrento at the San Francesco Cloisters and Villa Antiche Mura. The charming UK couple exchanged ‘I do’s’ in the idyllic setting of the San Francesco Cloisters on a sunny September day. Beautiful bride Charlotte was accompanied by her mum  as she walked down the white carpeted aisle to join dapper groom Ben.

During the ceremony, the couple sat on pretty gold chairs decorated with ‘sposo’ (groom) and ‘sposa’ (bride) signs. Guests sat on matching gold chairs decorated with pretty pastel floral arrangements. After the ceremony, and photographs alone together and with guests in the Cloisters, Charlotte and Ben hopped into their antique white wedding car for a drive through the streets of Sorrento before stopping for photographs in some of the town’s prettiest spots.

Charlotte and Ben’s wedding reception was held at the sublime Villa Antiche Mura, where, among the charming and delectable decorative elements chosen by the bride and groom, was a huge light-up Mr & Mrs sign! As the sun began to set across the sea, towards Bay of Naples, Charlotte and Ben followed the villa’s private pathway which winds down and through the cliffside, towards a secluded little beach, where they captured some stunning photographs as the sky transformed from bright blue to myriad shades of red, orange and gold, painting the scene with a delightfully dreamy glow.

Before the cutting of Charlotte and Ben’s pretty tiered wedding cake, the couple and their family members released white and lemon coloured balloons from one of the villa’s terraces, before Charlotte and Ben’s romantic first dance.

Planned to perfection by their wonderful Sorrento wedding planner.

Cheryl Pagano of Bella Sposa.

According to a poll by YouGov on behalf of a UK insurance company insurance, almost one in four British couples now marries abroad. This figure does seem a little high and is difficult confirm statistically, however, the fact remains that over the past couple of years over 400,000 British brides and grooms have married abroad and there is a definite trend towards destination weddings.

In fact, the UK’s largest travel association, ABTA, revealed that over 1.5 million people were planning to travel abroad to a wedding tuin 2014, either as a guest or as part of a wedding party.

The main reasons given by couples, for choosing a destination wedding, are better weather, escaping unwanted guests and the chance to combine their wedding and honeymoon. Naturally, the ‘wow’ factor of offering your guests a wedding celebration abroad and the truly ‘once in a lifetime’ experience of marrying away from home are great motivators.

Cost is also considered an important factor as many couples believe it is cheaper to marry abroad than in their own country. Favourable exchange rates (when and where available) and a lower number of wedding guests contribute significantly to savings on wedding costs.

According to ABTA Members specialising in weddings abroad, Italy is among the top European destinations. The country has long been a preferred wedding destination for high-profile couples and has gained further popularity and press recently, thanks to George Clooney’s Venice wedding.

There are so many advantages to a destination wedding and you really can create a unique and unforgettable experience for you and your guests, however organising a wedding abroad can be a very challenging and potentially frustrating experience! It is also easier to marry in some countries than in others, due to factors such as minimum residency before marrying. Some countries, like Italy, ask for between 1 and 7 days residency, while in others, like France, a much longer residency or special dispensation is necessary in order to legally marry in the country.

I truly cannot overemphasise the importance, in my opinion, of a wedding planner. A professional, experienced wedding planner situated in or specialising in your chosen country will be able to provide you with a wealth of advice and information, help you avoid pitfalls and enable you to take advantage of their contacts and knowledge of trade secrets.

It is totally possible to plan your own wedding abroad and I personally know many brides who have DIY-ed their destination wedding and created amazing results. However, to do so requires an in-depth knowledge of all-things-wedding in your chosen country or the time, resources and, potentially, the finances, to develop this. Red tape, language barriers and cultural differences are only some of the issues you may hit upon in your efforts to create your dream wedding.

There are many great resources online to help couples considering or planning a destination wedding, whether alone or via a wedding planner.

In particular, the Weddings Abroad Guide website (www.weddings-abroad-guide.com) is a great resource for destination wedding couples. It is a completely unbiased source of advice, information, useful tips and, importantly, the real-life experiences of real wedding couples. The site features a huge variety of wedding destinations in Europe, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, Asia, Australasia and Africa and covers all aspects of planning a wedding.

Having planned her own destination wedding in France, with all it’s challenges and satisfactions, the website’s creator Natalie Wingrove, wanted somewhere to share the priceless knowledge and experience she had gained during the wedding planning process, and so the Weddings Abroad Guide was born! The ethos behind the site is, in Natalie’s words, ‘To provide trusted, independent, information and advice to couples planning their wedding abroad’.

The site guides you through all of the stages involved in planning a wedding from the most serious aspects to the most fun elements! For those couples searching for a wedding planner or specific wedding services, there are details of recommended wedding service and product suppliers. And for couples planning their own wedding abroad, there is also a helpful guide to doing so. The personal experiences and inspirational stories of real-life brides and grooms are an invaluable element and provide helpful hints, tips and ideas and recommend destinations, venues and suppliers.

The website buzzes with Natalie’s passion for weddings abroad, based on her own fabulous experience. Natalie says she cannot recommend getting married abroad highly enough and the Wedding Abroad Guide website is the perfect resource to help you do this!

Naturally I would always recommend Italy, with its beautiful sunshine, amazing food, charismatic people and breathtaking backdrops, as the perfect destination for a wedding abroad. From the majesty of cities such as Rome, Florence and Verona, the unique and colourful beauty of Venice. From the charm of the Amalfi Coast and Italian Lakes to the lush Tuscan countryside, Italy is the home of romance and there truly is no end to the fabulous wedding destinations available! Wherever you do choose to marry, at home or abroad, your day will be an amazing, unrepeatable event that will live in your memory forever!

Visit our wedding photo galleries, to be inspired and tempted by the amazing Italian wedding destinations available as well as other beautiful European wedding destinations.

 

 

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