We Asked an Italian Wedding Expert Where to Celebrate Love in Italy Right Now
A conversation with Alessandra Ferretti, wedding planner with over 30 years of experience organizing luxury celebrations across Italy
If you’ve ever wondered which Italian destination is right for your wedding, proposal, or romantic escape — and whether the classics still hold up against the rising stars — you’re not alone. We sat down with Alessandra Ferretti, lead wedding planner and event designer at Kiss Me Italy, to get her honest take on where love belongs in Italy right now.
Alessandra has spent more than three decades organizing exclusive weddings, proposals, and romantic events across the country. She’s seen every trend come and go — and she knows exactly which locations still give couples the feeling they came to Italy for.
FameWorthies: You’ve been planning weddings in Italy for over 30 years. What’s changed most about what couples are looking for?
Alessandra Ferretti: What couples want today is authenticity. They’ve seen the Instagram version of Italy — they know what it’s supposed to look like. What they’re really asking for now is the real version: private, intimate, not staged. They want a location that feels like it was waiting for them specifically, not one that’s hosted a hundred identical celebrations before.
There’s also a shift toward experiences that extend beyond a single moment. Couples are arriving three, four, five days before the wedding and asking us to build something around the whole stay — welcome dinners in private courtyards, guided visits to places that aren’t in any guidebook, farewell brunches overlooking the water. Italy lends itself to this more than anywhere else in the world.
Let’s start with Venice. It’s the most requested destination you work with. What makes it so enduring?
Venice is genuinely impossible to replicate. Every other romantic destination on earth has some version of what it offers — the water, the history, the architecture — but Venice is singular. There is nowhere else where the city itself feels like a love letter.
What I tell couples is that the Venice most tourists see is only a fraction of the city. The Grand Canal, San Marco, the Rialto — those are extraordinary, of course. But the Venice that makes people lose words is the one you reach by walking away from the crowds. The private gardens behind walls you’d never know existed. The campo in Dorsoduro at 7am when the light is just beginning. The palazzo courtyards that have been hosting private ceremonies for five hundred years.
What are the specific moments in Venice that stay with couples forever?
Arriving by private water taxi and stepping directly into your ceremony venue — that transition from the water to the interior of a historic palazzo, with the sound of the canal still in the air — I have never seen a couple not moved by that moment. It’s theatrical in the best sense.
Gondola arrivals for the ceremony are still one of the most requested experiences we organize, but the key is doing it on the smaller canals rather than the tourist routes. When it’s done right — early morning or late evening, in a part of the city that’s genuinely quiet — it feels private in a way that surprises even couples who thought they knew what to expect.
And the evenings in Venice are extraordinary. A candlelit dinner in a private garden, with the sound of water everywhere and the city settling into itself — that’s something you carry with you for the rest of your life.
Which time of year would you recommend for Venice?
September and October are exceptional. The summer crowds have thinned, the light becomes this extraordinary amber in the late afternoon, and the city reveals a more intimate version of itself. November and early December have their own magic — misty mornings, almost no tourists, a melancholy beauty that’s actually deeply romantic. Spring, from April through early June, is magnificent for colour and energy.
July and August I would steer couples away from for intimate celebrations. The heat and the volume of visitors changes the atmosphere significantly. Venice in August is still Venice — it’s still beautiful — but it’s a different city from the one that makes people propose on the spot.
Lake Como is having a significant moment right now. What’s driving that?
Como has always attracted a certain kind of traveller — artists, aristocrats, people who understand that true elegance doesn’t announce itself. What’s happened in recent years is that a broader audience has discovered what those people have known for centuries.
The villas on Como are in a category entirely their own. The gardens, the history, the way the mountains reflect in the water — it’s a landscape that seems designed for beauty rather than having arrived at it by accident. And the scale is intimate in a way that places like Lake Garda are not. Como feels personal.
What makes Lake Como particularly powerful for weddings and proposals?
The setting does something that very few places can do — it renders decoration almost unnecessary. I’ve organized weddings at historic villas on Como where the brief was essentially “get out of the way of what’s already here.” When your venue is a 17th-century villa with frescoed ceilings and a terrace that extends directly over the water, your job as a designer is restraint.
Proposals at Como tend to happen at moments that weren’t entirely planned — a boat trip in the morning where the mountains are mirrored in the water, a garden walk when the light hits the magnolias. I tell couples who are planning a proposal at Como: have a general plan, but stay open. The lake will find its own moment.
Is there a specific area of Lake Como you prefer?
The western shore — Bellagio, Varenna, Tremezzo — has the most concentrated beauty. Bellagio in particular, at the point where the two branches of the lake meet, gives you views in three directions simultaneously. It’s one of those places where every photograph looks like it was composed.
For privacy and exclusivity, the smaller villages and private villa rentals north of Como town offer something the more famous spots can’t — genuine seclusion, with the full beauty of the lake and not another tourist in sight.
Florence feels different from Venice and Como — it’s a city rather than a water destination. How does it work for romantic celebrations?
Florence works because it adds meaning to beauty. The art, the architecture, the layered history — they give every moment a context that purely scenic destinations can’t provide. A proposal at Piazzale Michelangelo at sunset isn’t just beautiful because of the view. It’s beautiful because you’re looking at a city that has been considered one of the most important places in human civilization for six hundred years. That weight is felt, even if you don’t consciously articulate it.
What are the moments in Florence that you’ve seen move people most?
Sunrise on the Ponte Vecchio — before the city wakes, when the river is still and the light is just beginning to warm the stone — is one of the most quietly extraordinary experiences I’ve ever organized for a couple. There are almost no people. The bridge belongs to you. That’s something I don’t think exists in many cities in the world.
The gardens are extraordinary too, and underused. The Boboli Gardens at the right time of day have a grandeur that somehow feels private. The private villa gardens in the Florentine hills, overlooking the city — those are where some of the most memorable weddings I’ve organized have taken place. You’re surrounded by cypress trees, you can see the Duomo in the distance, and the only sound is the wind.
Is Florence better for weddings or for proposals?
Both, for different reasons. For proposals, Florence gives you the architecture — the specific locations that carry such weight that the moment almost frames itself. The Piazzale, the Boboli, the view from Fiesole looking down over the city at dusk.
For weddings, the surrounding Tuscan countryside is what makes Florence exceptional. A ceremony in a vineyard or a medieval villa in Chianti, thirty minutes from the centre of the city, followed by a reception as the sun sets over the hills — that combination of city culture and landscape is unique to Tuscany. Nowhere else in Italy offers it at that level.
What’s something about Florence that most couples don’t know before they arrive?
That the city rewards walking away from the obvious. The Oltrarno district — the south side of the Arno — has a neighbourhood quality that the tourist centre has largely lost. Little restaurants, artisan workshops, piazzas that don’t appear in the guides. For couples who want to feel like they’ve actually lived inside Italy for a few days rather than visited it, that’s where I send them.
Let’s talk about Liguria — Portofino, Santa Margherita, the whole coastline. It seems to be gaining serious momentum.
Liguria is having a moment, and I think it’s only beginning. The coastline between Genova and the French border has a quality that’s different from the rest of Italy — the villages are vertical, the light comes off the sea in a particular way, the food is extraordinary. It’s been loved by a certain kind of European traveller for a century, and international couples are now discovering it at scale.
Portofino specifically has this reputation for exclusivity. Is it deserved?
Completely. Portofino is tiny — the village itself is a few streets and a harbour — but everything about it communicates rarity. The yachts, the boutiques, the way the coloured houses reflect in the water. There’s a glamour to it that feels genuinely earned rather than manufactured.
For proposals, it’s exceptional because of the scale. A proposal at Castello Brown, looking down over the harbour, is theatrical in a way that feels intimate rather than grand. You can take in the whole panorama and still feel entirely private. That combination is rare.
And the rest of the Ligurian Riviera?
Santa Margherita Ligure is a destination I talk about constantly. It has all the beauty of Portofino — the same harbour light, the same Ligurian coastline — but it has the soul of a real town. There are people who actually live there, restaurants that aren’t performing for tourists, a pace of life that draws you in rather than processing you through. I believe Santa Margherita will be one of the most requested destinations in Italy within the next few years.
The Cinque Terre villages offer something different again — more rugged, more visceral, the kind of beauty that feels earned because you’ve had to work slightly to reach it. Couples who want the drama of the Italian coast without the polished surface of Portofino are drawn there consistently.
Final question: if a couple came to you tomorrow and said they had one trip to celebrate love in Italy and had never been — where would you send them?
Venice in September or October, with one night at Lake Como on the way back. That combination gives you the city experience and the landscape experience, and both are at their absolute best in autumn. Florence I would add if time allowed — even two days there changes how you understand the rest of Italy.
What I’d tell any couple is: don’t try to see everything. Choose one or two places and go deeply into them. Italy rewards that. The country reveals itself to people who are willing to stay still long enough to let it.
Alessandra Ferretti is the lead wedding planner and event designer at Kiss Me Italy, specialists in luxury weddings, proposals, and romantic experiences across Venice, Lake Como, Florence, and the Ligurian Riviera.
