Getting Married in Italy, Advice?

You can't get married wherever you want like in the US. You have to have the ceremony in a church or one of the designated city halls. You can have a symbolic ceremony anymore and make it legal somewhere else.

There is a lot of information on weddings in Italy via wedding planners' website. This page has some info: http://www.santasusanna.org/weddingsRome/weddingsRome.html

Same as above. This subject has come up frequently here. It takes substantially more planning and effort on your part than getting married in Hawaii or some other countries, especially if you want to have a legal ceremony (and even if you don't it's more work). Most reporting in here who have done this have needed to pay a wedding planner in Italy. It also helps if you are Catholic, esp. to have a legal ceremony--if you are then contact your local priest or the Church for more information.Here's a link to more info from Rick on this:http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/graffiti125.html

First off, congratulations!

We have some good friends who did that very thing last year in October (sadly, we couldn't go but had been in Siena a few months prior and did some recon work for them). They rented a villa outside Siena, where most people stayed for the week leading up to the wedding. They had arranged different activities for their guests (day trips, vineyard tours, etc.), and had also arranged all the transportation to/from the area (they had about 30 guests).

The actual wedding was conducted in a church by the university in Siena, and afterwards everyone walked down to the Piazza del Campo for some pictures and a drink. Dinner was at Osteria da Divo, and they apparently did a wonderful job of preparing a great meal and providing the wedding cake.

They had a wonderful time and would do it again in a heartbeat (and it wasn't too expensive - well under the average cost of a US wedding these days, including all the housing/transportation/activities for their guests, and every single one of their guests loved the fact they got to go to Italy). It helped, however, that they are both Catholic. This not only enabled them to get married in a Catholic church, but also because of that, their marriage is considered 'legal' in the USA.

Send me a message if you would like any further information and I will try to get it for you. And although getting married overseas can be a bit more trying with the extra levels of paperwork involved, if that is what you and your fiance want to do, then go for it!

Make sure you plan well before you get to Italy. If you are Catholic it should be pretty easy to find a priest but if you are not.......................you may have to work harder at finding someone to marry you.