Villa Cetinale, June 8th 2022.
We came into wedding planning from different experiences of Italy, which was also reflective of the broad range of our guests' backgrounds: Jackelyn is of half Italian heritage, with first degree Italian relatives and grew up visiting Italy annually, and Christopher had never been! Martina helped us create a dream wedding that encompassed both of our visions, and executed a beautiful event that impressed every guest in attendance: from Italian citizens, savvy traveler friends, to United States residents making their first trip to Italy for our wedding.
Overall, Martina combined our individual impetuses for a wedding in Italy - capturing both the dazzling magic, beauty, and food authenticity of experiencing Italy as novel experience, anchored with evoking the romance and sentimentality of sharing a wonderful experience collectively with loved ones in a familiar, special place - and elevated it into a truly unforgettable experience.
Our vision was to create a bespoke wedding with an emphasis on gathering our guests together to experience a beautiful time with us they would never forget. The focus on creating an authentic wedding reflective of our personal touches was of tantamount importance; we did not want to have our wedding in a hotel or other venue that formulaically churns out weddings. We carefully selected EIW after meticulous research and interviews of some top wedding planners in the United States and Italy. Guilia at EIW was immediately and obviously intuitive, asking questions and listening to carefully guide us in narrowing down our favorite venues. We met Martina in Florence for our site visit, and we immediately knew she was our match! Martina is meticulously organized, intelligent, with wonderful insights, an easy smile and calming personality to diffuse even the most stressful of situations (that always will!) arise during wedding events.
There are many elements of planning a trip abroad that you cannot control or micro-manage, so it is imperative to be in good hands. This was doubly important during the pandemic when restrictions made it very difficult to make return international trips for a while. We intended to return to meet some of the vendors, but were unable to with our timing and relied solely on Martina. In contrast to our friends planning weddings who could stop by their venues weekly if they wanted, we had no idea, for example, what our florals were going to look like beyond our color scheme, and we were unable to taste test our food (which we really do regret!). However, the flowers were the most beautiful we had ever seen and our wedding dinner, with many suggestions by Martina, was one of the best we've ever had.
Martina had expert knowledge or savvy to create solutions to execute every single one of our many dreams for the wedding. She has working relationships and abundant experience to draw from with the many vendors - florists, stationers, restaurant owners, transporters, caterers, confettiers, hair and makeup teams, photographers, priests, videographers to last minute hairdressers - to quickly and seamlessly execute the perfect events. We are a very busy couple balancing our full time jobs in addition to job changes and graduate degrees during our year of wedding planning, and Martina gently but firmly kept us on track. Our biggest wedding regret is that she was unable to come before the rehearsal dinner night during our week at Villa Cetinale. Upon her arrival the week of our wedding, we immediately went from being over-stressed and burdened by coordinating to finally being able to enjoy and focus on experiencing our wedding. Our wedding was sandwiched between two others for Martina during a very busy 2022 wedding season, but she was so composed and completely focused on us while there.
There is nothing that can compare to the beauty of having a wedding in Italy - the scenery, delicious food, and passionate people are unparalleled. And if you are fortunate to plan and execute a wedding with an expert Italian planner to put together these elements in a truly artistic way, the result is truly a masterpiece setting to celebrate the most important day of your life, surrounded by your closest loved ones.
To say that our wedding was beautiful is inadequate to describe the emotions and thrills of the experience, but our highlights included a securing one of the most beautiful venues in the world which we spent a week at with our closest family and friends, an intimate rehearsal dinner with speeches by each member of the wedding party followed by a welcome party in Siena's famous Palazzo del Campo, the beautiful ancient stone church where we felt the love of our favorite people around us witnessing our marriage, our four-course wedding dinner which included pasta with truffles, the most beautiful and colorful florals we have ever seen, our most amazing and compassionate hair and makeup artist Laura Narvanni, the small kindness of Martina thoughtfully saving wedding mementos for us and placing them in our wedding suite, the amazing artist of a photographer Elizabetta Marzetti, and true visionary videographer Giulio Cantarella (the two latter which captured our important memories in such an incredible way). Every one of our 105 guests said it was the most beautiful wedding they had ever been to, and our gift to them was the creation of their own beautiful experiences and memories. We have still not fully processed the emotional highs and beauty of the experience - it feels like a dream! Thank you for working with us on the most important time of our lives, Martina.
Jackelyn & Christopher
