It is really hard to describe a wedding in Italy until you’ve been to one! Everything is laughter and noise and chaos and cheers and eating and drinking and dancing. It’s exactly like every European-wedding-based romantic comedy you’ve ever seen. Our whole weekend with Karinna and Dario was like riding one giant wedding wave and it was so much fun! Our starting point was Milan, where Dario’s cousin Riccardo and his girlfriend Sabrina met up with us to give us a ride to Dario’s home town of Ruino. Really it was more of a little bitty village than a town. Only 20 or so people live there!
Ruino is way off the beaten path in an area where tourists basically don’t exist. When we got there we had a little time before the rehearsal dinner started, so Riccardo dropped us off at the “Albergo” where we would be staying during our time at the wedding. An albergo is basically the local Restaurant/Cafe/Bar/Inn, and the reason it is all those things in one is because it’s the only Restaurant, Cafe, Bar, or Inn for about 10 miles. (And 10 miles away it’s most likely another Albergo.) To add to the adventure, nobody at the inn spoke any English. In fact, nobody in the area spoke English. Only Karina, Dario, Karinna’s family, and a smattering of cousins who had moved to the city and gotten jobs at international companies were English speakers so everyone knew the moment we were nearby that we weren’t from Ruino!
Since we had some time before the rehearsal, we decided to go for a little walk down toward where we knew Dario’s mom’s house was, and when we rounded the corner, this is the view we got of Dario’s village:
After our little walk, we met up with Karinna and went back to the Inn for the rehearsal dinner. Have you ever heard anyone talk about their Italian grandmother making the most amazing meals? We have. It’s the truth. Out of all the places we have been, Dario and Karinna’s rehearsal dinner is one meal that we will always remember. The people at the inn brought out course after course of unbelievably good pasta and meat dishes. We were in food heaven!
The next morning we walked down the hill to Dario’s house where everyone was getting ready. The whole upstairs of Dario’s house is made up of nice rooms that are for guests and special occasions, and it was the cutest place for Karinna to get ready.
This is Dario’s toy horse from when he was little, and there’s a long story about why it ended up living in the front yard!
The ceremony took place at the church that Dario grew up going to. It was only big enough to hold 40 people, so once the seats had filled up, it was standing room only. There were over 100 guests, so everyone had to start piling out the church doors. Some people weren’t content with that, so they went around the side of the building and watched through the priest’s office, too!
After the ceremony, it was time for us to make our way from Ruino to the reception at the Castle in Zavattarello. The road was so tiny leading up to the church that everyone had had to park down at the bottom of the village and walk. As we were getting in the car with Riccardo to drive to the castle, he mentioned that we would be making “a few stops” to toast the bride and groom. We were not even a little prepared to round the corner by our inn and find a table with two wine glasses and champagne in the middle of the road! All the cars in our caravan stopped, everyone got out, and they toasted Dario and Karinna right there in the street! This shot is from just the first of three times that this happened on the way to Zavattarello!
At our third toasting stop, one of the cars wouldn’t start back up so some of the guests (including Dario’s friend Guiseppe who is on the right) decided to add Push-to-Start to the car’s list of features. All of those guys are wearing Armani suits while pushing a car down an Italian street, by the way.
There was a shuttle waiting for the guests at Zavattarello because the road up to the castle was also too small to accomodate all of the cars that would need to park up there. The road was SO small and SO steep, though, that the shuttle overheated while taking the first batch of guests up. This picture doesn’t even begin to do it justice, but imagine a bunch of nicely dressed Italian men trying to work out what to do about this:
Ever opportunistic, we decided to take advantage of the momentary pause in the whirlwind to sneak in some pictures of Dario and Karinna in the streets of Zavattarello:
Everyone in Zavattarello came out to see Dario and Karinna. Right when we were taking some of their shots, a church across the street let out and all the ladies kept saying “bella sposa!”
We eventually did make it up to the castle and it was absolutely amazing! It was such a perfect place to finish off Dario and Karinna’s pictures. The view of the countryside was amazing!
Nothing we’ve ever experienced at a wedding properly prepared us for an Italian wedding reception. There was a lot of shouting, a lot of drinking, and a whole lot of “Hip, Hip, Hoorah”-ing!
One of Dario’s cousins finally managed to make Dario’s mom blush:
This was probably the best part of what was already an amazing reception: Adam Sandler showed up as the wedding singer. Yes he mostly sang American and British 80’s songs in a thick Italian accent, yes he used a deep, cheesy voice, and yes all of the guests went absolutely crazy for him.
