T i f f a n y H s u

Planning a wedding is not easy, but I'm discovering that planning a destination wedding isn't as hard as I thought it would be.

Daniele and I decided to have our wedding in Italy, which makes me one of THOSE cheesy Americans.  Well, he's actually Italian, but you get what I mean.

No, we aren't having the Tuscan wedding, though we did consider either an Umbrian castle owned by the descendants of  Napoleon, but a quick survey of my family regarding countryside or seaside soon decided our location.

Going through the options of where in Italy we could have our wedding reinforced our decision to marry in Italy instead of California, the tantalizing choices we had over the traditional California wedding of "garden or winery" were just too fun in comparison.

A Contender, Former Hermitage In Spoleto (Via Homeaway.com)

Back in June of this year we started our search. We decided to rent a villa for both our families, 12 adults and two small children, and since the villas we saw were so much more breathtaking than most traditional wedding locations, we decided to do everything in the villa.  After searching and searching and searching, we reserved our lovely wedding villa in the Amalfi Coast, more specifically in the center of Positano! We couldn't have chosen a more difficult location to find an affordable villa that matched everything we were looking for, but it was worth it once we found it!

Umbria would have been much more affordable and 10x less touristic, the former hermitage we looked at in Spoleto would have cost only 1,000 euro to rent for a week, but we decided that since we're renting a villa for a week we wanted it to be somewhere our families could spend the time without running out of things to do and see.  Plus I'll never forget how Positano took my breath away on my first trip to Italy.  Funny enough, the villa we finally decided on is only a few meters from where the picture at below was taken.

Here are a few photos of the villa we've rented for our May wedding.  The view itself is worth all the trouble it took to find a place that was big enough for twelve adults and two children,  and is accessible in terms of not having too many stairs to reach it (Positano is a very vertical town) and is close to public transportation for day trips to Capri, Pompeii, Sorrento, and the rest of the Amalfi Coast. Add that the beach is a ten minute walk and the town center and bus stop are two minutes away by foot in either direction, I couldn't have asked for a more perfect location!  Three levels also means our families will be together, but also separated enough for privacy.

Lowest Terrace

View From One of the Mid-level Balconies

Private Breakfast Nook For One of the Rooms

One of the Living Rooms

Lower Terrace Where the Wedding Will Be

We decided to have a not so traditional wedding.  Instead of focusing so heavily on just the one day, we want to turn it into a week long vacation for our families.  The bulk of our budget goes to location, food, and photography.  Location is done, food is super important since we both come from food loving families, and photography is where I'm running into some puzzlement.

After that, we can pull back on how much we spend on decorations since late spring brings out the cascades of bougainvilleas and lemon trees on the villa property, and the view of the sea and multi-colored mountainside villas that characterize Positano are bound to out shine any other decorations we can possibly plan for.  We'll add other decorations to compliment what naturally is already there.

The absolute most surprising part is that our destination wedding cost less than a wedding in California!  For a fraction of the cost of one of the classic locations in the Bay Area, we are able to rent a villa for a week.  Because of what we save on location (and accommodation) we are able to add in other activities such as day trips and private boat rentals.  Since one of our families would have had to fly overseas regardless of if we chose Italy or California, there are no added cost choosing Italy over California.  As for friends, that part is a little trickier.

As I go through the planning for my Amalfi Coast wedding, I'm discovering that, like travel, destination weddings only seem difficult until you actually take the time to learn about it.  Before I started traveling the thought of going to places like Egypt,Turkey, Cambodia seemed like a far off dream until I realized it's all possible.  The same applies to destination weddings.  I thought it was a far flung fantasy, that is until I started to do the research.