We’ll Be Dreaming About This Wedding In Italy Forever

We both love traveling and always wanted to get married in a beautiful setting. It was both of our forever dreams to have an outdoor wedding and our venue being top of the hill overlooking Florence was just perfect. Although our wedding day started off rainy, it miraculously cleared up just in time allowing us to be married outside at sunset. It was magical! 

We are both very simple people and wanted classic tones such as white and pale pink for our wedding. As we were blessed with the beautiful setting already, we did minimal decorations during ceremony and reception. Our flower vendor was awesome and created such a beautiful arch for our ceremony and the bridal bouquet of my dreams. We also both kept our attire pretty traditional which I feel matched the gorgeous classic charm of our venue. 

Our first-look was very special for us. My husband had never seen the dress although it was hanging in our home for 5+ months before our wedding day. Sparing him with any details of my dress, hair-do, etc. throughout our planning, it was really fun to finally see each other just before we said our I do's. Our photographer, Pierre, captured the lovely moment so perfectly, we now have beautiful pictures to reminisce the special moment of our wedding day. 

I luckily did not experience any horrible moments during our wedding planning. Although planning an overseas wedding was scary at first, I was so fortunate to meet awesome vendors who helped tremendously through our planning process. I would say there is not one way to plan a wedding. It’s about what you want your special day to look like and it really doesn’t have to cost a fortune to make your dream come alive. I would recommend doing a lot of research, which has become so much easier with the Internet nowadays and to have fun while planning!

We first met through a mutual friend. I had just moved from New Jersey and I did not have many friends in the Chicago area. Daniel was one of the few people at my friend's house when I first paid her a visit. He was super friendly and was so easy going. We clicked pretty fast and had great conversations from the beginning. We quickly found that we shared similar interests such as trying out new restaurants and traveling. We started to date not long after and the rest is history. :)

The proposal was during our first trip to Europe during Christmas. We started our 15-day trip in London and visited Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague. It is at Prague Daniel had secretly planned a surprise proposal. He had carried the ring in a hidden pocket for a whole 10 days before the proposal! It was two days before Christmas and he took me to a beautiful villa-restaurant up on a hill overlooking the city of Prague. He had successfully convinced me that it was a "Christmas dinner" he had a reservation for. The stairs leading up to the private dining space up in the tower had candles and rose petals the whole way up. Once we got up there our favorite music was playing in the background and Daniel was on one knee when I turned around. It truly was a beautiful surprise!