Wedding Weekends in Italy: Rome, Lake Como and Beyond
Your wedding in Italy does not have to be over in one evening.
When your guests cross an ocean to be with you, a single afternoon and dinner is a lot of travel for very little time together. A wedding weekend gives that time back: a welcome dinner where two families meet for the first time, the wedding itself, and a long, slow lunch the day after when nobody has a speech to give or a photograph to pose for.
There is one more reason, and it is practical. If you are American and marrying legally in Italy, you need to be here two or three working days before the wedding for the paperwork at the US Embassy or Consulate and the town hall. You are coming early anyway. A weekend simply makes those days part of the celebration.
We have planned wedding weekends in the countryside outside Rome, in a historic hotel in Trastevere, in a medieval castle on the edge of Rome, at private villas on Lake Como and Lake Maggiore, and above the bay of Portofino. Here is what they actually look like, what they cost, and what to decide before you choose a venue.
Why a weekend rather than a day
Because on the wedding day itself, you will barely see anyone. Getting ready, the ceremony, portraits, dinner, speeches, the first dance: even at a wedding of thirty, couples tell us afterwards that they hardly spoke to the people who flew in for them. The days around the wedding are where those conversations happen.
Because your guests should meet before the ceremony, not during it. When friends and family come from different countries, the welcome dinner is where they become one group. By the time you walk down the aisle, everyone has already shared a table and a bottle of wine, and the wedding feels like a party among friends rather than a room of strangers.
Because the place is half the reason you chose Italy. Around Rome that means a winery, a trattoria, an evening walk through the old city. On Lake Como it means a boat, a village on the shore, an afternoon by the pool. A weekend lets your guests experience the place you fell in love with, not just the venue.
None of this means filling every hour. The best weekends we have planned had one or two events beyond the wedding and plenty of time left free. Guests who have flown nine hours want to recover, wander and have a long lunch on their own, and a good programme leaves room for that.
Three shapes a wedding weekend can take
There is no fixed formula. These are the three we plan most often, and each can be bent to your venue and your date.
Two days: a welcome evening and the wedding
Day one. Guests arrive through the afternoon. At half past six, a welcome aperitivo, followed by an informal dinner at the hotel, the villa or a trattoria nearby.
Day two. A free morning, then getting ready from late morning. The ceremony in the late afternoon, around half past four in spring and autumn and closer to six in high summer, when the light is kinder and the heat has gone. Aperitivo and portraits, dinner at half past seven, dancing from ten.
Guests leave the next morning or carry on with their own holiday. This is the natural shape for a wedding in Rome, where everyone has a city to explore in their free hours.
Three days: welcome dinner, wedding, farewell brunch
The two-day shape with a gentle ending: a late breakfast or a long brunch on the third morning before everyone checks out. It is the simplest way to stretch a wedding without making the programme heavy, and the brunch is often the moment couples remember most, because for the first time all weekend nobody is in a hurry.
Three nights at a private villa
Day one. Check in from mid-afternoon, time to settle in, a welcome aperitivo at seven and dinner together.
Day two. Breakfast, the pool for whoever wants it, getting ready from late morning. Ceremony in the late afternoon, aperitivo, dinner, dancing.
Day three. A day that belongs to everyone: a boat on the lake, a wine tasting, or nothing at all. To gather the group one last time, we recommend one of two endings. A long brunch by the pool, late enough that nobody needs an alarm. Or a pizza party, with the wood-fired oven built into a vintage Ape, the little three-wheeled Italian van, parked by the water and baking pizzas to order, as we did at Villa Regina Teodolinda. Guests who have been in suits and silk the day before love it.
Day four. Breakfast and departures, usually by late morning, depending on the villa.
This is the shape that private villas are built for, and some of them require it: many Lake Como villas let only for a minimum of three nights in the wedding season. When that is the case, the extra days are already in the rent, and the only question is how to enjoy them.
Near Rome: three nights at Casale del Gallo
A country estate of your own, half an hour from the Colosseum.
If you have pictured your family spending a few days together in an Italian country house, Casale del Gallo is that picture without the drive to Tuscany. Vineyards and olive trees around a private estate on the Castelli Romani side of Rome, beds for around thirty, and the city close enough to be part of the trip.
We have planned two weddings here, and both couples took the estate for three nights, which is its minimum for a wedding. What made those weekends was what happened around the ceremony. There is a winery within walking distance, where one couple took everyone for a tasting of local wines on the first evening. Another couple chose a winery ten minutes away by car for a tasting followed by dinner. One couple married legally at the town hall in Rome and held their symbolic ceremony at the villa the next day, so the weekend had the city and the countryside in it.
Casale del Gallo is at its best for weddings of around thirty guests, all of whom sleep on the estate. At that size it stops feeling like a venue and starts feeling like a house party.
Our idea of the weekend: three nights in the Roman countryside, a winery evening, the wedding under the lights in the garden, and a long lunch the day after.
Budget: ●○○, €60,000 to €90,000, for the full weekend for thirty guests, with the estate, the chef, every supplier, Italian taxes and our work.
In the city: Donna Camilla Savelli, Trastevere
Let Rome be the rest of the weekend.
A wedding weekend does not have to mean a villa. If your guests would rather spend their free hours in the Pantheon than by a pool, a historic hotel in the centre gives you the city as your programme.
Donna Camilla Savelli is a former convent in Trastevere, now a hotel, and we planned a July wedding there for twenty guests. The couple covered every guest's room, so the whole group lived under one roof for the weekend: breakfast together in the morning, Rome on their own in the afternoon, and the wedding on the hotel's terrace with the domes of the city around them.
This is the most relaxed shape of weekend we know. A welcome dinner in a Trastevere trattoria, a private walk through the old centre for whoever wants it, and the next day a wedding that is a staircase away from everyone's room. Afterwards, your guests simply carry on with their Roman holiday.
Our idea of the weekend: a historic hotel in Trastevere for everyone, a trattoria dinner on the first night, the wedding on a terrace over Rome, and the city in between.
On the edge of Rome: a weekend in a medieval castle
Castello della Castelluccia, where the whole wedding sleeps upstairs.
Somewhere between the country estate and the city hotel sits Castello della Castelluccia: a twelfth-century castle built over the ruins of an imperial Roman villa, on the green north-western edge of Rome, about forty minutes from the centre and close to Fiumicino. Popes and a queen of Sweden have slept here. Today it is a family-run castle hotel with frescoed halls, a terrace under old magnolias, a hanging garden on the roof and a pool.
What makes it a weekend venue is the beds. Forty-two guests sleep inside the castle in double rooms, and up to fifty with family rooms, so for most weddings everyone who matters is under one roof. The first evening is a Roman dinner with porchetta from Ariccia and pasta made in front of your guests; the second day is the wedding, with the music moving indoors after midnight and carrying on with no fixed end; the third is a long brunch by the pool before everyone flies home. Nobody drives home after dinner, and nobody is ferried back to a hotel in the middle of the party.
We have planned a wedding here for a couple who asked for complete privacy, so we will not show it. But it means we know the castle from the inside: how long the walk from the roof garden to the hall really takes, which rooms to give the grandparents, and when to move the music inside so the party never dips.
Our idea of the weekend: a Roman dinner on the first night, the wedding in the castle on the second, a pool brunch on the third, and everyone sleeping upstairs throughout.
Budget: ●●○, €90,000 to €150,000, for the three-day weekend for thirty guests, with their rooms in the castle included.
Lake Como: a villa of your own
Lake Como is made for weddings that last longer than a day. Most couples come here to share the landscape with their guests, and the lake only really reveals itself on the second day: from a boat, from a village terrace at lunch, from the water's edge at the end of the afternoon. These are four villas where we have planned weddings ourselves.
Villa Aura del Lago: three nights, and you decide how much of it is a wedding
Aura is let as a house, never for the wedding day alone: in high season it comes with a minimum of three nights, sixteen guests sleeping in the villa and room for up to a hundred at the wedding. That frame suits a weekend perfectly. Daria and Ivan, who live in Germany, brought fifty guests from three countries here in August 2025: a symbolic ceremony under the old tree by the water, dinner by the water, and a pizza party the following evening, when the wedding was over and the weekend was just beginning.
Our idea of the weekend: a welcome drink on the first evening, the wedding on the second, a pizza party and a lazy brunch to close, with the villa yours the whole time.
Budget: ●●○, €90,000 to €150,000, for the full weekend with a programme for thirty guests, with the villa for three nights, the table, every supplier, Italian taxes and our work.
Villa Regina Teodolinda: a wedding with the night included
A nineteenth-century villa on the water at Laglio, taken for you alone, with six suites, a private dock and a pool garden above the lake. The night after the wedding is part of the booking, and the suites sleep up to twenty-four of your closest people, so the next morning begins with breakfast on the terrace rather than a taxi.
We met the couple we married here a year later. The word they used for their weekend was seamless, and their favourite evening was not the wedding dinner but the dinner in the village of Laglio on the second night, a short walk from the villa, in one of its unhurried, unfussy restaurants. That is the quiet argument for a weekend: some of its best moments are the ones nobody would put in a programme. Out of season the villa lets its rooms like a small hotel, so they are already planning to come back for an anniversary.
Our idea of the weekend: the wedding with the night at the villa, dinner in Laglio on the second evening, and a pizza party by the lake from an oven on a vintage Ape if you take a second day.
Budget: ●●○, €90,000 to €150,000, for two days at the villa for thirty guests, with everything included.
Explore Villa Regina Teodolinda →
Villa Bonomi: a private house for your closest people
The wedding we planned at Villa Bonomi is the clearest example we have of a weekend that felt like gathering friends and family in a beautiful private home. The villa has eleven suites for up to twenty-two guests, so the couple's closest family and friends lived in the house for the whole stay while the rest of the guests slept in hotels nearby and came for the events.
That split is what made it work. The villa was not just the backdrop for the photographs; it was where the inner circle had breakfast together, drifted to the pool in the afternoon and gathered again in the evening. The welcome dinner, the wedding and the slow day after all happened in a place that, for those few days, was theirs.
What it taught us: at a villa that sleeps fewer people than it can host, decide early who stays in the house. That one decision shapes the whole weekend.
Villa Balbiano: when the venue itself is the destination
Villa Balbiano is one of the most selective venues on Lake Como. It hosts very few weddings a year and runs on precisely agreed timings, which is part of why a wedding there feels so composed. For Kristen and Filip, whose guests travelled from several countries, the August day began with low cloud over the lake. We moved the ceremony later, rearranged the details around the weather, and the ceremony took place on the terrace above the water, surrounded by white flowers, exactly as the couple had imagined it. Aperitivo in the garden, dinner, and an evening that nobody wanted to end. Kristen wrote to us from the villa that same night.
What it taught us: at the most exclusive villas, the days around the wedding are what give you room to breathe. When the wedding itself runs to the minute, a relaxed welcome evening before and a slow lunch after are what make it feel like a celebration rather than a production.
Beyond Rome and Como: the Riviera and Lake Maggiore
Two of our favourite wedding weekends happened a little further from the usual map, and both show how much the days around the wedding can carry.
Villa Riviera, Liguria: three days above the bay of Portofino
Villa Riviera sits on a hilltop above the Ligurian coast, with the bay of Portofino below and the sun setting over it, fifteen rooms for around thirty guests and a party that is allowed to go on indoors until three in the morning. It is a villa you take entirely, for one night or for a weekend.
Artemiy and Victoria had first planned a wedding at home, then decided they wanted their guests, many of them in Italy for the first time, to have a journey rather than a banquet. Their three days began with a dinner for the family on the first evening. The wedding day opened with a civil ceremony at the town hall in the morning, then a ceremony at the villa with a piano and the bay of Portofino behind them, an aperitivo on the terrace with a portrait artist, dinner under the stars and dancing until three. The day after was pure Liguria: a party by the sea with a live band and a swim, and a pesto workshop where everyone pounded basil by hand and ate the result with pasta.
What it taught us: on the coast, the day after the wedding is not an epilogue. It is often the day guests remember best.
See Artemiy and Victoria's wedding → · Explore Villa Riviera →
Villa Porta, Lake Maggiore: thirty guests under one roof
Vanessa and Evgeny chose Lake Maggiore over its more famous neighbour, and the quieter lake suited a wedding where all thirty guests stayed together at the villa. On the first day everyone swam in the lake, and in the evening sat down at one long table looking over the water. By the end of that dinner the two sides of the family were one group.
The wedding was the next day. The symbolic ceremony took place by the lake in the afternoon, with their three-year-old niece scattering petals and a violin playing as Vanessa's father, Nikolai, walked her down the aisle to Evgeny. While the couple slipped away for a boat ride, the guests had an aperitivo on the terrace, recorded voice messages and learned to open champagne with a sabre. Dinner was at a long family table in the ballroom, and the DJ played until four. The next morning there was breakfast together, and then everyone set off home. Vanessa wrote to us afterwards: “It was flawless and exactly like my dreams.”
What it taught us: when everyone sleeps in the same house, the wedding starts the night before, at the welcome table.
Where everyone sleeps, and who pays
This is the question we discuss most often, and the answer depends on the venue far more than on etiquette.
Everyone under one roof. It works beautifully at a city hotel or a country estate that sleeps your whole group: at Donna Camilla Savelli all twenty guests stayed in the hotel, and at Casale del Gallo the estate sleeps around thirty.
Your closest people at the villa, everyone else nearby. Most private villas can host more guests at the wedding than they can put to bed. Villa Aura sleeps sixteen and hosts up to a hundred; Villa Regina Teodolinda sleeps up to twenty-four. The families and the wedding party stay in the villa, and everyone else in hotels a few minutes away, with transfers so nobody is looking for a taxi at one in the morning.
Do you have to pay for your guests' rooms? No. Some couples cover everyone, which is easiest at a small wedding. Others cover the families and the wedding party, or reserve a block of rooms at a group rate and let guests book their own.
The exception is the private villa. When a villa is let exclusively for three nights, its bedrooms are part of the rent whether you fill them or not, so the rooms are already paid for and the only question is who sleeps in them. That is why we look at accommodation and rental terms together, before a venue is chosen, rather than leaving guest rooms as a detail for later.
What a wedding weekend costs
A full wedding weekend for thirty guests starts at €73,000 on Lake Como and €89,000 near Rome, and most land between €90,000 and €150,000. These bands come from our own 2027 budgets, not teaser prices, and they include everything: the venue for the nights it requires, the food and wine, every supplier, Italian VAT and our planning fee. The fee is inside the number, not added to it.
What moves the figure is not, as most couples expect, the number of days. It is the venue and the rules it comes with. A villa that must be taken for three nights costs the same whether you hold one event or four, so on Lake Como a pizza party and a brunch add surprisingly little. A city hotel is the opposite: there is no rent for empty days, and each extra evening is simply a dinner. After the venue, it is the guest count, because the table grows with every person while the house stays the same.
A weekend also does not need a formal event every night. A welcome dinner in a trattoria, a winery visit or a pizza evening by the pool often suits a group better than a second banquet, and costs a fraction of one.
We build your budget on the first call, line by line, around the venue, the number of nights and the events you actually want, and you receive it as the working spreadsheet we plan from. We name our fee on that call, in full, as a figure.
When to start planning
Start with the venue and the rooms, not the flowers. Private villas and small hotels have few bedrooms, many require minimum stays in the wedding season, and the question is never only whether your wedding date is free but whether the whole stay is. For May to September we suggest beginning twelve to eighteen months ahead, earlier for the most sought-after villas. A church wedding needs about six months of preparation that begins in your own parish at home, and legal paperwork for American couples needs those two or three working days in Italy before the wedding, so both shape the dates too.
Why couples choose us to plan their weekend
We live here. We have planned weddings in Italy since 2016, with a permanent team in Rome and on Lake Como rather than a desk abroad. Katerina lives on the lake, Svetlana in Rome, and Laura runs production across the country. We know these venues because we have worked inside them: Casale del Gallo, Donna Camilla Savelli, Castello della Castelluccia, Villa Aura del Lago, Villa Regina Teodolinda, Villa Bonomi, Villa Balbiano, Villa Riviera, Villa Porta and others. How long it takes thirty guests to walk to the winery, which suites face the lake, where transfers go wrong at midnight: none of it is in a brochure.
We tell you the real number first. Every venue on our site carries a real starting budget, and on the first call we build yours line by line, with 2027 prices and Italian VAT already in it. Our planning fee sits inside that number and we name it in full, as a figure. We do not take commission you cannot see.
We plan the weekend, not just the wedding day. The welcome dinner, the winery, the boat, the brunch, the rooms and who sleeps in them, the transfers between hotels: a weekend has more moving parts than a wedding, and we treat them as one plan rather than a list of extras.
We take few weddings each season. That is a choice, not a limit. It means the people you speak to in the first month are the people standing next to you on the day, and two of us are on the ground for the whole wedding, never one.
We will say no when we should. If a villa does not suit your numbers, if a weekend is more than your group needs, or if you have come to us too late for a church, you will hear it on the first call rather than in month five.
And we hold the umbrellas. When it rained at one of our weddings, our team took the umbrellas to the guests and stood in the rain ourselves. Your job that weekend is to get married and enjoy the people you love. Ours is everything else.
We do not sell the same three-day package to everyone. We start from how you imagine spending time together, and then find the place, the rooms and the rhythm that fit it.
A wedding deserves time to enjoy it
Your wedding in Italy can be a beautiful ceremony and a dinner. Or it can be a few days in which the people you love most discover a place together: long tables under the lights outside Rome, the city at your door in Trastevere, a villa on Lake Como with the water below and nowhere else to be. The ceremony lasts half an hour. The weekend is what everyone takes home.
Questions couples ask
Ask your ownDoes a wedding weekend have to last three days?
No. Two days of events, three days, or three nights at a villa all work. Often the venue decides: many Lake Como villas require a minimum of three nights in the high season.
Do all our guests have to stay at the villa?
No. Most villas host more people at the wedding than they can sleep. Your closest family and friends stay at the villa, everyone else in hotels nearby, and we arrange the transfers.
Are we expected to pay for our guests' rooms?
Not necessarily. You can cover everyone, cover only the families, or hold a group rate and let guests book their own. If you rent a villa exclusively, its bedrooms are already part of the rent.
Can we have a wedding weekend in Rome without a villa?
Yes. A historic hotel in the centre, such as Donna Camilla Savelli in Trastevere, lets everyone stay together with the city as the programme between events.
Can a Catholic wedding in Rome be part of the weekend?
Yes, if you meet the Church's requirements and the church accepts your booking. The religious ceremony fits naturally between a welcome dinner and a farewell brunch. Start about six months ahead, with your own parish at home. Our guides to Catholic weddings and churches in Rome explain the steps.
Do we need to plan activities every day?
No, and we would advise against it. A welcome dinner, the wedding and one more gathering are usually enough. Guests flying in from abroad want free time too.
How much more does a three-day wedding cost than a one-day wedding?
Less than you might think, depending on the venue. At a villa that must be rented for three nights anyway, the extra days are already paid for and an informal pizza party or brunch adds little. At a hotel, each extra evening is simply the cost of that dinner.
Planning a wedding weekend in Rome or on Lake Como?
Marina, who founded WOWITALY, answers every inquiry herself. The first video call is with Katerina, it costs nothing, and it is not a sales call.
Tell us roughly how many guests, roughly when, and whether you see a city celebration or a villa of your own. The first call costs nothing and is not a sales call: we will tell you what your weekend would cost, which venue fits it, and what we would change about your plan.
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