Issue 13 — Our Tuscan Wedding: Details & 70 Photos

Indulge me while I recap some special details from our outdoor dinner party on the one year anniversary.

I never really planned to get married. It took nine years together, countless conversations, a therapist that helped me peel back the triggering layers of “traditional” weddings (see: father passing daughter off to another man like a piece of meat), and a pretty great partner who consistently voiced enthusiasm but didn’t push me, for it to even be a consideration. The discussions started as a reframe: we’d throw an outdoor dinner party, maybe somewhere across the pond. Our vision included a long table under the trees, the setting sun, big bowls of pasta being passed around, crunchy wine flowing, sexy music playing. This felt like a celebration I could really get behind.

Handwritten vows are one of the few wedding details that always struck a cord with us. We both love to write, especially in the form of love notes. Sharing warm feelings in front of everyone that’s watched our partnership grow felt like an easy yes. So maybe we’d stand up at our dinner party and recite them?

As we started to take these party dreams and bridge them into tangible reality, we found a villa outside Florence in the Tuscan countryside that would sleep all 16 of our immediate family members. Soon after, we discovered it had a small outdoor amphitheater flanked by tall trees and old statues. Maybe that would be a cool place to say our vows? Maybe it would be fun to keep our outfits from each other until the day of? Over coffee with friends, conversation around singing a first dance came up. We were giddy at the thought of someone so close to us singing. So let’s have a first dance?

Slowly, and so very beautifully, our outdoor dinner party morphed into a true wedding (it only took me until a few weeks before our flight to admit that out loud). At every turn, we carefully thought about what felt like “us” to ensure all decisions were intentional and garnered meaning vs. following the conventional wedding current. What ultimately revealed itself was the best week of our lives (to date) and so many universal signs that were kismet. This week’s issue is a recounting of those special moments and all the pieces that fell so perfectly into place, reminding us both that this path was always written in our stars.

I am a perfectionist, a planner, and someone who lives for the itty bitty details and the creative process. This is not everyone. But it is me! We shipped a few big boxes from NYC to Italy, and then checked some bags with the rest. We made countless color-coded documents, seating charts, packing lists and playlists. We didn’t hire a wedding planner, but instead found someone locally to translate and help coordinate with the few vendors we needed. I am excellent at creating extra work for myself, like making napkins from scratch and setting our own wedding table as if we were hosting an intimate 80 for dinner, and that’s exactly what we did.

Welcome Party Aperitivo

In the fall of 2017 I went on a solo trip to do some soul searching. Sandwiched between travel, I took a food styling & photography workshop at an artist residency in Florence called Numeroventi. The space blew me away, and I stayed in touch with a few friends from the trip. One of which, Fiona Franziska, I reconnected with and we flew in from Germany to take photos for us. In place of a rehearsal dinner, we held aperitivo in the city center to toast with everyone who flew in to celebrate. We reached out to the Numeroventi team, who was delighted to host us, and worked with local wine makers and chefs to pull a menu of drinks and snacks together. Magic.

Invitations

We opted for email invites with a custom website instead of mailing paper ones. Max and I wrote out the alphabet and doodled some drawings on a sheet of paper, and a friend turned them into a font and graphics for a sweet little website.

Embroidered Napkins & Table Linens

This is a level of detail many could care less about, but I revel in. I walked the aisles of Mood Fabrics in NYC’s garment district, getting clippings of samples, and landed on an array of soft washed linens in playful patterns and stripes. I bought the fabrics by the yard, hauled them to Northern Michigan one weekend while visiting family, washed them with my mom, and she cut and sewed them into napkins with fun colored stitching. On a later trip to the city, she brought them back and with a crew of good friends we embroidered every guest’s name to use as place cards. While yes, this was entirely unnecessary, the transition from sitting curled up on the floor of our small apartment stitching and discussing each guest to setting the table on the day of the wedding was enchanted. Most guests took theirs home, which made my heart so happy.

Rather than renting starchy tablecloths in boring colors, we opted to pay a little more and be able to save them forever. We got enough of these green & white striped ones to fill the long dinner table, and then saved a few for ourselves and gifted the rest to our parents and siblings to take home from the wedding and enjoy for years to come. Maybe I’ll make a few pillow cases or a shirt with one of ours. I also brought some fun ribbons that we tied to wine glasses and champagne coupes.

Not long before our flight I decided we needed food menus pinned to the napkins. I found small wooden clips, wrote the menu with fun markers in half Italian and half english, and then ran to FedEx where they made 80 copies that I cut out into weird shapes and threw in my bag. A little last minute adrenaline. Et voilà!

One end of the dinner table captured on film.

Flowers

Rather than spending astronomical money on pre-arranged flowers, I had a vision of my mom, mother-in-law and four (!!) sisters all making little bouquets ourselves. On the day of the welcome party, we drove into Florence early and stopped at a little flower shop I called ahead of time. We picked out a few buckets of stems, and that night at the villa we arranged small glass vases (that I *chaotically* brought along with the tablecloths, napkins and everything else in our checked bags) and my mother-in-law designed a bouquet for me and a little floral pin for Max. We also brought some Murano glass style tumblers & candles to scatter along the table, which made it back home with us and are now our drinking glasses, and some small dishes for flaky salt and chili flakes (yes, I brought a big bucket of Maldon to Italy as well), and my sister-in-law made a big welcome sign that we hung on the entry gates.

Libations

About a year before our wedding we came to Tuscany on holiday and met Robin at Fattoria Le Masse. We fell pretty hard for his small production organic wines and olive oil, the art his mother made for the walls and bottles, and his philosophy on life and farming. It was only after we booked the villa for our wedding that we realized Robin’s vineyard was close by. Needless to say, we bought nearly all of our wedding wine (except bubbly which we sourced from his friend in Lombardy) directly from Robin. He came by our villa lunch/pool party the day after our wedding with a magnum of special wine, and the following day we went with a big group of friends to visit him. We ended up shipping multiple cases back home that we enjoyed for the coming year.

We bought the rest of the spirits ourselves at a great bottle shop in Florence, which we loaded into our rental car’s trunk and drove right to the villa. We made sure we had good espresso flowing, and our talented friend Quinn painted the bar menu on a thrifted board which now hangs in our kitchen.

Some photos taken while we opened a jeroboam of Franciacorta. We are now transfixed on procuring something bigger, maybe a rehoboam (6 bottles) or a salmanazar (12 bottles!) for our unborn kid’s first birthday party. Mark your calendars, this time next year.

Bites

Having a local chef cook family style dinner for 80 at a villa that’s not set up for it isn’t really an option. I’m pretty anti-catering, but it was the best route. I micromanaged the dinner menu (places on halo), and we had Martin, a chef based in Rome that we met through friends of friends, come and do aperitivo snacks before our wedding dinner, and lunch for the day after. He picked tender lettuces from the villa’s veggie garden and filled them with homemade ricotta and lemon zest, drove to a corner of Italy for the best burrata, and picked kumquats from a friend’s tree to serve with the prosciutto.

Langoustines post-pasta, and late night fruit platters.

Local Support

Through cold email outreach to Italy Segreta, an Italian Culture magazine that kept making it’s way into my inbox, we found Lindsay — our Italian speaking angel who helped find the companies we rented furniture, dishwares, staff, and lighting/AV from. She brought bottles of balsamic for the tables from her partner’s family business, and came to the villa on the day of the wedding to make sure everything went smoothly.

Before everyone arrived in town, we stopped at the original Santa Maria Novella, the world’s oldest pharmacy, and bought hand soap, lotion, and candles for the villa bathroom. The scent we picked still transports me. We stopped at a local grocery store (my ultimate vacation activity) and bought bags of Italian candies and salty chips for late night treats.

Garb

The only outfit vision I had was wearing a bright color, possibly my beloved red, and no bra. I’ve been to so many weddings where the bride is pulling up her dress all night. I wanted to feel effortlessly comfy, wrapped in easy breezy fabric so nothing could steal me away from being as present as possible. I also wanted to avoid being in a bridal shop at all costs.

After seeing some designs online, I reached out to Delfina Balda, who had just begun making some bridal pieces. I brought 3 friends, and we walked out having found my wedding outfit — a gauzy, pleated fabric in butter yellow that we draped and pinned every which way in the coming fittings until a custom top and skirt were made. We left the tie in the back long for a little drama. The best part of this fabric was how it traveled — scrunched up into a ball inside a small silk garment bag. My mom makes unique jewelry, and created a pair of asymmetrical pearl earrings for me. I wore my grandmother’s bracelet, and strappy Khaite sandals that came off during dinner and were never seen again.

With Delfina’s eye, we decided on another custom outfit for the welcome party but in a bright color to satisfy my anti-bridal-white agenda. I wore a magenta two piece set that we cut by hand with scissors in her studio until the raw edges were just right, complete with glass beaded straps, a lace up pair of The Row sandals and a blue Maria La Rosa bag. Max wore all white, a little nod to flipping the roles and my anti-wedding past.

My sister did my hair and makeup (for which I had absolutely zero plan) and just like our childhood repeated, there was a moment between drinking bubbles and jumping around in my new Loretta Caponi pajamas where she gently reminded me I was about to get married and needed to get ready. The sister moments were so special.

We ate paninis from a local shop, drank cappuccinos, and all got dressed and ready together while Max was upstairs with his crew.

Sounds

The jazz quartet we hired was discovered through my friend Emiko Davies. They play behind the counter at a butcher shop in her small town of San Miniato, and we were connected on Whatsapp. In broken English texts, they asked what instruments we wanted, how many hours, and gave us a text-based handshake that they would show up on our wedding day and we could just pay then. This was admittedly a bit nerve racking, but they showed up in full force and the live music matched the backdrop perfectly.

For the first dance, our good friend Laura serenaded us with I’m Glad There Is You by Julie London. After dinner, the band packed up and we pressed play on a mix that our friend DJ Auz put together for us. Max and I spent countless hours making a playlist, in the exact order and energy flow we anticipated wanting. Austin then shortened the songs, removed breaks and used some form of sorcery to make it perfect. We simply pressed play and let the night ride it out on big speakers under the lit up trees. Our only qualm was having to end the night too early.

We also curated a playlist of funky disco for the welcome party, old Italian songs for our wedding aperitivo, and other groovy stuff for the pool hang the next day.

Our crew

The 80 people that flew from every possible corner — Brooklyn, Minneapolis, Miami, Israel, London, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix — to celebrate with us were what made this weekend together what it was. It’s profoundly moving to look up and down a big table and see nearly every person that’s touched your heart all in one place together. We still revisit the speeches our family made, the moving ceremony our best friend Shane built for us, and all the little sparkly moments throughout.

As a wedding gift, our good friend Nick (writer/director/producer extraordinaire) filmed the weekend on Super 8. The video he made us is one of the most cherished things we own.

For small mementos we made wine keys and matchbooks, and sent everyone home with small bottles of Tuscan olive oil from Robin’s vineyard.

6/6/25

On the one year anniversary last week, as we wait for the arrival of a tiny human that will be joining us in a matter of days, we read our vows to each other and both cried in between bites of pizza at Lucali.

It’s hard to articulate how much gratitude we both feel — for finding each other, for the people that encircle us with boundless love and support, for being able to throw this outdoor dinner party last year, and for the new addition about to join our team. We may not have it all together, but together we really have it all.