Hi from Italy!

Many ppl are not calm. I am not. My future husband and I decided to elope without guests instead

Hi Ambra! Late congrats on your engagement and always interesting to hear how things are going around the world.

I think things vary a lot depending on the state but my situation in California is very similar to yours. Vaccinations are slow and regulations seem to be changing so often it's hard to know what to do. But I think once the ball gets rolling with vaccinations it will continue to pick up speed. The predictions are that things will start to get better and I have seen events starting to get scheduled for the latter half of the year. I also have not heard any bad news from our venue in a long time - they are back open for tastings (since they do the catering as well) and don't foresee any closures.

Is there a reason why you might go to orange? We had a slight hiccup like that due to the holidays where we had more regulations for ~a month. Hopefully, it is something similar! At least with a July date, there is still a bit of time.

Thank you for posting!!! We were supposed to have our dream Italian wedding in Siena in September 2020. Now we are pushed back to October 2021. Since you are there, “on the ground”, do you think that date could still be feasible? Right now they’re saying vaccines in the US will open to general public around summer time here. Keeping our fingers crossed Italy still works this year otherwise we’re going to have to fight for all of our deposit money and try something else in the states. We are sick of postponing.

Welcome and congrats!

Think of the US as more like the EU - each state is totally different from the next, when it comes to rules, regulations, and vaccine rollout. (Yes, it's confusing to us, too!)

In a lot of the Northeast, restrictions are still very tight, and we aren't sure what's going to happen. Other states were never strict to begin with, so people are having weddings regardless.

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I know the feeling. The important thing in a wedding is the couple and it's right if you two decide to celebrate alone

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Thank you Jessica, congrats on yours as well!

Here in Italy a lot of wedding were celebrated on last summer, they said the hot temperature probably helped to not spread the virus, so we all hope that this summer will be the same...!

Hope you'll have the same situation in California, known for the wonderful beaches and the hot the vaccination surely will be faster now they started, and if your venue don't give you bad news, you will be fine!

The worst thing that can happen is that our wedding as we always dreamt, will have masks (we'll tell to our photographer to avoid guests with masks in the spontaneous photos...)

We might go to orange because my region (Lombardy) is one of the biggest in Italy, Milan is the "head of italian business" and one of the first regions to be affected by the virus in February-March-April 2020 so we have a very high risk of contagion, due do a lot of people moving to work/school. The government try to please everyone giving us the "freedom" with the yellow-zone for 1 or 2 weeks but then they return to the orange or even red. We have been in the yellow zone for 2 weeks, so it's time to go to orange in order to decrease the contagion...

If you had an hiccup as well, this probably means that all world states communicate between them to find out the best solution for decreasing the contagions.. This time we choose July to avoid mid-spring doubts...

Will you have a ceremony on the beach?

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Hi Katie!

Wow, Siena is magic, all Tuscany as well! Can I ask you why you choose to celebrate in Italy? Is your or your fiancé's family italian? All your guests will move in Italy from US?

October is absolutely a perfect month for a wedding, specially in Siena if you are planning a wine-theme wedding, with yellow and orange autumn colors!
You probably have the flight issue, but if most of you are vaccinated, the company will let you come in (be informed if you will have to do the quarantine of some days), but for October there is still a long time

Are you organizing with an italian wedding planner? Did you already planned your honeymoon in Italy? Will you celebrate in american style or in italian? (you know, wedding are soooo different between us and italian )

Sorry for all these questions but I love difference between countries and I love when americans move in italy for weddings!

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Thank you Rebecca!

I always thought America is an union of single states - we europeans don't really feel united as much as you American people... but surely in these rough times, every State must act by its own...

I see, the Northeast were the first countries to be involved in the pandemic and the safety of people is what should worry the most the government... How often they give you some info about new restrictions or changes?

Thank you all for sharing these info with me!

View Quoted Comment It is, but it's also much more complicated than that, and likely best explained elsewhere. We should not really be acting completely alone, but.


Each state updates restrictions based on current case data, hospital load, and so on.
My governor (I live in the best state, New Jersey), has a press conference/release with the new data *every day*. Restrictions are updated when certain criteria are met.

View Quoted Comment Ambra, We chose to do Italy because my family is Italian and I studied abroad in Florence in college and ever since then it was my dream to get married in Italy and share our love of Italy and travelling with all our friends and family!! My fiancé’s fathers side is from Switzerland, so we will have guests coming from US and Switzerland


We are working with an Italian wedding planner! We haven’t planned the honeymoon yet just because everything is still up in the air with covid we’re thinking of doing a “mini moon” maybe in Portofino or going back to amalfi coast (my fiancé and I have already been there- when he visited me when I studied abroad!)
Well do an American wedding but with some flavors of Italian weddings also for example we don’t like the traditional American wedding cake so we will do the Italian style instead.
Fingers crossed it can happen this year in October! Hopefully quarantine won’t be a requirement by then, especially if we are vaccinated. Quarantine would prevent a lot of our guests from being able to make the trip.

View Quoted Comment Thank uou for your understanding. Unfortunately, I received a lot of backlash from it.