Planning our Wedding in Cinque Terre Italy

Last Updated on April 19, 2024 by snaphappytravel

Planning a Cinque Terre Wedding. Here, we explain how we chose a venue and wedding planner for the most important day of our lives.

Our Cinque Terre wedding was held in August 2019 and it was everything we could have dreamed of (and more!) Some of you may have visited this colourful area in the Italian Rivera, others may have admired photos on the internet, while for some of you this may be your first time hearing of it. If you’ve not heard of it, I recommend googling it pronto; it’s truly a unique part of the world. Which is why we’re getting married there.

It brings me great excitement to let you all in on the details for planning a Cinque Terre wedding.

Why Get Married in the Cinque Terre

A photo of the town of Manarola – one of the five villages in the Cinque Terre has been my laptop screensaver for, oh, about 10 years. Hilariously, I never knew where it was ’til me and Paul were planning our trip through Italy back in 2014. He showed me the exact same photo and said “we should go here”. On  the trip, we stopped here for 4 nights and loved it. I even said when we were there that this was my dream place to get married.

The story of our proposal

Paul proposed on a magnificent beach in Kerikeri, New Zealand in February 2018. We call it our beach because it doesn’t have a name. It’s just a beach at the end of a walk through a rainforest. We spent a lot of time this past summer sunbathing and swimming and relishing the fact that we had the beach all to ourselves.  When he got down on one knee one evening over a Picnic, I was surprised (I even offered him the wrong hand).

When the excitement and novelty of having a ring on that finger died down,  we started talking about where our Wedding would be. There was one thing we were both certain about, and that was that we would get married abroad. 

We’ve spent our whole relationship traveling the world together, and honestly, it just wouldn’t be us to get married at home (i.e., Ireland/England). We wanted to share our love of traveling with our family and friends. What better way to do that than with a Wedding in one of our favorite places in the world?

Creating our wedding checklist

Even though a Cinque Terre Wedding was top of my list, I was open to other suggestions.  So, me and Paul sat down and came up with a list of what’s most important to us for our Wedding:

• It has to be in Europe  – easily and cheaply accessible for our wedding guests who are from Ireland/England. Also,  preferably a budget airline will fly there e.g, Ryanair or Easyjet
• It has to be somewhere lesser-known, and nobody I know can have gotten married there
• The venue needs to be by the ocean
• It should be relatively inexpensive

Narrowing it down to 3 potential destinations

Making that list helped us narrow it down to three places  – Cinque Terre, Lake Como, or one of the Greek Islands. Lake Como got crossed off the list pretty quickly when we realized how expensive it was. Don’t get me wrong, there are cheaper ways to get married in Lake Como. But for what we wanted – a wedding on the water and completely private, it just wasn’t feasible. Greece was next to go because it’s not so easy to get to from Cork (where all my family would be flying from).

Planning a Cinque Terre wedding, it is!

Picking a great wedding planner

We found a great Wedding Planner and a potential Cinque Terre Wedding venue after a few days of research. I recommend joining the Facebook group Weddings Abroad Guide Community. We also simply did a Google search of ‘Wedding Planners in Cinque Terre’, made a list of the best, then, emailed off some questions. After a few days, we were able to narrow it down to who seemed the most helpful and who offered the most practical venues for us.

We eventually decided on Cinque Terre Wedding and are so happy with our decision. Our Wedding Planner, Melina, is an Australian-Italian, so there is no language barrier. She lives in the Cinque Terre and is also fluent in Italian to deal with all the suppliers. The whole process so far has been seamless, and because we are living in New Zealand at present, we are so happy that we have opted to get a wedding planner

The importance of visiting the venue before booking it

When we were visiting home this past June, Paul and my Mom went to the Cinque Terre to meet with Melina and to see the venue we had chosen, all these years later, the Cinque Terre was as magical as we believed. We visited the venue, and honestly, it was perfect in every way. Exactly how I imagined it to be.

Hooray, we picked the venue for our Cinque Terre wedding!

Our wedding venue in Cinque Terre

For our Cinque Terre Wedding, we got married in Buranco Vineyard – a vineyard at the top of Monterosso. It is a completely private venue with a view down to the village and the ocean. It was ‘very us’, the aperitivo, the ceremony, and the dinner were all held outdoors. This venue is surrounded by rosemary and vine leaves and the smell is divine.

Our Wedding Day in Cinque Terre

Thankfully, the ceremony didn’t start until 5 pm due to the hot weather in Italy in August. So, there was no early morning start for me for my hair and makeup. Instead, I had a leisurely breakfast with my family in the vineyard (Buranco Vineyard was our venue) and then walked 5 minutes to the village to have my hair done in the local salon.

With my hair done, my bridesmaids and then I did our makeup in one of the vineyard villas. I was completely relaxed all day and in the lead-up to the big day, but 30 minutes before I was due to walk up the aisle, the nerves really kicked in.

The ceremony

The ceremony was probably my favorite part of the entire day. We held it at the very top of the town overlooking the sea. It was quite a steep walk up, and some of our guests decided to get taxis to the top. The guests who walked mentioned it was very ‘Mamma Mia.’

The weather was just perfect. Our celebrant really made the ceremony what it was and really personalised his speech to include funny little details from our relationship. We had our band playing some songs at some key moments during the ceremony. They really added to the atmosphere and even learned Perfect Symphony by Ed Sheeran and Andrea Bocelli for my walk up the aisle. Which was a really lovely moment.

After the ceremony, we had Prosecco waiting for our guests to toast us after they had covered us in confetti.

The aperitivo and dinner

In Italy, it’s tradition to have an Aperitivo before the dinner at weddings. It was buffet style with land, sea and vegetarian options. This was held outdoors, overlooking the vineyard and the dinner area. All of our guests commented on how good the food was at the aperitivo. We had the band playing Italian songs during the aperitivo, again adding to the relaxed atmosphere.

After 8 pm, we were called to the dinner area. We decided to have the dinner outdoors in the middle of the vineyard to make it more unique and to really take in the surroundings. We had two menu options for our guests: meat or fish. Dessert was a massive buffet, and after dinner, we had an open bar – much to the delight of our guests.

On the drinks menu was wine, beer, Mojito, and Gin & Tonic. Our band played several more songs – mainly for the key moments like our first dance (which was to ‘How Long Will I Love You‘ by Ellie Goulding). We then had a DJ until 2 am who had the guests dancing until the early hours.

At the end of the night a few of us decided we’d go for a swim in the sea in the village. A great end to the best day.

Important information about our Cinque Terre wedding

• The venue: Buranco Vineyard
• Our wedding planner: Cinque Terre Wedding
• The photographer: Pure Wedding Photography
• Our band: James Band 003

Planning a Cinque Terre wedding has been one of the most exciting experiences of our lives and we cannot wait for the BIG DAY!

Why not read next – Where to stay in Monterosso – the largest town in the Cinque Terre

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