I've been trying for a while to come up with a pithy blog post title or a first line that somehow sums up the past few weeks in a way that conveys how wonderful they've been without sounding twee. I haven't been able to. The wedding and the honeymoon were everything we'd hoped they would be and then some. I usually try to stick to bookish posts but I can't seem to pass up any opportunity to chatter about my wedding and so here we are.
We chose to get married in Florence because it's a city we love that we wanted to share with our immediate families and friends. Our wedding was small and we only invited 20 guests. We wanted to have a group of people we were close to at a quiet service and to treat them to some Italian food and wine in the sun. Our families were wonderfully supportive in the days that we were in Florence before the wedding day and were truly fabulous at the venue. We'd chosen a villa that we could use the night before for a pizza and prosecco party so both sides of the family could get to know each other (Villa le Fontanelle, which I honestly couldn't recommend more highly).
After the obligatory few hours of getting ready, drinking a couple of glasses of prosecco with my mum and bridesmaids, we got married. It was beautiful. The chapel had just room for 20 people, we just had a violinist and a cellist for music and the weather was perfect. Our reading was from The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (which remarkably my now husband chose without realising he was straying into literary territory!):
Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle.
Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was queen and he was king. In the autumn light, her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, they parted with leaves in their hair.
Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
I happy cried a few times but I smiled a whole lot more. The food was incredible, there was plenty of wine and it was perfect. There's nothing that I would have changed and I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. Enough said, I guess.
The day after we got the train out to Sestri Levante and spent the next two weeks travelling around Italy, eating some of the most delicious food and enjoying some stunning views and time away together. I read barely anything before the wedding (unsurprisingly) and then made up for that on our honeymoon. We balanced exploring towns and trying to see everything with a few days of relaxing and reading. I was going to write about my honeymoon reads together with the wedding but I feel like I've rambled on enough!
Until next time, friends :)
Left to right: Sestri Levante, Cinque Terre, Lake Como
