A Lake Como Wedding, and the Couple Who Came Back to Stay
They married on the lake, and a year later they bought a home on it, from the friend of mine who had married them.
| The story · Varenna, and a lake they came back to | Watch, 2:52 › |
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Picture going back, every year, to the exact place where you got married. Not to see it again in a photograph. To live there, with your children, in an apartment that looks out over the same lake where you said yes. That is how it went for Adam and Chelsea, and at the start it was nobody’s plan.
They married in Varenna, on Lake Como, one of those places where the water, the mountains and the terraced gardens look as though somebody put them there on purpose. As we always do, we had built everything starting from them, from their taste, from the way they were together. And their group stayed on the lake for several days, not just for the ceremony. In those days the thing no contract can plan for happened. We became friends.
Their bond with Varenna grew day after day, until it turned into something more than a good memory. They decided to buy a home there, an apartment on the lake. The agency that sold it to them was one I pointed them to. It belongs to a friend of mine, the former mayor of the village, the same man who used to officiate the civil ceremonies back then and who had married them.
Today Adam and Chelsea have two children, and they come back to Varenna regularly. That lake is not the backdrop to a single day any more. It is a piece of their life as a family.
This is what we mean when we say a wedding in Italy, done properly, does not run out in twenty four hours. We do not turn up, set up a party and leave. We get into the place, the people who live in it, the relationships that have grown around it since 2005. And by the time the couple notices, that place has stopped being a venue. It has become theirs.
Today you might just be looking for a villa for one day. It is possible you are looking, without knowing it, for a place you will come back to for the rest of your life.
Varenna, on the eastern shore. For Adam and Chelsea it stopped being a venue some time ago.
Guests meet the place. A group that stays three days stops being a party that flew in and starts recognising the village.
You meet the people. The boatman, the baker, the man who marries you. Those are the names that outlast the photographs.
The day stops being a deadline. With time on either side, the wedding is the centre of a week rather than the whole of one afternoon.
Ask them to name people in the village, not suppliers in a catalogue. Those relationships are what opens a door that is not on any list, and they are the ones still there in ten years.
In two weeks: a tablecloth caught fire halfway through dinner, and almost nobody noticed.
Common questions
Can you get married in Varenna, on Lake Como?
Yes. Varenna is one of the villages on the eastern shore, with gardens running down to the water, and it holds civil ceremonies as well as weddings in private villas. Guests often arrive by ferry across the lake rather than by road, which turns the journey into part of the day.
How many days should a destination wedding last?
Two or three around the wedding itself is the pattern most couples choose now. Guests have flown in from several countries, and the days on either side are where they meet each other and the place, rather than only the couple.
Can foreign couples buy a home in Italy?
Most nationalities can, and it has nothing to do with having married here: it is a separate process handled by an Italian notary. Anyone considering it should take proper legal and tax advice locally rather than treat it as an extension of the wedding.
If you want a wedding that does not end with the last dance, book a free consultation with us: it’s a real conversation about the two of you, and by the end you’ll have the start of a plan and a first few places that could be yours.
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