The Wedding Day

Our wedding took place in the upper church of Portico, Santa Maria in Girone, then with the guests gathering for an aperitivo in the hotel garden, and finally the wedding dinner and party in the evening in the Graten of Dante & Beatrice in front of the church.

Of the more or less 160 we had invited, we ended up being about 130 guests, coming from 15 different nationalities(Sweden, Germany, Scotland, England, Holland, Spain, Switzerland, Japan, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Philippines and then, of course, Denmark and Italy. The bride was happy to have 33 danes join her for the big day :-)


Already the week before the wedding, some family and friends arrived and took part in all the preparations.  Without them, it would not have been possible to have such a special day!

Friday evening all our guests from outside Emilia Romagna had arrived and joined us for a welcome dinner in the big restaurant room. We were about 50 people from all over the world and we were happy to sit down with them. As always Gianni made a spectacular dinner with aperitivo, pasta and then a a smaal ovengrilled piggy, that was cut before our guests. To round it of the spctacular dessert of Massi was brought in.  

The bride brought her wedding dress and all her accessoires to a nearby appartment, were she would spend the night in company of three very much appreciated friends. Then the future husband and wife kissed goodnight and went to sleep...

We both woke up to some extra heartbeating, excitements and nerves, but also very happy to finally make this dream come through. After a morning of hairdressers, anxiety, laughs and creation of the weddingcake(The Groom himself - natural choice, no?).

The weather was hot, windy and somewhat cloudy, giving us sun in the afternoon and just a light wind during the evening. Perfect weather for a wedding!

The bride prepared for the day with her three friends, just as the groom prepared himself with his witness and friend, Sir James. Then it was time. Enjoy :-)

The groom and The Mother of The Groom arrives.

The Bride and The Father of The Bride arrives.

The Groom waiting at the alter

The Bride and her very emotional father

The Church

Bride & Groom

The bouchet and leaflet with translations in Danish

Singing a Danish salm - sister and cousin are crying a bit, :-)

(The Bride was also very emotional hearing all the Danish voices filling the church with the Salm)

We have said our vows and now exchange the beautiful wedding rings

Husband and wife

Beautiful music came from harp and violin

Signing the papers, our very kind priest asks if everything was good - the answer was "perfetto"! 

The throwing of rice - a lot of rice!

Enough - now protected by the veil :-)

The Bride and her mother :-)

La famiglia!

Walking Borgo piano as happy, relieved and slightly overwhelmed bride and groom

We now let the photos talk a bit...

After the walk in the Borgo and Via Roma, becoming greetings from people looking out their windows or sitting around in the village, we went to the hotel graten, where our guests were having our own personal wedding spumante and enjoying a relaxing moment accompanied by the harp and violin. 

It was very welcome and relaxing with a small glas and lots of laughter. We were given a few gifts and gave thank you gifts to our 4 witnesses, who had supported us in the church and signed the papers with us. Gianni was spotted in the kitchen wearing shirt, tie while lending them a hand :-) 

At seven we all turned back up in the Garten of Dante and Beatrice, where 14 round tables, a large buffet, bar, band and dancefloor where waiting to give us and our guest a fantastic wedding party! 

All the tables where given the name of an island and decorated with candles, peonies and lavender as well as a sign of Danish and Italian wedding traditions. Place cards where made as Manila marks tied to the wine glass, so our guests could mingle and keep track of their wineglass. 

We welcomed our guests 

Very fast the Italians took action with the Danish tradition of banging cutlery to their plates in order to make the Bride and the groom get up and kiss.

Un brindisino perché no!

Father of the Bride gives his speach - with translation in Italian.

Hurra, hurra, hurra!

The Mother of the Groom, Marisa.

Our lovely, Danish sister in law, Ulla.

Mario gives his speach - traditionally it rimes and is great fun :-)

The grandmother of the Bride gets up and gies a speach in English. She is actually 83 and a very strong woman. The Bride is moved... 

The Groom has made the cake himself and proudly escaped to bring it up in the garten. Spumante was prepared to the toast and the cake was beautiful and very big! 

Massi tells Camilla to count down with him and then cut, so 5,4, 3, 2, 1 and BANG - knowing his bride he had arranged for fireworks to pop at that exact moment - what a man!

Our cake topper... 

We finally had our first dance - waltzer as always. 

We had also given the notes of  the traditional wedding waltz, where the guesta are then supposed to approach the married couple towards the end.....

... the for the men to grab the groom, free him from his shoes and cut his socks! Originally to disable him to  go to other women. To bring luck to the bride, the women tear of a peace of her veil to keep. 

Now the party could begin and needles to say that everybody danced, sipped spumante and mingled in the warm summernight in June. It was even possible to enable the biggest group dance ever and as if all that was not enough,  as the party was fading out a few rain drops hit the bride and gave her even more luck. 

The End

All photos are from mattburgessweddings.co.uk