Wedding | Bianca & Eric

Tell us a little about yourselves!

We are both from Ontario, Canada. We met in high school and have been best friends ever since! We’re both in the medical field and in our downtime, we love traveling, hiking, and spending time with our standard poodle, Comet.  

Why did you decide to get married where you did?

We travelled together around Italy for a month back in 2022 and had the most amazing time together. When we started looking for wedding venues, we fell in love with Casale del Gallo, a little villa in the Roman countryside.

I am also half Italian, and we loved the idea of getting married in Italy with the beautiful scenery and amazing food. Having a small, intimate wedding was also important to us, so it made sense for us to have a destination wedding with just our closest friends and family. We would do it all over again if we could!

How many guests did you have?

We had a total of 27 guests, which included our immediate family and closest friends. 

What was your budget? 

We had support from our parents which was incredibly helpful in allowing us to having our dream wedding. While we didn’t do the greatest job sticking to our initial budget, we tried to be very thoughtful with choosing our vendors and prioritizing what was most important to us.

For example, we chose not to have a videographer because we felt confident that our photographer Elisa Rinaldi was going to do a great job capturing the special moments from our day (and she did!). We also saved money by making our some of our own wedding stationary. We did choose to opt for things such as a live band because we loved the idea of having live Italian music, and it was so worth it!

Tell us about your outfits.

I wore a dress from Sarah Seven, which is a wedding dress designer I absolutely fell in love with. We wanted our wedding to be non-traditional and relaxed, and I felt like this dress gave the ultimate nonchalant, cool-girl vibe. I didn’t want something with a long train or lots of material because I really wanted to make sure I wasn’t restricted from dancing all night long. For the ceremony, I wore a 90” veil from Sara Gabriel.

Eric custom-designed his suit with Suit Supply in Toronto. It was a beautiful dark-grey linen blend that was perfect for the hot weather in Rome. He had the Italian phrase “tutto bene” embroidered on the inside of the jacket which basically means “it’s all good”, a nod to Italy and to the relaxed vibe of our wedding. 

What was the most important aspect for you, in terms of planning your wedding?

We really just wanted our guests to enjoy their time in Italy, and we wanted to make sure we got to spend time with everyone. Casale del Gallo ticked all the boxes for us, because they planned everything, saving us the hassle of having to sort out the details of our wedding in another country. This also allowed us to sit back and relax on our wedding day because we knew that everything was going to be taken care of.

I think it’s easy for a lot of couples to get stressed and caught up in the whole planning process, and we didn’t want to lose sight of the bigger picture. Our wedding was perfect because it was a very laid-back (in typical Italian fashion) and we didn’t have much stress in the planning process!

Were there any elements that were important for you to incorporate?

Keeping with the intimate vibe of our wedding, we chose to handwrite our thank you cards. During the weekend, we also had disposable cameras lying around the villa and we asked the guests to take photos and return them to us at the end. We actually printed the photos and sent a handful to each of our guests along with the thank you cards. I think this added a personal touch and it was an opportunity to share with our guests how grateful we were to have them celebrate with us.

Something else that was important for us was the food. Thankfully, it wasn’t difficult to find delicious food in Italy! We really wanted to ensure that our wedding menu consisted of food and wine that was authentic to the region we were in (when in Rome!). Giulio from Casale del Gallo was extremely accommodating with helping us choose our meals for the weekend. Everything from the wood fired pizza, to the cacio e pepe, and the local wine were amazing!

Any tips for couples getting married?

Make sure your wedding is what you and your partner want and try not to give into too many outside pressures. I hear so many couples saying they wished they chose a different venue or a different guest count, but they didn’t because they were trying to please someone else. At the end of the day, this is your wedding day!

Are there any vendors that you would like to tell us a little more about?

Our photographer, Elisa Rinaldi was absolutely amazing! We wanted our photos to be very candid and she did a great job at capturing the overall vibe of our wedding. She was super easy to work with and made us feel so comfortable on our wedding day.

Also, our florist Motif Floral created the most beautiful florals for us and we could not be more grateful! We wanted our florals to be colourful and whimsical and they were even more beautiful than we could have hoped for!

Photographer: Elisa Rinaldi @elisarinaldiphoto | Flora: Motif Floral @motiffloral | Ceremony & Reception Location: Casale del Gallo @casale_delgallo | HMUA: Ruslana Regi @ruslanaregi | Catering & Beverages:

Casale del Gallo @casale_delgallo | Entertainment: Michael Fedeli @michaelfedelidj | Dress: Sarah Seven @sarahseven | Suit: Suit Supply @suitsupply | Veil: Sara Gabriel @saragabrielveils | Engagement & Wedding Rings: Alexis Gallery @alexisgallery