An Italian Wedding...

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Written by Marcella Perodo of Minicaretti...

If you are planning a miniature wedding, why not go for an Italian theme!

Evviva gli sposi!

What could happen to you if you went to an Italian wedding...

Getting married in Italy is a months long affair, what with churches, priests, town hall officers, mothers and mothers-in-law, so I thought I’d better spare you all this and go straight to the reception…

As soon as the newlyweds get out of the church, they are greeted with a shower of rice – yes, rice, that leaves unsightly white marks on the groom's dark vest; but lately the grains are being replaced with flower petals or paper confetti. Anyway, they must be showered, perhaps to symbolize the shower of good wishes coming from friends and relatives.

When you go to a wedding party in Italy you already know you will eat too much, sit too long at table, lose the entire day, and the food won't be as good as it could (as it often goes when there's lots of people to cook for).The reception is held generally at some restaurant, unless your hosts are quite wealthy and can afford to rent a villa, a castle or whatever, and feed their guests by some classy catering service; or unless they are very rich, in which case they hold the party at their own place, generally an elegant building surrounded by manicured gardens and possibly a pool or – the greatest luxury of all – a natural pond. You will have time to explore it, if the weather is kind, because after the ceremony the newlyweds must undergo the first of many photo sessions, which can last hours. Depending on the time of the wedding, you could get invited to lunch or dinner, but beware that even a lunch will last at least 4 hours. Dinner is generally a quicker affair, as guests must have time to dance a little afterward, but this does not affect the number of courses – what really makes a wedding lunch so unbearably long is the time you are left languishing between courses.

You generally begin with an aperitif with a buffet of canapés, but the trend is towards more elaborate displays, such as huge cheese and salami boards, a whole Parmigiano cut open, crudités and other finger food, even sushi if you are really, really posh.

After the aperitif you sit down and start an almost endless stream of antipasti – meat, fish (even oysters if your host is prone to showing off) and veggies, cold and hot, anything you can think of. While the antipasti should just open the meal - that is their meaning: coming before (anti) the meal (pasto) - you usually end up totally replete way before the first course. Which is, quite obviously, a pasta dish – maybe with some classy ingredient such as lobster, scampi or truffles, but even at a wedding reception we don’t give it up on pasta. You usually get two or three different first courses in a row – say, lobster linguine, Parmigiano risotto with white truffles, stuffed pasta with salmon and/or shrimps.

Then it’s time for the so-called main course, some premium morsel of beef or fish or game cooked in an elaborate way, but no one ever gets to actually eat it. You may even get a second main course, if your host is a little wicked. If this is the case, they will try to trick you into taking a bite offering you a fresh lemon, sage or mint sorbetto to cleanse your palate and speed the digestion up a little.

The more modern receptions invite you to leave your place at the table now, to enjoy the dessert phase standing on your feet. So you are ushered to another buffet with fruit, assorted patisseries, cups of spumante or champagne and, of course, the wedding cake: multi-tiered, but also one-dimensional and as large as the whole table. We don’t have a true tradition of cake decorating so even wedding cakes are kept quite simple – brides seem to love real fruit and flower decorations on a white base (meringue or whipped cream).

After the cake (that the newlyweds will cut together, under a shower of flashlights), it's time for the bride to let go of the wedding bouquet. All her unmarried girlfriends gather round screaming – she turns her back on them and throws the bouquet behind her shoulders. The first one who gets it is sure to have her own wedding in a 12 months time (I have seen perfectly elegant and smart girls tearing a bouquet into pieces and going away proudly with a single battered rose or even just a leaf). Needless to say, at my own wedding the bouquet was caught by my best friend, who has been a single since then. But maybe it was my fault: I ended up divorcing, so maybe that bouquet was faulty right from the start...