From contacting more than 100 venues to three unforgettable days in Italy, this is the experience that eventually inspired The European Wedding Edit.
When I got engaged in July 2025, there was one thing I knew almost immediately: I wanted to get married in Europe.
I’m originally from England, my now-husband and I live in Florida, and many of the people we love are spread across both sides of the Atlantic. But logistics weren’t the only reason Europe felt right.
I’m a huge foodie, I care deeply about guest experience, and I didn’t want our wedding to feel like just one evening. I wanted it to feel like a vacation; a few incredible days where everyone we loved could be together, eating amazing food, drinking great wine and actually having time to enjoy one another.
Europe felt like the perfect place to do it. What I didn’t realize was just how difficult finding the right venue would be.
The hardest part wasn't planning the wedding. It was finding the venue.
I started my search the way most couples probably do: Google, Instagram, TikTok, wedding websites and countless open tabs. There was certainly no shortage of beautiful venues. What was surprisingly difficult to find was actual information.
How many bedrooms did the venue have? How many guests could stay onsite? Was catering provided in-house? Were there minimum-night requirements? Could we host multiple events there? What was actually included in the venue fee?
And, perhaps most importantly: what was this realistically going to cost? So much of that information simply wasn't available online.
Instead, I found myself emailing venue after venue, waiting for responses and receiving beautiful marketing brochures that often created more questions than they answered. One venue might quote accommodation separately. Another might bundle it into a buyout. Catering might be mandatory but not included. There could be exclusivity fees, minimum spends, additional event fees or requirements buried somewhere in a proposal.
Comparing one venue with another was surprisingly difficult. So I started collecting the information myself.
I contacted more than 100 European wedding venues.
I wanted to understand which venues actually fit our wedding - not simply which ones looked beautiful online. I compared budgets, guest capacities, bedroom counts, catering, location, event possibilities and the countless other details that determine whether a venue really works.
Eventually, after researching and contacting more than 100 venues, we found ours: Villa Cariola near Lake Garda, Italy.
And something surprising happened once we did.
The planning suddenly became easier.
Looking back, finding our venue felt like 80% of the work. Once Villa Cariola was secured, I finally had the framework for the wedding. I knew where our vendors needed to travel. I knew what was already provided. I knew the aesthetic I was working with, which made decisions about florals and décor much easier. Our catering and beverages were handled in-house, eliminating another enormous piece of the puzzle.
Instead of planning an abstract wedding somewhere in Europe, I was finally planning our wedding.
And then it became the experience I'd imagined from the beginning.
Ultimately, our wedding wasn't really one day. It was three.
We welcomed everyone with a traditional Italian barbecue and live Italian jazz.
The actual wedding day, we had a long aperitivo filled with incredible food, followed by a four-course dinner and a party that carried on until 1 a.m. with a DJ and saxophonist.
The final day, everyone came back together for a pool party filled with music, spritzes and that wonderfully relaxed feeling you only get once the wedding itself is over. We even squeezed in a visit to a local vineyard just 15 minutes from the venue - the perfect ending to the entire celebration.
It was everything we'd hoped for. People still tell us it was the best wedding they've ever attended. But one comment has always stuck with me even more: “It felt like going on vacation with 70 amazing people.”
That's exactly what I had wanted when I first imagined getting married in Europe.
The experience also showed me what was missing.
When I think back on the months of planning, I don't wish someone had simply planned the wedding for me. I wish I'd had someone at the very beginning who could have said: “Here are the destinations that work for what you want. Here are the venues that actually fit your guest count and budget. Here's what they really include. And here are the ones worth spending your time on.” Because once I found the right venue, everything else started falling into place.
That's ultimately what inspired The European Wedding Edit. I took the research, spreadsheets, venue information and experience I'd accumulated while planning my own wedding and turned it into the resource I wish I'd had when I started.
Because there are thousands of beautiful places to get married in Europe.
The hard part isn't finding a beautiful venue. It's finding the right one.
And that's where The European Wedding Edit begins.
