Don Pedro

For those of you who don’t know – we got married in Sorrento, Italy, through a company called Don Pedro Wedding Organizers. They made our wedding day – as well as pre/post wedding – so special. So much so, I felt that they deserved a whole blog post to themselves!

Don Pedro are a family run business, and an incredibly well-oiled machine – the Disney of wedding organisers, in my opinion. Each family member plays a role on your wedding day, from cooking to general timekeeping. I’ve never seen anything like it. I now use their efficiency, friendliness and overall competence as a benchmark for every business. I’m yet to see anything come close.

Engagement

From the moment we got engaged, we secretly knew going abroad would be what we truly wanted to do – the only problem was if anyone else would be interested in travelling abroad to attend. Regardless, we knew we wanted to go abroad, so we stuck to it and started doing our research…

Destination

We decided on Italy for a few reasons; it was the first country we visited as a couple – Rome was one of our favourite places we had visited together – and we had visited Italy a couple times and generally loved its overall culture and lifestyle. And, obviously, Italy is beautiful.

We spent hours and hours looking for the perfect location, looking for wedding planners and ideal wedding locations through various websites. Until, my Mum came across Don Pedro through Trip Advisor. Now, if their reviews don’t make you want to use them for your wedding… then I don’t know what to say. Look at their reviews, they are outstanding.

Contacting Don Pedro

So, after reading through what seemed like every review on trip advisor – and checking out their website, facebook and Instagram – we were totally sold. We wanted them. I emailed them and didn’t have to wait long until I got a reply back – of which was completely heart warming.

With lots of back and forth, Tony gave us all of the information we needed to discuss and help plan. So we decided to go out to Sorrento, meet them and do some location scouting.

Visiting Sorrento

We flew out to Sorrento in March 2017 – you can read that blog here. We had contact with Tony through Whatsapp and Email, so we knew when and where to meet him.

We met Tony, on day 2 of our holiday. He picked us up from our hotel with his sister-in-law Marcella, and they treated us to a bottle of red and white wine, which their family makes themselves. We spent the day visiting all of the places we could have our ceremony at, from a museum to a monastery. And then we visited all the reception locations, from country houses to villas. The choices were endless. And during our visits, we made one or two (or six) coffee stops – or in my case, tea stops. Tony thought the idea of me asking for tea was hilarious…

The next day, Tony and Marcella invited us to join them for another day of location scouting. Tony also kindly invited us to meet up with our registrar Alessandra, who we met for a coffee – along with her little chihuahua. We had a good old chin wag – she told us her fascinating life story and how she got into weddings. She definitely helped put us at ease.

As well as generally loving spending time in Sorrento, we absolutely loved being with the Don Pedro family. Spending time with Italians and learning new things about their culture was amazing. We stopped for coffee a lot, received multiple bottles of Don Pedro Wine, chatted about our likes and dislikes. I wish I could have brought a whole suitcase of Don Pedro wine home for family and friends to try – it’s delicious – as is their Limoncello. We had an absolute blast. They really made us feel like part of their family and we feel like we’ve made friends for life!

Pre-wedding

The wedding planning was an absolute breeze for us – another reason why I think everybody should use Don Pedro. All we had to do was to let Tony know how many people were attending, their food choices, and a few finer details that we wanted for the wedding – like cake, appetizers, cars etc.

We got married July 2018, so we had well over a year to plan, but we didn’t need to rush at all. In the middle of all of this, we bought a house too, so knowing that the wedding planning was in good hands was a massive relief.

While we were in Sorrento for our wedding my Mum turned 50, so through Don Pedro, we planned a day trip to Capri for her with some of our wedding guests – you can read about that here.

Getting married abroad, you here of it not being the easiest in terms of the paper work. However, I think in a few countries in Europe, including Italy, it’s pretty straightforward. You have to be weary of the wedding not being legal abroad, and then having to hit up a registry office back at home – we didn’t want that. Italy is super easy, you are legally married by the registrar and that’s that. We just had to have a few documents signed by a solicitor, then sent to our registrar, with a deposit to her and Don Pedro. Then our wedding planning was good to go.

The wedding week

Arriving into Sorrento on the Tuesday, we got to our hotel Relais Villa Angiolina. All of us stayed here, I think we took over the hotel! It was totally perfect for us all.

Our first port of call was meeting our lovely registrar Allessandra. We signed a few documents and she talked us through the day. As part of Allessandra’s service, she included my bouquet and Rich’s buttonhole. So she took us to the florist and we picked our flowers, which were then stored in a massive fridge. Once leaving Allessandra, we then went to a shop we found on our previous visit to order our wedding favours (Limoncello shot glasses). Tony then picked us up, and we drove to our wedding reception to go through everything and confirm it all (2 days before – that is how relaxed the process is). This is when we paid Tony – this wasn’t us leaving it to the last minute, that’s just how they do things. In fact, you here all of the time about guests cancelling and things changing last minute with a wedding, and you end up losing money. Tony’s relaxed attitude with regards to payment, cut all of this out.

I would give you a break down of costs for our wedding, but I don’t think you would actually believe how affordable it was. Sitting with Tony and Marcella in our soon-to-be reception area was when everything started to hit us. We had some limoncello and talked through the day – our song, our car, seating arrangements, food, everything. It was so much fun.

The second day in we had our day trip to Capri (mentioned above) so we spent the day with Marcella, who acted as our guide to the island.

The third day in – the day before the wedding – Marcella arranged for the hair dresser to come to my room to practice a few styles on my hair. I loved this. Both hair dressers were lovely. We decided on a style, and then that was it – it was just waiting for the big day.

Our wedding day

The morning of our wedding day was very relaxed. We were getting married at 1pm, so we had all morning to prep. The hair dressers came pretty early and sorted out my Mum and Mother-In-Law’s hair first. They soon finished mine and before I knew it, I was having my make up done and I was in my dress.

My husband went for a coffee, chilled a bit, and then took his time getting into his suit and catching up with the rest of the guests. Once everyone was off to the ceremony at The Cloisters, it was just me and my Dad waiting for tony to pick us up in a vintage Fiat 500 – yes, how perfect is that. Tony drove us all around Sorrento Town, making sure we arrived at the right time. Beeping and honking at all passers-by – you wouldn’t believe how many people popped their head in the car to wish me well – my Dad was definitely loving the celebrity of it all. I hate attention. But I did love it, I loved how it made my Dad feel, and I loved how happy Tony was doing it. And when we arrived at The Cloisters, I was greeted by a crowd that gathered around the car – both tourists and locals. I was offically papped.

Our wedding ceremony went smoothly. It was July and hot, so I wanted to make sure the heat wouldn’t get to me – so Allessandra kindly arranged seats for us to sit on at the alter. The Cloisters is a dream wedding location, all of our family were sat to the left of the alter, and as I walked down the Aisle to Pachelbel Canon – some locals gathered in aswell to watch us get married, which was super sweet. We didn’t write our own vows, we wanted it to be a full Italian wedding, so we had some beautiful Italian vows translated and read back to us – then we both said ‘I do’ and signed our wedding certificate, which came in a beautiful folder so it could be kept safe and sound.

After having beautiful photos captured at The Cloisters, our guests jumped in a minibus to take them to our reception up a hill, where they were presented with canapes and Don Pedro Prosecco while they waited for us to arrive. Due to the location of our venue, the minibus could only take our guests so far – so they then all jumped onto golf carts – no one was expecting that, they all loved it too! Rich and I jumped back into the Fiat 500 with Tony driving and we stopped off at some beautiful locations along the coast for some wedding photos. Our photographer is one of our closest friends, who came along via moped with Tony’s Dad – Rich snapped a great photo of him loving life!

We arrived at our wedding reception – The Don Pedro Countryhouse – with a great big welcome from our family and friends, all sipping prosecco and eating some tasty treats. The best thing about our wedding reception was how relaxed it was. The venue overlooked the Mediterranean, and allowed everyone to chill out and take in the beauty of where we all were as a big family.

As soon as food was ready, everyone took their seats, and we were welcome as Mr and Mrs Bush for the first time – everyone had something different, but me and Rich both had Palma Ham and Melon for starters, the first course was spaghetti bolognese, the second course was Sirloin Steak Pizzaiola, and then dessert was chocolate profiteroles. The food was incredibly fresh and beautifully cooked – and I think all of our wedding guests would agree.

I remember how comatose everyone looked after food – it was filling and delicious. We then gave gifts, and had some lovely speeches. That then allowed my body to relax before we had our first dance. Now, before I get on to that, in Italy, if you play any kind of music at a private event you have to pay a government agency permission to do so. It’s called SIAE for copyright and loyalties – this covered us for creating a playlist and playling music through a speaker for the evening. Our first dance was to a song called “Pushing Up Daisies” by Brothers Osborne – the song is one of our favourites and it totally suited our wedding style.

When it came to our wedding cake – I’ve never in my life tasted a more delicous cake. We chose a simple sponge cake covered in Chantilly cream and wild strawberries – wow. It was also in the shape of a heart with our wedding details decorated on it. The Don Pedro family surprised us by throwing some extra flower and heart decorations on it too!

The rest of the evening we drank, chatted and listened to music. The day was truly, truly magical, all thanks to Tony and everyone at Don Pedro. Tony arranged Taxis to get us all back into Sorrento. Half of us went to an Irish bar that we’ve visited a few times for some drinks. What a way to end your wedding day – walking through the streets of Sorrento in your wedding dress, having well wishes sent your way at every corner.

Overall

I don’t want to give too much information on the finer details and costs – because if you contact Tony he will no doubt give you the exceptional service that he gave to us. He gives you all of the information you need and more, including photos.

To this day, 3 years later, we have family and friends talking about it. Imagine having a stress-free, easy, simple yet beautiful wedding! You can actually have that. We did. It was everything we dreamed of.

We’re still in contact with Tony and Marcella and plan to visit them soon with our baby boy. This is the next amazing thing with choosing Don Pedro – you stay in contact withy them through social media – there are tons of couples just like us that do the same. It is such a special service that shouldn’t be missed.

I hope I have convinced you. Everyone says getting married in the UK is easier. It’s not. Getting married in Italy is a beautiful experience and much, MUCH easier than you think.