By now, you’ve probably seen The Real Budgets of Vogue Weddings, the piece that broke the internet recently and has wedding planners, vendors, and recently-engaged women all in their feelings. Some feel the numbers are understated, with important vendors missing entirely from the price breakdowns. Others can’t believe anyone would ever spend that much on a “party.”
Vogue’s article is the closest thing to a real conversation about wedding costs we’ve had in mainstream media in years. And when it comes to the size, price tag, and hoopla surrounding weddings, there’s sooooo much judgment that you can hardly blame anyone for being cagey about what it took to put theirs on.
Well, it just so happens that my wedding anniversary was last Sunday, June 14th. It also happened to be featured in Vogue the year we got married, which means I have some skin in this conversation. And now that the big day feels like a lifetime ago, I have a lot I can finally say.
Seven years after the big event, I’m doing what any oversharing, wedding-obsessed friend would do: pulling back the curtain on my own wedding in Italy. The real planning decisions. The savings. The splurges. The regrets. Some thoughts for future brides, some nostalgia for the long-married women reading this, and some fun for everyone else who simply loves a wedding.
On Money
I happen to believe that weddings are deeply important events where two people commit, before God, friends, and family, to a life together. I take it seriously. Which is why I think the pomp and circumstance is more than warranted. The stakes are high.
You will also never have another opportunity to bring everyone you love together in one place for one reason. It was unbelievably touching to stand at my welcome dinner and see faces from my childhood in Nigeria, my New York fashion years, and my newer European chapter all in the same room. It was even more beautiful to watch them mingle so easily, lending each other curling irons and extending their Italian holidays together. Every penny, worth it.
Before we go further: yes, my wedding was not cheap. But it cost less than people assume. A reader recently asked if my family crowdfunded the wedding, and the answer is no. Alessandro (!!) and I paid for most of it, and our mothers contributed to some things. I will share more specific numbers and where they went in the next post.
For now, I want to walk you through how I actually got to my wedding day. The dream, the venue hunt, and the early decisions that ultimately shaped everything and landed us in the legendary magazine.
The Dream
My wedding fantasy went through many lives. I’m a dreamer, so the goal was always for something elaborate. For a while, when I lived in New York, I wanted a wedding at the Pierre Hotel. Then I wanted the Breakers in Palm Beach. When Alessandro and I started dating seriously, I dreamed of 100 guests in Capri. Long tables. Black tie. A sea view. Walking down the aisle to the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana.
Then we actually started looking at venues, and a lot changed. Though the dress code, the long tables, and the music all happened as hoped.
Location, Location, Location
We were living in Paris at the time, and it would have been the easy choice, but a Parisian city wedding never quite called me. Plus, why make his side travel all the way to France when their region was home to dream destinations like the Amalfi Coast and Capri?
My 100-guests-in-Capri dream lingered for a while. But Alessandro’s family is from the area, only a couple of hours from Capri by both car and ferry. Asking them to book pricey hotels and ferry themselves onto an island when they could practically drive to a wedding felt absurd. I let Capri go.
The Amalfi Coast was the other dream. Obviously. We toured everything. The Belmond in Ravello. Santa Caterina in Amalfi. Bellevue Syrene in Sorrento. Rada in Positano. Palazzo Avino in Ravello. All of them gorgeous. All of them had the same problem.
Where do we dance?
In Italy, the structure of a wedding is a church ceremony followed by a long dinner. Most of the famous venues are built for exactly that. Stunning table settings. Five courses. Hours of food and wine. And then, if you want to dance, you have to relocate to an “after-party,” often in a completely separate space, often at an additional cost, and often with time restrictions due to local noise ordinances.
I did not want any of that. I wanted my first dance in front of everyone and speeches during dinner. I wanted those who didn’t want to dance to be able to sit, drink, and watch without feeling exiled. I wanted the indoor and outdoor to flow together. One place, one continuous story.
Positano added another problem. The town is breathtaking, but it’s brutally hilly, and the logistics of moving guests from a church to a reception venue felt like a punishment we didn’t want to inflict on people who had flown across the world for us.
So I started doubting La Costiera Amalfitana
The Venue That Almost Wasn’t
We landed at Villa Andrea in Paestum. The first place we saw, actually, which I should have taken as a sign but did not.
I almost didn’t book it. Why? Because, interestingly, I didn’t think it was old enough. The interior is modern, and I had this idea that if I were having a countryside wedding, it had to be rustic. Crumbling stone. Climbing ivy. The rustic dream Instagram had sold me.
What changed my mind was simple: Villa Andrea was the only venue that could actually do everything I had been describing. They were the most flexible venue we toured by a mile. No restrictions on how late we could go. The indoor-and-outdoor layout meant I got my first dance, dinner with speeches, dancing, dessert, and an open bar, all in one fluid evening.
And the interior that I thought was too modern? Comfortable for my guests, with air conditioning and ample sockets for charging their phones.
Sometimes the right venue is the one with the right flexibility, not the one with the famous reputation.
On Italian Wedding Planners
If you are considering Italy, though this applies anywhere, please hear me on this part.
The most famous wedding planners are extraordinary at what they do. But they tend to work with preferred vendors — florists, lighting designers, and other suppliers — many of whom are very pricey. If you book a famous planner, you are often inheriting their expensive Rolodex along with their expertise.
I was tempted to use a very famous Italian wedding planner, but for the reason above, I went with a lesser-known local planner from the region where we were getting married. She was from the area and knew the vendors and suppliers who could make my dreams a reality. For example, our local florist, sourced by my local planner, did a marvelous job for what we felt was a very reasonable price. The famous planner would probably have called an Amalfi Coast florist who would have charged three times as much for the same result.
Another note: be mindful of venues that are subtly tied to a specific planner. We almost booked Villa Eva in Ravello, but after several conversations with the wedding planner they regularly work with, I realized we wouldn’t have been a good match. To be fair, this was years ago, and I have no idea if they still work together. But at the time, the planner kept using phrases like “my weddings” and was pushy about his vendors and the order of the day his weddings followed. He actually showed me floral designs to choose from and never asked for my dream, ideas, or theme. That style would have worked better for brides without a strong point of view, brides happy to fit into a cookie-cutter formula. That wasn’t me.
Final suggestion: Try to pick a planner from the region where you are getting married. A regional planner knows everyone personally and can help you cut deals. In Italy, people offer special pricing to those they know, those who speak the local dialect, and so on.
But there are a couple of drawbacks to flag: a possible language barrier, and the chance that a regional planner may not quite get your taste if you’re used to a big-city standard. More on that in a future post…
One last thing. Our vendors were genuinely honored to have been chosen. They wanted to impress us and show the international clientele who would inevitably see their work what they could do. I’m not sure we would have gotten the same hunger to please from venues and vendors featured in magazines every other month. There is something to be said for being someone's prized project rather than someone's Tuesday.
Choose a Place That Means Something to You
Italy has become a wedding-industrial complex, and you can see it on Instagram. The same venues. The same lake and sea views. The same villas. All beautiful, but increasingly generic.
A few principles that served me well:
Pick a place you have a personal tie to. A region that means something to you or to your partner, ideally somewhere you have spent real time, somewhere you would happily visit again on your anniversary or show your children.
Look beyond the famous regions. Instead of Tuscany, consider Umbria. Instead of Capri, look at Ischia. Instead of Amalfi, look at Cilento or Paestum. I wrote about this exact topic on my website a few years ago.
Get creative with the venue itself. Can an agriturismo or restaurant host a magnificent dinner and dancing? Often yes, and at a fraction of the cost of a famous villa.
Lean Into Where You Are
If you are in the countryside, use the bales of hay and the animals. Use the local flowers, local herbs, local food. Don’t fly in tulips from the Netherlands when there are wild Italian poppies and delightful herbs a kilometer away. Are you near olive groves? Use olive leaves. Lemon country? Lemons. Don’t insist on a fish dinner if you’re on an island known for lamb and rabbit. The location should drive the wedding, not the other way around.
Lean Into Who You Are
Marrying an Italian in Italy didn’t mean my heritage would get lost on the day. One of my favorite parts of the evening was bringing in elements of my culture.
I encouraged my aunties and Nigerian friends to wear traditional Nigerian dress. My girlfriends wore asoebi, the matching fabric tradition that lets your closest women stand together in coordinated colors and prints. It looked stunning against the Italian countryside, and frankly, my Italian guests couldn’t stop talking about it.
The biggest moment came at the very end of the night. While guests were eating dessert and the dance floor was full, Alessandro and I slipped out and changed into traditional Nigerian clothes. His mother, bless her, changed too. And then we made our entrance back into the room, dancing to Nigerian music, completely unannounced. It was chaos in the best way. People screaming. Aunties leading the charge. Italians who had never heard of Afrobeats were discovering it in real time. It was the moment everyone still talks about, years later.
If you come from somewhere other than where you are getting married, bring that with you. Do not flatten yourself for the venue. The most memorable weddings are the ones that feel, specifically and unmistakably, like the couple.
On Destination Weddings
I believe that if you’re asking guests to fly across the world for your wedding, you owe them a show. You owe them thoughtfulness. You owe them more than just the ceremony.
We built a detailed wedding website with information on where to stay, what to do in the region, and how to navigate the area. We hosted a welcome dinner for our out-of-town guests, and a farewell brunch the day after the wedding. We held both at the same venue, which negotiated a deal for us because we were booking multiple events. Worth knowing for any bride reading this: venues are often far more flexible on pricing when you bundle.
Destination weddings are a significant ask of your guests. The financial cost, the time off, the travel logistics. It can also be lonely for guests who don’t know many other people there. Help them feel comfortable. Help them figure out what to do with their time. Make it worth the trip. They will remember it forever, and so will you.
On Splurges and Saves
Pick your battles. Decide in advance what you actually care about, and let everything else be reasonable.
For example, I splurged on my invitations, which were custom expensive cardstock designed by Momental Designs. The save-the-dates and invitations were the first impression of the wedding, and I wanted our guests to understand where they were going and what kind of event they were coming to. I included a details card and a map. Everything was hand-painted and printed in two languages. But the menus, name cards, signage, and program inserts? All produced locally. I didn’t need imported cardstock for something that would sit on a dinner table for a few hours and then end up discarded.
That principle saved me thousands. Decide what matters, splurge there, and stop pretending everything matters equally. Plus, decision fatigue will get you.
Coming Up Next…
In the next post, I’m pulling out the receipts. What I actually spent. Where I saved. Where I splurged. And my biggest money regret on the big day.
If you are planning your wedding, share this with a friend who needs it. If you are already married, forward it to someone who is about to be. And if you are simply nosy and love a good wedding story, you are in the right place.
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