How I Planned My Dream Wedding at Villa Del Balbianello From the U.S. | Lake Como, Italy

Hi guys, what's up? It's Natalie. Welcome to, or welcome back to, my YouTube channel. In today's video, I am taking you guys through the journey on how I planned my Lake Como dream wedding at the breathtaking Villa del Balbianello, all from the US. I'll share how my amazing planner did it all, how I found my planner and the vendors I used, and how I basically planned a whole entire wedding in another country. Whether you're dreaming of an intimate, beautiful wedding or you're here for a good little story time, come along with me because I am your 2026 Bella Di Bavianello bride, and I can't wait to inspire your wedding. Okay, so I want to start kind of in the beginning of how I decided to plan this. So I really knew from the start that no matter where I did my wedding, I wanted it very intimate, very attention to detail, and very, very small in how many people I was inviting to my wedding. My whole entire wedding, I think there's probably like 6 people, which was my daughter Sam, my husband, my mom, his mom, and then his stepdad, and then myself. So 6 people in total. And from there, since I live in the United States, specifically in Florida, I really, really wanted a breathtaking venue. And unfortunately, nothing I saw really matched my vision, and I just wanted my venue to be very romantic, very jaw-dropping, and very memorable. My mom's dad is from Italy, and her side of the family is as well, so I grew up going to Italy when I was little, but my husband's never been. So when we were talking about getting married, we had the idea of doing it in Italy. And how I found my venue was, it's actually from Star Wars. And I did not find my venue, my husband did. He's a big geek and loves Star Wars and Marvel, and he mentioned Villa del Bobbianello. And he kind of knew my vision, but he didn't really know the vibe, obviously. So when he showed me the venue, I instantly fell in love. And this was all online. We did not go see the venue in person. And from there, the next step was getting a wedding planner. And how did I find my wedding planner all the way from Florida? TikTok, actually. Um, I found my wedding planner through TikTok, and I found another girl who did her wedding in Italy, I believe in Lake Como, and she was kind of gatekeeping in her video who she used. And then finally I messaged her on TikTok and I said, "Who did you use? Like, I am dying, I need to know." And she finally let me know and then did another video like tagging the company. So from there I contacted the company, wrote an email and said, "Hi, I'm looking to get married in Lake Como, Italy. This is my vision, this is our budget." "Can we jump on a call and figure this all out?" And within a week they got back to me and said, "Absolutely, let's jump on a call. Let's see if we're right for you guys." I used Wedding Event Italy to plan my whole entire wedding. Marta and Silvia, they are locals in Italy and they specifically do Lake Como. They do all of Italy, but they're known to do Lake Como, I think. And the nice thing about having a wedding planner in Italy is they're able to speak the language and get the vendors and get my point across while I'm not there. So that was really nice. So I had two wedding planners who were absolutely amazing and handled every single thing for me. We did a lot of Google Meet video calls, me, my mom, and sometimes Sam, but it was mainly me and my mom. My mom helped me tremendously with the whole wedding and, um, dealt with me kind of being a bridezilla. So my wedding planner specifically only helped me for my wedding. They did not help me plan my whole entire trip to Italy. We stayed in Italy for about 8 days. We left from Miami to Milan, and on that trip it was Miami actually to Paris, Paris to Milan. And I can do a whole story time on how that went because that was really a traumatic experience for me, that whole plane ride. But When we landed in Milan, we actually stayed one night in Milan, and then the next day we went to Lake Como. Looking back, I wish the whole entire time we stayed in Lake Como because it was just so magical and so inviting and exactly my vision. In Lake Como, we stayed at Grand Hotel Tremezzo, which if you're ever going to Lake Como, I highly recommend this hotel.. It is on the pricier side, but trust me, it's amazing. It's heaven on earth. It really is. I vlogged my whole trip to Italy, so definitely go check those videos out. Silvia and Marta really only focused in on my wedding, not my whole trip in general. The timeline on from start to finish, it took about a whole year to plan. My original date I wanted was in May, I believe, but the date that I wanted was already taken, so we decided to do it in April, at the end of April. So, and that really wasn't an issue for us, so we secured that. And then from there, Villa del Bellinello is a historic venue, so with that they only allow certain vendors into— onto the property and will work with them. And thankfully Marta and Silvia had all the connections I needed, so I did not need to go research different vendors or anything like that. They told me who they've used. They've given me probably about 4 or 5 different vendors from each category, like catering, photography, videographer, florist, everything, and showed me their work so I could choose from afar. The cool thing about all my vendors is they all actually worked with Vogue. Um, and that, like, I feel like not a lot of people can say, "Oh, my, your vendors work with Vogue." So that was really cool. Yeah, it took a whole entire year to plan my wedding. Sylvia kept me on track with not only the payments, she kept me on track with timeline. She was very understanding on the time difference and very respectful of it, and all the small details. Even though I was having a very small, small wedding the whole idea of it was massive. I wanted specific things, and if I didn't get the specific things, we found a way to get it. Okay, so let's talk about my vendors. My vendors, I absolutely loved all of them, from my hair and makeup girl to the photographer to the videographer. Everyone felt like I knew them for years and years and years, which was really nice, and they all spoke English as well. Let's start with my makeup artist and my makeup artist and my hair artist. She was also going to do my spray tans, but, um, I suffer from eczema, so I had to cancel that and figure out something else. So she does offer that, and I'm gonna put all of my vendors in the down box below, and also my wedding planner as well. So if you want to copy my wedding, please do, and all my links are down below. So my makeup artist and hair artist Her name was Elena. I'm gonna butcher her last name. Panzieri? Panzieri? I think is her last name. She's worked with multiple people on magazines, in Vogue, like all over Italy, and she is phenomenal. Very, very experienced, knew exactly what I wanted. She had this whole entire— my whole bed in the hotel room was covered in makeup. She obviously knew what the vibe was. And while I was getting my hair and makeup done, my mom, Arabella, and Sam's mom, they were also in my hotel room getting their makeup done with her assistant. So it was nice to have Lena completely do me and just take her time. She also gave me a lot of suggestions because I'm the type of person, I like when the makeup artist or the hair artist kind of tell me what looks good, because at first I wanted to do my hair kind of like this, like these two pieces slicked back and then my hair down, and then she mentioned how Hollywood waves would look better and will, will be better for photography, and I'm so happy I listened to her. The one thing I wish we would have done was pin back my veil on my head because my veil was not pinned, so it was kind of sliding down a little bit, but that's okay. She made me feel like a celebrity bride. She also had her own videographer and photographer to shoot her social media content, which I'm so excited to see. Okay, so let's talk about my photographer. So when I had the idea of doing an Italian wedding, my biggest, biggest, biggest priority was my photos. I wanted to capture every single moment possible, and I was willing to spend the money on a photographer and videographer because I knew I'll never be able to do this again. And who else can say that they had their dream wedding in Italy? And since it was so private, I wanted to announce my wedding because we really didn't talk about it much. Within that year, I wanted to announce it with the photos. So Matteo Culturo was my photographer, and he was amazing through the whole entire process. We did video calls a couple times. He sent a questionnaire on what kind of photos I was thinking about, if I wanted film, if I wanted digital, if I wanted more like in-the-moment photos, if I wanted professional, like poker face kind of photos. And I basically said I wanted it all. I love like the look of very spontaneous and like in the moment, but I also wanted some that would like make me, make me focus and like they could use if they wanted to in, in magazines, I guess. I don't know. I just wanted it all. And he was very accommodating. And he was amazing with my daughter, which meant a lot to me. He made us run around the whole entire hotel. He made us jump on the bed to shoot photos. He was just amazing. His photos are priceless. We already— we already printed out a lot of photos that he took and hung them up around my whole house. And all the compliments I'm getting on my wedding are specifically my venue, and also the photos are just Oh my God. Um, let's talk about my dress. So my dress was my biggest vision. It's so funny because when I first started looking at dresses, I did not find one dress that made me— I did not find one dress that matched my vision. I was looking on Pinterest and I saw these beautiful brides with like really, really skinny waist and then the hips would just flare out. I could not find that anywhere. I went to um, a bridal place in Ormond Beach. I went to another one in Delray Beach, and then finally my mom booked me an appointment at Boca Bridal. If this is your first time watching my video, I'm from Boca, and everyone knows Boca Bridal to have the most gorgeous dresses, biggest selection, and would have basically any dress you could think of or could get in any dress you could think of. So when I was trying on all of my dresses, I just did not feel like they were matching the vision I had. I was kind of giving up hope with this whole entire appointment, and finally my girl was like, "Let me look at one more dress because I think I know your vision." And she pulled it, and it was couture. It was my last dress, and as soon as I put it on, I knew, and I started crying. And Justin Bieber was playing, and I just knew this dress was my dress. I'm gonna insert pictures of my dress here, but it's my dream dress and it was exactly the vibe I was trying to go for. The designer of my dress was Leah Gloria, and she is an Australian-based designer. And my dress, very heavy, like, and long, and like to carry that through an airport because I couldn't check it either, it gave me really bad anxiety. I had to literally carry it, and it would not fit in like a traditional garment bag. I— it was kind of a headache, but we decided we had to get an extra extra large garment bag to fit this ball gown in. And then from there, we would have to bring it on the plane with us. And yeah, it was just a lot. Thank God Grand Hotel Tremezzo was able to steam my dress out for me. Because it was really, really wrinkly and, um, like I said, heavy. So I had to put like 2 Band-Aids on my hips because of the weight of the dress, because it poops out right here. There was so much extra fabric and the heaviness was just carving into like my bones right there. So yeah, it was worth it though. It was definitely, definitely worth it. Um, but let's talk about my videographer. My videographer, his name was also Mateo. His company is MDM Wedding Videography, and I'm so excited. We haven't received the final footage yet, but I believe we're getting a 2-minute video and then a 10-minute video, so I will be posting that on YouTube as well. So stay tuned for that. But he also has worked with my wedding planners, Silvia and Marta, multiple times, and then he also worked with my photographer. So it was kind of nice to know that they were all kind of friends, and they all knew each other, and was very respectful of each other's time and space, and just gave each moment for each person. Okay, so my venue, like I said, was Villa del Balbianello. To get to the venue, you had to take a, um, boat over there. So we decided to do 2 private boats. The first one would carry Sam, my mom, his mom, his stepdad, and Arabella. And then the second boat would bring me over. And from like our hotel to the venue, I want to say it took like 10 minutes, if that. And then we also decided to do another boat to take us around during, during our wedding day to get those shots of us on the boat with like our hands up and just like really enjoying it.. So that was definitely worth it. I'm so happy my wedding planner talked me into getting another boat to do that because those photos were amazing. But to rent out Villa del Balbianello, we had the venue, I want to say, from 3 to midnight, 12. Yeah, I want to say 12, and we had to get security even though it was super, super small intimate wedding. Um, we had to get security because it is a historical spot, so we had security there. Um, we had a harp and a violinist playing while I walked down the aisle, which was super romantic. I didn't know really what I wanted to do, but I always loved like the sound of a harp and having a bride walk down. The song I walked down to was Moon River. And if you don't know the song, it's actually in Breakfast at Tiffany's, but I wanted it done in the harp and the violinist, so that was really romantic. And then we had Arabella drop little tiny rose petals. We forgot a basket, which I don't remember— I don't know how I forgot that, but we forgot a basket. But luckily she was able to take it in her hand and just throw it, and then she was kind of over it. Let's talk about my florist. My florist, when I tell you she captured my exact vision, crazy how spot on she was. So her name is Maya, and I'm gonna butcher her last name. It starts with a V, Vazoler, Vazoler, V-A-Z-Z-O-L-E-R. And she— I was able to send her— we were able to jump on a call and I was able to send her kind of my Pinterest board. So when we first sat down with my planner, she had, she had me create a wedding board, but my wedding board and also like a separate board for just photos and what I was thinking of. And in my wedding Pinterest board that was like my whole wedding, I really, really love the look of peonies but white. And then a sprinkle of light, light, like almost white flowers. So it could be roses, and then I love baby's breath. I used to use baby's breath all the time. I love, love, love the look of it. So I wanted my table for the dinner to have the flowers cascade down, and then with tall candlesticks hanging up in the middle. And she was able to do that. And she told my mom she was so nervous with how I was going to react because some brides like either love it or hate it, and it was exactly how I wanted it. So I highly recommend her. Let's talk about my stationery. My stationery was kind of like a last-minute idea. I, I kind of knew what I wanted about 3 weeks before my wedding, um, and my vision was basically For the menus, I like the look of lace. My dress was, my veil had lace on it, and I just wanted something unique and different, and not like your typical, your typical name tags and menus. So I'll insert a photo here of what mine looked like, and I'm going to also tag the artist down below on who he is and how he did it. Sylvia, my amazing wedding planner, found him and was able to coordinate that with him, completely, and he did an amazing job. And then my wedding cake— my wedding cake was from the same catering I had, which was a specific caterer that Bobby Nello uses, and my cake was absolutely incredible. Like, everything about it was absolutely incredible. I'm going to also show you guys kind of the slideshow my wedding planner did for us so you can see our vision and what that looks like. Um, but from the, the flowers, the venues, to the types of chairs, to what I wanted on my menus, and the food and the drinks, and everything was taken care of completely seamless, which made me feel better about not being there. Because if you know me, I'm a planner and I like to be involved as much as possible. And for the most important day of my life, I didn't really have the hands-on that I thought I would have if I did like an American wedding. But knowing and trusting my wedding planners, they made me feel amazing throughout the whole entire process, and I would not do anything different. Anyways, guys, I'm going to wrap up this video here, but if you guys have any questions, I'm gonna do another video on my wedding, a couple more. If you guys have any questions, let me know and I'd be more than happy to answer them. And don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe, and I will see you guys in my next video.