Anna and Marianna’s colorful wedding was like a “journey into their soul”, a daydream full of details and evocative settings, surrounded by the immense and infinite love of their families and friends, set in an enchanted place overlooking on the sea, in a riot of colors in honor of their love Celebrated, with pride, in the month of Gay pride, among elegant and lively nuances of colors and modern design details. We have combined the tones of red, light blue, green, yellow, indigo, blue, purple in various shades including orange. Designer furnishings and a breathtaking location characterized Anna and Marianna’s wedding, signed by the Wedding Planner Roberta d’Esposito (founder of the Roberta d’Esposito Event Planner agency of the same name), an exploit of colours, elegance, design and originality.
For Anna and Marianna the dream location on the Gulf of Naples, with a sea view facing Vesuvius, was the romantic setting of the civil and symbolic ceremony, celebrated on a platform surrounded by lush floral vegetation and the waves of the sea, which crashed on the surrounding cliff, giving off an unmistakable scent of saltiness. A magical place that has been in the dreams and minds of young brides for years.
Anna and Marianna contacted me almost a year ago.
Two splendid young women with very clear ideas and with infinite love in their hearts.
The challenge was not easy: Bringing back to their wedding all the colors and elements of the LGBT flag and taking care of the ceremony and reception respecting the chosen color palette, the travel theme and the elements that the girls had chosen.
The colors of the flag are many and we easily risked confusion if we had not found a chromatic balance and a common thread between the theme, the elements and the colours. We immediately set to work to come up with a Mood board worthy of an LGBT wedding. We chose the location, the color palette, the theme, the materials and we started working on the wedding stationery, the graphic coordination of the event, we tried and found the right balance and compromise between the colors and the elements and we developed various sketches and projects up to the final ones.
The ceremony required a separate organization both for the coordination of two Celebrants, Symbolic and Civil, and for the multitude of things it included: “colourful” Wedding Procession with connection to the stone rite (The symbolic rite chosen by Anna and Marianna ) four witnesses, pageboys and ladies to sprinkle the carpet with colored petals, intervention of their two beloved dogs to bring the wedding rings.
At this point you are surely wondering: “How did you construct Anna and Marianna’s ceremony?”
For all those curious about “behind the scenes” I take you with me into the world of symbolic weddings and civil unions…Anna and Marianna were civilly united in common on the morning of 10/06/2024 and we decided to replicate and embellish the ceremony in a wonderful place, just as they have always dreamed of, near the sea, set by the rocks and in the frame of their colours.
Before proceeding to the graphic design phase and what their event would be, we thought about choosing the symbolic ritual and then subsequently building our ceremony.
Just as I do with all the spouses, I gave a book to the girls, a collection of all the symbolic rites with their origins and their history, containing various explanations both on the etymology of the rite and on why to choose it, in order to make them participate and aware of the choice they had made (The rite is a very personal choice therefore I have never believed that it should be chosen by the celebrant or proposed between only two choices but I believe that the spouses should choose among the infinite possibilities themselves and possibly go together then to personalize everything thanks also to the precious contribution of the celebrant).
The girls therefore chose the oath stone ritual with the request to expand and “personalize” the ritual in order to involve both their witnesses and the guests present. We accepted the request and did more: We created, again at the request of Anna and Marianna, the Wedding procession with their heart colors and each person involved in the Wedding procession would bring something important for the construction of the rite.
We have therefore entrusted Anna and Marianna’s precious stone, a beautiful Amethyst, to the purple knight while we have entrusted the stones for the witnesses, the oath pens and the parchment to the Bridesmaids and knights of other colors in order to create a connection between the procession Nunzial, the witnesses and the girls.
Subsequently we built the ritual on the basis of a very specific schedule and embellished it with poems, readings and obviously Anna and Marianna’s promises. The final phase contains the passing of the baton to the municipality’s celebrant as regards the readings of the articles. Furthermore, the girls chose their favorite songs and we placed them in the various crucial moments of the ceremony and expertly communicated them to the musician. Therefore, together with the musician and according to the girls’ tastes, we chose the most suitable musical instruments for the ceremony and left the choice of instrument to use for each song to the musician’s discretion.
Around the platform, like an embrace within an embrace, the seats for the guests were arranged circularly.
Particular attention was given to the reading of the girls’ favorite moving song, entrusted to the multifaceted and well-known doctor and artist Carlo Alfaro.
For the setup in the place of the symbolic ceremony we chose a nave of colored flowers 15 meters long and more than one meter high. At the end of the nave we find, to complete everything, a wonderful portal of intertwined branches, drapes in the colors chosen by Anna and Marianna, colored floral arrangements and ribbons, tied to the chairs, in LGBT colours, divided alternately between cold tones and warm tones.
The choice of wedding bags was truly unique and original: both for their contents and because, being made of fabric, they could be preserved and reused by the guests.
Anna and Marianna therefore wanted a fabric bag that was a bit reminiscent of their colors and some countries around the world. We therefore chose colored bags made of silk and Indian manufacturing and we thought of graphically designing a fan for them that would display their names and the date of the wedding on the front and their heartfelt poem on the back.
We combined the paper fan with colored tassels to match the various colors of the bag. The colored dragees are contained in the paper bag with their logo.
Anna and Marianna’s wedding bag was therefore reminiscent of Asian countries and contained the ceremony booklet, a sweet colored gift and a wand of colored ribbons and bells to shake to replace the classic moment of throwing rice or petals.
At the end of the ritual, a riot of colors was foreseen thanks to the use by the Bridesmaids and knights of special colored smoke bombs in combination with the colors of their clothes which were reminiscent of the LGBT flag.
The reception at dusk was beautiful, personalized and chic: We chose the wonderful setting of the gardens, with the majestic gushing fountains of the villa and small waterfalls with artificial lakes set in living stones, as regards the aperitif buffet and for dinner the wonderful area swimming pools with panoramic sea views. In the table setting, round tables set up in a harmonious and balanced way with a solution, and designer packaging in line with the entire graphic design of the wedding, the menu, with the design of an airplane, has also become a wonderful place holder and the thank you cadou a small gift for the guests.
The table sign, strictly in plexiglass, recalls one of the countries in the world most loved by Anna and Marianna.
We decided to match the colors to the various continents and countries of the world chosen by the brides so that each table recalled, in warm and cold or intermediate tones, the continents of the chosen countries.
The same logic was used for the tableau de Mariage postcards.
The mise en place combined romantic elements with LGBT colours, such as the menu/place card which recalls the theme chosen by the girls, the journey also understood as a journey of the soul, the wonderful and exclusive table centrepieces, small one-of-a-kind masterpieces , specially made for the wedding. In fact, the Floral project that we developed included a “reference” to the elements used for the civil and symbolic ceremony. We therefore decided to use wood in the form of peeled trunks and branches woven into various shapes.
The trunks were decorticated and worked to accommodate the flowers of Anna and Marianna’s colors inside them. Floral elements arise from the inside of a trunk made essential to recreate a single common thread with the elements of the ceremony.
The graphic and packaging project included a single placeholder menu solution that recalled the theme that the girls had chosen (The Journey). The transparent glass charger and the crossed chairs completed the wonderful mise en place.
The ensemble was embellished by the floral arrangements placed on large elongated compositions arranged by the pool and the wonderful luminous and transparent spheres placed inside the pools.
The cutting of the wedding cake was also enchanting: a spectacular cake that recalled their colours, tall and beautiful compositions of colored flowers embellished the cake table.
White and romantic lanterns contributed to giving a fairy-tale and surreal atmosphere. The cold fires behind the girls made the moment magical.
“Anna and Marianna’s story involved me completely”, guiding and supporting them on this journey for an entire year thrilled and moved me. For me Anna and Marianna were like a colorful rainbow that suddenly arrived in my life! Someone asks me to describe an LGBT love or wedding but I can’t describe it because my eyes simply see it the same as all the others…indeed more beautiful, much more beautiful and colorful “For these brides I created an installation that spoke of them and their love Anna and Marianna with their colorful and love-filled world leave a special place in my heart.
