Ask the experts

Every issue we’ll be asking a wedding expert to answer questions you’ve sent in about your forthcoming wedding or honeymoon in Italy. If you have a question you would like answered then send it in to editor@italymag.co.uk

Dream Italian Weddings & Honeymoons

My partner and I agree that no one quite lives like the Italians do. In 2005 we made our first visit to Italy, to the city of Bologna to be exact. We fell in love with the city and have returned there a few more times. We just love the people and the relaxed atmosphere of the whole city and despite only knowing a few words in Italian the local people have been more than helpful when needed.

We also love Italian food and so Bologna is exceptional for us and now we have considered getting married there early next year. We are both from Ireland but live and work in the UK. We have found that Ireland has become too expensive to get married and as we want a small wedding with just close family and friends we thought that it would be nice to take everyone to Bologna and experience the things that we have. We more or less want to organise it ourselves but are not too sure where to start.

We want a church ceremony as we are Catholic but unlike traditional Irish affairs (usually hundreds of people in a hotel for a sit-down meal with entertainment after) we just want to have a nice meal in a restaurant after the ceremony and photographs and have two in mind that we have been to in Bologna. We would like a photographer to follow us around and take casual photographs. Do you think that the lack of language will hold us back and what legal documents will we need to organise? I carry an Irish passport but my partner carries an English one as he was born in the UK. He has considered getting an Irish one as his parents were Irish. We run our own business and find it difficult to get time away to do a language course but are trying to learn from listening to cds.

Our main concerns are in sorting the documents and finding a church, we’re not sure if we should visit some in person and just enquire? We will probably visit Bologna later in the year and enquire about booking the hotel for guests, and the restaurant when we are there. Do you think the same can be done by just exploring some churches or will the lack of language hold us back?

If you have any information on churches, photographers, florists or perhaps inexpensive wedding planners in the city of Bologna, and of course any other useful information that we will need to know we would greatly appreciate it as we have been unable to find much information ourselves on the internet. I guess Bologna is not one of the traditional choices for foreigners.

Rebecca Babington (by email)

Reply from:

Marion Hunter, Dream Academy

...we just want to have a nice meal in a restaurant after the ceremony and photographs...

Here it might be easier to give the ‘headache’ to an Italianbased wedding planner who can pull their hair out...

Hi Rebecca

First of all congratulations on your forthcoming marriage and also on your choice of destination. As you say Bologna is not one of the more popular destinations but a lovely city, so well done!

Your desire to learn some Italian will no doubt stand you in good stead but I would still stress that having someone on the ground with fluency will be of endless peace of mind to you especially given that you want a church wedding.

I will deal with mainly the document questions here but would just like to offer the following ‘words of wisdom’. You have decided on an Italian style wedding and so although it will be nice to bring over some of your own touches and traditions, do try to go with some of the Italian traditions too.

The photographer is one that springs to mind. Italian albums are lovely, they come in their special leather carrying case and will certainly look different to the traditional UK style albums. The photographers take great delight in taking you around the main sights in order to get the best for you. They will spend a lot of time doing this, so it’s a good idea to arrange a bar where your guests can enjoy a few drinks while you are doing your photo shots on the back of a Vespa or kissing until your cheek muscles are sore! This saves your guests hanging around and you worrying if they will be OK without you for an hour or so.

Finding a lovely church in Bologna should not be a problem, the Santuario di San Luca springs to mind, which is beautiful and set on the hills overlooking Bologna, which would make for amazing album shots. However, finding an English-speaking priest who is prepared to do the ceremony may well be more difficult. Being a major university city it might be worth contacting them there as they have a large number of foreign students and obviously contacts with multi-lingual priests.

Where having someone on the ground might help is going to be in chasing up the documents and seeing they are all in place. Priests often move from church to church and so have no real base office from which to work from and so very often documents can go astray. Add to this the language problem and it could be time consuming trying to keep tabs on it all. Here it might be easier to give the ‘headache’ to an Italian-based wedding planner who can pull their hair out as they make sure that the priest is up to date and has everything in order!

The documents you will need for the religious part will be dealt with by your own parish priest who will send the paperwork to the Diocesi in Bologna to be passed on to the church you are marrying in. The religious ceremony in Italy can also be valid in a civil way. This is a simple process which involves the reading of articles 143-144-147 of the Italian Civil Code at the end of the religious ceremony.

Apart from the religious documents which will include copies of your baptism, first communion etc which your parish priest will take care of, you will both require a Nulla Osta which is issued by the relevant British Consulate or Irish Embassy in Italy.

In your case having a British and an Irish Passport between you, the process is a bit more complicated and so the idea of your partner obtaining an Irish passport might make things a bit simpler or at least less time consuming. So if you both manage to obtain Irish passports, you would then only be required to contact the nearest Irish Embassy in the UK who will issue the certificate of no impediments stating that you are free to marry which they will then send to the Irish Embassy in Rome for the release of the Nulla Osta.

It is worth bearing in mind that you should then fill in all further paperwork stating that you are both Irish rather than saying that one has a dual passport as it will only complicate matters this end at the Irish Embassy.

Also bear in mind that the Irish Nulla Osta is only valid for 4 months (UK one for 6 month) so don’t do this too far in advance or you may find yourselves having to go through the ‘red tape hoop’ all over again! If you continue to work with two different passports your partner as the UK passport holder would need to contact the FCO office in London who will give you full instructions of what to do and also an idea of the timescale you need to be working to.

This will also involve him having to publish an ad in the UK press stating his intent to marry an Irish subject before they can issue the certificate of no impediment and send it to the relevant body in Italy. Sounds complicated but it’s not really. Just more timeconsuming than anything else, to be quite honest.

You, as an Irish passport holder, need only then contact the nearest Irish Embassy to you in the UK who will release the certificate of no impediment (having published your banns) and send it to the Irish Embassy in Rome to release the Nulla Osta.

You must also ensure that your passports are valid for more than 6 months after date of marriage.

There are other documents that you will need as well such as photocopies of your passport, original long versions of both birth certificates and so on (you can see the full list in this feature online at www.italymag.co.uk/weddings) and having someone who can check that they are in place is very important.

I once had a wrong birth date on a Nulla Osta and this was only noticed when the couple went to do their intent to marry signing at the town hall two days before the wedding. They went into panic mode while I phoned the Irish Embassy in Rome and had a new copy faxed over in minutes with the original replaced the next day as I was local and spoke the language. All things to consider but in the end I am sure you will have a day to remember.

Tanti Auguri e Vivi Gli Sposi!

Dream Academy - www.dreamacademy.it