Planning our Wedding in Cinque Terre Italy

manarola, cinque terre wedding

Planning a Cinque Terre Wedding. Here, we explain how we chose a venue and wedding planner for the most important day of our lives.

This time next year, me & Paul will be preparing for the most important day of our lives. Our Cinque Terre wedding. Some of you may have visited this colourful area in the Italian Rivera, others may have admired photos on the internet, while for some of you this may be your first time hearing of it. If you’ve not heard of it I recommend googling it pronto, it’s trully a unique part of the world. Which is why we’re getting married there.

It brings me great excitement to let you all in on the details for planning a Cinque Terre Wedding.

Why get married in the Cinque Terre

A photo of the town of Manarola – one of the five villages in the Cinque Terre has been my laptop screensaver for, oh, about 10 years. Hilariously, I never knew where it was ’til me and Paul were planning our trip through Italy back in 2014. He showed me the exact same photo and said “we should go here”. On  the trip, we stopped here for 4 nights and loved it. I even said when we were there that this was my dream place to get married.

riomaggiore, cinque terre, italy, cinque terre wedding

The story of our proposal

Paul proposed on “our beach” in Kerikeri, New Zealand this February. We call it our beach because it doesn’t have a name, it’s just a beach at the end of a walk through a rainforest. We spent a lot of time this past Summer sunbathing and swimming and relishing the fact that we had the beach all to ourselves.  When he got down on one knee one evening over a Picnic, I was surprised (I even offered him the wrong hand).

When the excitement and novelty of having a ring on that finger died down,  we started talking about where our Wedding would be. There was one thing we were both certain about and that was that we would get married abroad.  We’ve spent our whole relationship travelling the world together and honestly,  it just wouldn’t be us to get married at home (i.e. Ireland/England). We wanted to share our love of travelling with our family and friends. What better way to do that than with a Wedding in one of our favorite places in the world.

vernazza, cinque terre, italian riviera

Creating our wedding checklist

Even though, a Cinque Terre Wedding was top of my list, I was open to other suggestions.  So, me and Paul sat down and came up with a list of what’s most important to us for our Wedding:

  • It has to be in Europe  – easily and cheaply accessibly for our wedding guests who are from Ireland/England. Also,  preferably a budget airline will fly there e.g Ryanair or Easyjet
  • It has to be somewhere lesser-known and nobody I know can have gotten married there
  • The venue needs to be by the ocean
  • It should be relatively inexpensive
vernazza, cinque terre

Narrowing it down to 3 potential destinations

Making that list helped us narrow it down to three places  – Cinque Terre, Lake Como or one of the Greek Islands. Lake Como got crossed off the list pretty quickly when we realised how expensive it was. Don’t get me wrong, there are cheaper ways to get married in Lake Como. But for what we wanted – a wedding on the water and completely private, it just wasn’t feasible. Greece was next to go because it’s not so easy to get to from Cork (where all my family would be flying from).

Planning a Cinque Terre Wedding it is!

manarola, cinque terre, cinque terre wedding

Picking a great wedding planner

We found a great Wedding Planner and a potential Cinque Terre Wedding venue after a few days of research. I recommend joining the Facebook group Weddings Abroad Guide Community  We also simply did a Google search of ‘Wedding Planners in Cinque Terre’, made a list of the best, then, emailed off some questions. After a few days, we were able to narrow it down to who seemed the most helpful and who offered the most practical venues for us.

We chose Cinque Terre Wedding as our planners

We eventually decided on Melina from Cinque Terre Wedding and are so happy with our decision. Our Wedding Planner Melina is an Australian-Italian so there is no language barrier. She lives in the Cinque Terre and is also fluent in Italian to deal with all the suppliers. The whole process so far has been seamless, and because we are living in New Zealand at present we are so happy that we opted to get a Wedding Planner.

cinque terre wedding, monterosso, italy

The importance of visiting the venue before booking it

When we were visiting home this past June me, Paul and my Mom went to the Cinque Terre to meet with Melina and to see if all these years later the Cinque Terre was as magic as we believe. We visited the venue and honestly it was perfect in every way. Exactly how I imagined it to be.

riomaggiore, cinque terre, italian riviera, italy, cinque terre wedding

Hooray, we picked our venue for our Cinque Terre wedding!

Our wedding venue in Cinque Terre

For our Cinque Terre Wedding, we’re getting married in a vineyard at the top of Monterosso. It will be completely private with a view down to the village and the ocean. It is very us, everything will be held outdoors, even the dinner (it will be in August so the weather should definitely hold up), it’s surrounded by rosemary and vine leaves and the smell is divine.

We can’t wait to share this special place with our nearest and dearest. Planning a Cinque Terre wedding has been one of the most exciting experiences of our lives and we cannot wait for the BIG DAY!

Why not read next – Where to stay in Monterosso – the largest town in the Cinque Terre

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Planning a Cinque Terre Wedding. Here, we explain how we chose a venue and wedding planner for the most important day of our lives.

18 thoughts on “Planning our Wedding in Cinque Terre Italy

  1. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding. What a gorgeous place to get married. For you and your guests. It’s amazing how easily you found a wedding planner in the FB group. It’s gonna be amazing!

  2. That sounds so magical! I am so happy for you guys! I also recently got engaged and am in the process of figuring out what kind of wedding we want. After reading this, I am ready to book a destination wedding, most likely to Cinque Terre!

  3. Have a wonderful wedding! I’m sure it will be gorgeous! I wouldn’t even know where to start when planning a destination wedding. I like the idea of making a list for things you absolutely want and narrow it down. This can apply to any wedding!

  4. Oh goodness, this is both thrilling and daunting at the same time haha!!! If I were closer to a stage where I was thinking of marriage, I’m sure this would be so helpful. Since I’m not, it’s just lovely to hear about your journey! New Zealand is amazing, and the fact that you are choosing to get married elsewhere must say something about the beauty of Cinque Terre. I’ll have to pay it a visit one day 😉

  5. Congratulations on the wedding! Quite a lot of preparation have gone into it. We had a destination wedding in the beautiful Banff National Park – Canadian Rockies

  6. wow – what an unforgettable place to get married! Not only in Cinque Terre but in a vineyard, sounds like a dream come true, I’m sure you will have the most incredible day, the photos will be stunning!

  7. Firstly Congratulations on your upcoming wedding. You’ve chosen the most incredibly beautiful destination. It must be so much easier having a planner and one who speaks both Italian and English. I am from England but immigrated to Aus, then met and married an Australian here in Western Australia…. long, expensive flights for the family! Hence why we only invited immediate family. Its great that your family and friends will be able to travel on budget airlines.

  8. This is the stuff that I love reading! I got married abroad two months ago – well, I got married in my host country as an expat, so for all of my guests it was abroad, to me it is now home. I loved sharing with my dear ones a special place on a special day!!

  9. Congratulations you guys! The Cinque Terre sounds like a perfect spot for a wedding! Hopefully avoiding the worst of the crowds at this time of year is part of the planning as well…!

  10. It is so wonderful to see you living your dreams. Visiting Cinque Terre is by in itself a dream that can be realized by a chosen few in this world. Getting married there is like a dream run. So happy that you are planning your wedding there. I am sure it will be picture perfect befitting the venue. Wishing you all the best and congratulations in advance. Stay blessed and happy forever.

  11. It’s been years since I’ve attended a family wedding and reading about your preparations and planning for your summer wedding in Cinque Terre next year was lovely. I can imagine how amazing your wedding photos are going to be in the vineyards and with the vistas below. All the best until then.

  12. Good luck with the wedding. Cinque Terre would be a beautiful destination. Our wedding list was very similar. Our final three were Peurto Rico, Mexico, and the Bahamas for similar reasons, but from the US. In the end, we went for the Bahamas and it was amazing. I love how Cinque Terre has a personal connection to your relationship as well.

  13. OMG! I loved Cinque Terre. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get married (again) but if ever, then Cinque Terre is the place to have a destination wedding! I’m sure you’ll need at least 3 days of just shooting wedding photos. It’s so photogenetic! Love it. Happy engagement and have a lovely wedding in Cinque Terre!

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