Italian Destination Weddings Are Having a Moment — Again

Ms. Emanuela Giangreco, a wedding planner, tells clients her home city of Venice is "delicate," a description that fits uneasily into accounts of how the wedding of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sanchez is expected to unfold there this weekend.

- Tammy LaGroce

NEW YORK CITY —

In March, Ms. Sanchez's brother Paul Sanchez told tabloid TMZ that the wedding, with about 200 guests expected to attend, would rival the pageantry of Princess Diana's nuptials at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. (The London firm Lanza and Baucina, known for its discretion, is planning the event.) Speculation about its cost has soared to the multiple millions, according to tabloid reports. People magazine has declared that the couple is planning "the wedding of the century." And Mr. Bezos, whose arrival has spurred protests, is expected to dock his US$500 million (S$637 million) superyacht Koru in the Venice lagoon.

The spectacle has prompted Ms. Giangreco, a wedding planner who once planned weddings exclusively in Venice, including her own, to reflect on how her business has expanded across Italy in the past decade.

When she launched Ema Giangreco Weddings in 2015, she organized about eight American weddings in Venice each year. Now, she works with US couples throughout Italy, where requests for ceremonies in Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast have tripled.

Convention Bureau Italia, a private national authority that promotes tourism, documented a double-digit surge in American weddings in 2024, and recently also found that 30 percent of all weddings held in the country are now American.

The trend is supported by data from Virginia-based travel agency Journeys, whose president Kim Goldstein said Italy consistently ranks among the top five countries for US weddings abroad. "Since the pandemic, we've seen a 10 percent increase in American couples choosing Italy as their destination wedding location," she said.