Ilaria and Edoardo are two veterinarians who fell for each other across five years of vet school and built a wedding that reads like a page lifted out of an antique herbarium. The whole day lives inside a single idea, a garden folly they called Folie au Jardin, dreamed up and crowned with the word Aeternum. Photographer Irene Gittarelli of February 30th Stories shot it the way she shoots everything, with a painter’s read on light and a documentary eye.
Location: Veneto, Italy
Style: Authentic, Fairytale-like, Poetic
Time of planning: 8 months
Number of guests: 81
Setting: Functioning Mill
Season: Fall
They met at university, both training to become vets, and for most of those years they were simply close friends. The shift came near the end of the course, when the friendship turned into something neither of them had gone looking for. Four years later Edoardo proposed in the least theatrical way imaginable, which is exactly why it landed. He wrote the question on the back of a painting, handed it to Ilaria on an ordinary afternoon in their living room, and let the object carry the moment. His hand was shaking so hard that the writing nearly slipped into a mistake, and that shaky near miss is now the part Ilaria loves most. She keeps the painting somewhere she walks past often, and every time she notices the wobble in his handwriting she smiles at it.
Bride's Morning & Fashion
The dress came from Anna Spose in Padova, and Ilaria has called it love at first sight, the kind of decision made in about four seconds. The detail that sealed it was the embroidered sleeves, cut to fan out like a peacock’s tail, the sort of reference that could tip into costume and instead stays on the right side of romantic.
Her hair, by Hair Project, was left loose and slightly undone rather than lacquered into place, and Giorgia Bedin kept the makeup warm and low, closer to skin than to full glam. Somewhere in the mix her red hair is doing the heavy lifting, landing her squarely in the lineage of the women Rossetti kept painting.
The jewelry carried the family thread that runs through the whole day. Her grandmother’s earrings, and a necklace her mother in law gave her for graduation, so two generations were on her before she reached the altar. On her feet were Marc Ellis shoes she treats as vintage, bought a while back from Pittarosso and pressed back into service for the occasion. She wore Chanel Chance, a fairly loud, fruity choice against all that sepia and moss, and it works precisely .
Groom’s Fashion
Edoardo settled his tailor before almost anything else about the day was decided. He went to Tambara, the Padua menswear house that has been dressing men since 1897, and never seriously looked elsewhere, which tells you how he operates once his mind is made up. The suit itself is dark and disciplined, cut close, worn with Bruno Magli shoes and finished with Terre d’Hermès. In a palette running this hot, all burgundy, moss and antique gold, that kind of restraint reads as the sharper move.
Ceremony
The ceremony happened in a pocket of Locanda Rosa Rosae that looks like it fell out of another century, a working mill dating to 1564, set among vineyard rows with a river running alongside. At the centre stood the piece the entire wedding was built around, a garden folly the couple named Folie au Jardin.
A folly is a real architectural genre, those decorative, deliberately useless structures that French and English nobles put up in their gardens between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries purely to astonish visitors, and often to host encounters they would rather not explain. The French word literally means madness, which is a fairly bold thing to build a wedding altar on and completely the point.
Crowning it was an illustrated harlequin carrying the word Aeternum, and the bee stitched through the design is not decoration for its own sake. Ilaria and Edoardo kept bees for years, and they wanted the most industrious creature they know standing guard over a promise meant to last.
The Amaranta Atelier Floreale florals kept everything looking freshly gathered rather than arranged, English roses and dahlias and burgundy carnations spilling out with a bit of deliberate mess. The couple skipped the rice toss entirely and walked out through a storm of soap bubbles instead, which is the single most accurate summary of their whole approach: traditional bones, zero solemnity.
Moments Together
The aperitif moved out into the garden, scored by Myricae Ensemble leaning into jazz and swing with a saxophone doing most of the talking. Guests kept reaching for the same phrase afterwards, a journey through time, the kind of thing people say when the details actually add up. Down by the river the couple set up an audio guestbook dressed like the doorway of somebody’s grandmother’s house, where guests could record a message instead of signing a page.
And in the middle of all of it Ilaria and Edoardo did the one thing every couple means to do, stealing a few minutes alone to just stand there and take it in. Irene Gittarelli of February 30th Stories is the one who kept all of this, and her frames are why the quiet minutes read as loud as the party.
Reception
Dinner moved inside the mill, into rooms with exposed brick, old wooden beams and candlelight doing all the lighting. The tables at Locanda Rosa Rosae were built like Dutch still life paintings you are allowed to eat from, figs and grape clusters and prickly pears and apples piled on pewter trays among burgundy roses, dahlias and eucalyptus.
The seating chart was a broad panel of mustard toile de jouy printed with bees, striped pink place cards clipped alongside, and the whole tablescape came together with rentals from Nolo Party and vintage pieces from Irreve Rent, lit through the evening by Real Sound Services.
The welcome toast was pure Veneto, prosecco poured the way the region intends it. For their first dance the couple picked Satie, Gymnopédie No. 1, a strange and slightly melancholy thing to dance to at a wedding that tells you everything about the two of them, with Myricae Ensemble carrying the music from there.
The cake landed the theme one last time, an artisanal creation dressed in fresh flowers and berries, and the favours were tiny bee charms, so everyone left holding a small piece of the couple’s actual life. The most talked about moment was the buffet, a live cooking show going by the fireplace in the garden, which is a very confident thing to put in front of eighty one guests and let them watch.
Advice from the couple:
• We strongly recommend relying on capable professionals with whom you can build a good relationship and mutual understanding. Having someone you trust during the stressful months leading up to the wedding is invaluable — it not only ensures the success of the event but also allows you to approach it with greater serenity.
• On the day itself, make sure to carve out a moment just for the two of you, after the ceremony or during the day, to pause, breathe, and share those silent, knowing smiles that need no words. A moment just for you to truly take it all in.
PHOTOGRAPHY February 30th Stories, Atipica Foto, Beatrice Photographer | PLANNER & DESIGN Crinolina Weddings | VENUE Locanda Rosa Rosae | FLORAL DESIGN Amaranta Atelier Floreale | MAKEUP Giorgia Bedin | HAIR Hair Project | BRIDE’S DRESS Anna Spose | BRIDE’S SHOES Marc Ellis | GROOM’S SHOES Bruno Magli | MISE EN PLACE Nolo Party | VINTAGE RENTALS Irreve Rent | LIGHTING Real Sound Services | LIVE MUSIC Myricae Ensemble
