Sitara and Ankit gave themselves three days on Lake Garda, and the person who pulled all of it together visually was Francesco Mencucci, the floral and event designer behind every green and white moment across the celebration. His brief here was tricky in the best way, which was to build a calm, natural framework that could hold up under three days of color, music, and roughly three hundred guests. He works as the resident floral designer at the couple’s lakeside reception venue, so he already knew how olive foliage and white blooms read against that water, and it shows in how consistent the visual language stayed from the first ritual to the last dance.
Location: Lake Garda, Italy
Style: Natural, Monochrome, Multicultural
Time of planning: 1,5 year
Number of guests: 300
Setting: Lakeside Estate
Season: Summer
Sitara and Ankit built this whole thing around family, culture, travel, and the simple goal of getting everyone they love into one place at the same time. The plan was a destination wedding that honored their Indian heritage while leaning fully into Italy, and Lake Garda ended up being the setting that made both halves feel at home. To pull it off they reserved the entire Astoria Resort for their guests and turned the property into a private world for the celebration, with roughly three hundred people flying in from different countries and about eighteen months of planning behind it.
Concept
The concept ran on contrast, and that is the reason the whole thing holds together. For three days the celebration brought the volume, with color, music, fragrance, and constant movement, the kind of energy a big multicultural wedding generates when everyone is genuinely happy to be there.
Against all of that, Francesco Mencucci pulled the flowers in the opposite direction, keeping the palette to white and green so that texture, movement, and form did the talking instead of bright color. The installations changed character as the days moved, reading garden and wild in one moment, stripped back and minimal in another, almost architectural by the evening. That range is what kept the design from ever feeling repetitive, even across a program this long.
Traditional Ceremonies
Before the white and green ceremony, the couple ran through the days beforehand in full color, and this is where the multicultural side really showed up. The Haldi set the tone, with the turmeric ritual that blesses the couple and gives that golden glow, staged on the lawn with low cushions, bolsters, and festoon lights strung overhead for a loose, sit on the grass kind of gathering.
Setting a turmeric ceremony against Lake Garda’s lemon trees is the sort of detail that rewards a second look, since the northern lake has grown citrus in its old limonaie for centuries, and that Mediterranean warmth met the marigold and saffron tones of the ritual head on.
The welcome moment leaned into the host country with a hand lettered That’s Amore sign, a wink to the Dean Martin standard that basically scores every romantic idea people have about Italy. Brass thali and puja details on printed cloth kept the rituals grounded in tradition, while a family procession carrying gifts moved the celebration through the property.
Bride's Morning & Fashion
Across the other days Sitara treated the wardrobe like a range, moving through different colors, silhouettes, and more contemporary takes on Indian dressing, from a deep blue sequinned evening look to lighter printed pieces for the daytime gatherings. For the ceremony, she wore an ivory bridal ensemble by Sabyasachi, worked with intricate embroidery and soft pink accents that quietly picked up the pink notes running through the floral design.
That ivory on ivory approach is very on brand for Sabyasachi, whose language is built around exactly this idea, the deceptive simplicity of pale embroidery where the craft carries the whole look rather than loud color. Her jewellery did the heavy lifting for contrast, with statement necklaces, earrings, and traditional bridal adornments layered so the metalwork and stones read against all that ivory. Hair and makeup by Tasneem Kanji stayed refined and let the embroidery and the jewellery stay the main event.
Groom’s Fashion
Ankit worked the same monochrome logic from the other side. For the ceremony he wore an ivory sherwani with rich embroidery, finished with the fresh floral garlands made specifically for the ritual.
The groom’s party carried a coordinated story too, with the men in ivory and the women in powder blue and aqua, a soft color block designed to keep the couple as the focal point. The detail worth clocking is the footwear, since pairing a traditional sherwani with clean white sneakers is one of the more confident moves in modern groom dressing, and it kept the whole look feeling current instead of costume.
First Look
The couple portraits are where the destination really pays off, and The London Rush shot them for everything the setting is worth. Out on the jetties and along the shoreline, the ivory looks read cool and clean against the deep blue of the lake, with the Dolomites stacking up behind for scale.
Ceremony
The entrance earned its own moment. Sitara arrived in a blue Piaggio Ape, the little three wheeler that carries a certain Italian screen romance with it, which turned a classic celebratory arrival into something that belonged to Lake Garda specifically. Elsewhere the couple crossed the water by boat, so the geography of the place kept writing itself into the choreography.
The ceremony happened outdoors in the gardens of the Astoria Resort, with Riva del Garda and the mountains sitting right there in the background. Sitara and Ankit exchanged vows under a mandap that Francesco Mencucci built entirely from white flowers and lush greenery, framed by olive trees and the lake, so the structure felt like it grew out of the setting rather than landing on top of it. Instead of leaning on bold color, the design worked through texture, movement, and sheer natural abundance, giving the couple an intimate space that still stayed open to the landscape around it.
The most compelling part was watching very traditional Indian rituals unfold in a setting that reads unmistakably Italian, olive branches doing the job that ceremony greenery always does, just with a Lake Garda accent. Family and friends stayed hands on throughout, which kept the whole thing warm, loud in the right way, and genuinely participatory.
Reception
After the ceremony everyone moved to Spiaggia degli Olivi for a lakeside reception that sat right on the water. Francesco Mencucci carried the white and green language straight through, leaning on transparency, natural texture, and candlelight rather than piling on decoration, so the long tables ran with clear glassware and tall tapers that caught the light as the evening dropped.
Spiaggia degli Olivi hands you the marina and the mast lights as a built in backdrop, and the design used exactly that, keeping the tablescape low and open so the water and the boats stayed in view. Dinner ran into speeches, dancing, and the kind of late night energy that three hundred people bring when they have been celebrating for days.
"The tension between the pure energy of the guests and the restraint of the white compositions is what carried the project."
Live percussion and a DJ kept the floor moving, the cake cutting landed by the harbor, and a set of cold sparkler fountains turned the couple’s final moment into the send off the whole weekend had been building toward.
Advice from the couple:
• Trust the professionals you choose and allow them the freedom to guide you. Planning a destination wedding involves countless decisions, but some of the most successful moments came from collaboration, flexibility, and confidence in the creative process.
• Focus on the experience you want your guests to have rather than on individual details. The memories people carry home are rarely a specific flower or decoration, but the emotions, connections, and moments shared together.
• Most importantly, be present. After months of planning, the wedding day arrives quickly. Take time to enjoy every conversation, every ritual, and every unexpected moment.
FLORAL & EVENT DESIGN Francesco Mencucci | PHOTOGRAPHY The London Rush | VENUE Astoria Resort and Spiaggia degli Olivi | CREATIVE DESIGN Angelo Garini | HAIR & MAKEUP Tasneem Kanji | BRIDAL DRESS Sabyasachi | CATERING SNK Foods | PLANNING & COORDINATION Pristine Events | MUSIC Paragon Music | LIVE PERCUSSION Vic De Leo | DJ Choice Eventi
