Davide & Davide's Italian Farmhouse Gay Wedding

Who: Davide and Davide

Where: Ca' Mariuccia, Italy

Photographer: Ordine della Giarrettiera(FB) (IG)

Flowers: Manifesto Flowers (IG)

Long-time partners Davide and Davide spent 10 years together as a gay couple in Italy before finally agreeing to put their happiness first and get married after kind and encouraging words from one of their mothers.

In Italy, the same-sex civil union law was approved in 2016. So after many years of us demonstrating for LGBT rights, we decided to go through with marrying each other.

We wanted our family to be recognised not only by our relatives and friends but even by the law and getting (almost) the same rights as straight couples".

- Davide

We were having dinner at our place when Davide began repeating the same words told by his mother after some homophobic declarations were made by an Italian politician: Tenetevi da conto" (Take care of yourself) she told him. That triggered both of us in that very moment to take her advice seriously and finally choose the day of our marriage.

Our gay wedding was in a farmhouse named Ca' Mariuccia, owned by a couple of close friends of ours", which hosted their 150 guests.

When it came to each other's gay wedding readings, the couple wrote their own, listing the reasons why they had chosen the other to be their lifelong marriage partner.

We also asked our best men, our "groommaid" and one relative of each to make a speech. We loved having so many warm voices around us letting us feel their love.

It is a place we have both seen the rise and grow throughout the years and has great ethical values both in their agriculture and in their business. They respect the earth and its inhabitants; a perfect place to mirror our values too we thought.

Being in the countryside, surrounded by hazelnuts trees, vineyards and farm animals led us to choose natural colours for our gay wedding, enriched by beautiful flowers, as well as a special touch added by Manifesto Flowers - our wedding florist.

Since it was a ten-year long engagement, we included our initials with the Roman numeral X (10) in the middle of our wedding invites as the main theme.

For the wedding foodand drinks menu, ingredients were sourced directly from the farmhouse and zero-mile suppliers, cooked perfectly" by the couple's friends' entourage.

We had some terrific wine which came from the vineyard and for our wedding cake we had a three-layer cheesecake done by the main chef using local hazelnuts and chocolate: two pillars of Piedmont patisserie!

We spent a lot of time creating several playlistsfor each moment of the day, even including songs suggested by guests through their RSVP and asking friends to sing some of our favourites live.

Our first dance song was Due Respiriby Chiara, an X-Factor winning singer. That song was part of a special moment in our story when we started to live together".

We loved the idea of creating a unique dayfor our guests, so we provided several entertainment activities after the ceremony.

And we even had a nap corner equipped for guests to have a rest in order to be ready for the drag queen show in the evening that entertained the last part of the day.

Just after the wedding lunch, our friends put on a show with some live performances (and even a quiz on us!) on a stage facing the courtyard of the farmhouse.

We also asked a light painting crew to create a photo boothwith some art installations inside to give a memory to each guest.

Everything on our wedding day was just so memorable! Our wedding celebrations did not even last just one day, but three, since we invited the guests to come along with us the day before the gay wedding for a social dinner and stay the day after for a casual brunch with a white dressing code.

One major piece of adviceDavide would give other same-sex couples who are planning their own gay weddingis:

Ask professionalsto help you in defining every single step of the journey, from photography to video, from flowers to settings, from invites to food!

Take time to think about the details - the great part of a wedding is not just the day itself, but also the preparation of it.