"Italian Wedding Planning Tips And Ideas"

An Italian wedding is a festival for all the invited guests. Add a few traditional Italian wedding customs to your own Italian themed wedding.

If your planning an Italian wedding you might want to also consider these locations...

* Country House

* Hotel or Banquet Room

* Italian Restaurant

* Vinyard/Wineries

In Italy, Sunday marriages are considered to be the luckiest. Tie a ribbon in front of the wedding chapel to symbolize the bond between the couple being married.

The traditional Italian bride would wear a green colored dress, which symbolized fertility, modern brides wear white. You can incorporate Italian lace in the design of your dress. The Italian bride typically wears a veil to conceal the bride and ward off evil spirits and carries a little satin pouch, which she collects monetary gifts from her guests.

The groom allows his tie to be cut in pieces, which he sells to the guests. Some say this is to help pay for the honeymoon, others that it simply pays for the band. Have bridesmaids hold a single sunflower instead of a bouquet. If you are having long family-style tables at the reception you can have candles and vases full of flowers down the center of the tables. Fill bowls with grapes or lemons and add flowers. For other decorations you can have topiaries incorporating grape vines and grapes or sunflowers.

Fill large glass hurricanes with lemons and limes. Use tall cylinder vases with long stem sunflowers.

Dancing and music are vital to a proper Italian wedding. Find a band that knows the traditional Italian wedding music such as the Father and Daughter Dance, and the Tarantella. To enhance the feel of your Italian theme wedding you could have Italian music playing in the background.

Sweet liquors are served to the women and strong drinks are served to the men, by the best man before the dinner begins. This is to give the guests an opportunity to toast the happy couple as they arrive at the reception.

A traditional Italian reception includes many different courses, some as many as 14 or more. Serve your guests an antipasto course that features stuffed mushrooms, olives, salami, pickled peppers, calamari, prosciutto and Italian cheeses.

For dinner serve Italian foods. Roasted chicken, lamb or pork with a variety of pastas, soups, salads, breads, and roasted vegetables. You could even inclued a variety of gourmet style pizzas to please your pizza loving guests.

Italian wine forms a prime part of an Italian wedding served with the meal.

Serve traditional Italian desserts such as biscotti, cannoli, cheesecake, truffles, iced gelato, or spumoni. Sweet desserts in Italian weddings consist of Italian cookies. Italian fig cookies, chocolate spice balls, pignoli and wedding knot cookies, a symbolic Italian wedding dessert of twisted dough covered in powdered sugar to bring good fortune.

Typically, the drink menu includes espresso, coffee and liqueurs, served with slices of multi layered Italian wedding cake. At the top of the cake are two figures symbolizing the bride and groom.

Provide your guests with odd number candy covered almonds(confetti)tied in mesh bags to toss at the couple for good luck. A little bag could be placed at each table setting. Treat your guests to a unique Italian wedding favor, including personalized or chocolate dipped biscotti.

At the conclusion of many Italian reception the couple shatters a glass and the broken pieces are counted. This represents the anticipated number of years the couple is expected to be happily married.

Instead of throwing rice at the bride and groom, have guests throw sunflower seeds as you leave the ceremony.

At he end of the reception the is car decorated with ribbons and flowers tied to the bumper.

Another tradition is the groom must carry the bride over the threshold so waiting evil spirits will miss their last chance to capture her.