Tuscany is the favorite location for foreigners who increasingly choose Italy for the fateful “yes”. In fact, it is in our region that the greatest number of weddings were celebrated in 2023 compared to other regions: 2,600 weddings of foreign couples, 12.5% more than in 2022, for an average expense of 65 thousand euros (the 15.3% more than in 2022) and a turnover that grew by 29.5% and comes close to reaching 170 million euros per year. The photograph was taken by the Tourist Study Center for Tuscany Promotion.
Weddings in the vineyard, on the beach at sunset or in historic villas. Foreign couples are won over by the charm of the Tuscan landscape. And they spare no expense. Those who choose Tuscany to get married are mainly couples arriving from the United States and the United Kingdom (60%), while as regards the type of celebration, the symbolic rite is still the preferred one (66.3%), with the civil and religious one which stand at 22.4% and 11.3% respectively. Furthermore, 9.3% of civil and symbolic rites concern civil unions celebrated between people of the same sex.
Almost one couple in two, 48.2% of the total, then relied on a wedding planner to fulfill their dream of love (5% more than in 2022). That of the wedding tourism (organizing a trip to a country other than your home country to celebrate your wedding) is a constantly growing sector. «The work carried out in recent years with Toscana promozione and Destination Florence Convention & Visitors Bureau with the “Tuscany for weddings” project, and which also extends to conference tourism, is a strong point on which to continue to focus – comments the regional councilor for Tourism, Leonardo Marras – The “most beautiful day” is an emotion to be experienced, but at the same time an event to be taken care of in every detail by involving many professionals.”
Pietro Autorino of the Blanc Weddings team, the wedding division of Genius Eventi, an agency for the organization and production of luxury events based in Florence and operating throughout Italy, explains that habits have changed. There is a before and after the pandemic and, beyond the trends that come and go again, there are completely different parameters for the weddings of foreign couples compared to Italian ones. «Generally speaking, those arriving from abroad are immediately struck by the beauty of our landscape. Tuscany is a very popular destination also for its food and wine aspect – specifies Autorino – At the moment there is a very popular trend, which has been in vogue for several years: it is theelopement, essentially an intimate wedding with a minimum of 10-14 and a maximum of 30 guests. In this case the spouses choose to come to Italy only with the witnesses and the celebrant with the aim of preserving the intimacy of the wedding rather than celebrating it in grand style”.
But don’t be fooled: it’s anything but a simple wedding. Indeed, it is a mini-vacation that lasts at least three days. «It starts with a themed welcome event, for example a pizza or sushi party: in short, more informal dinners in which the future spouses welcome their guests. An opportunity to create more fun and lighter situations than the moment of the ceremony with food trucks by the pool such as the bee with the pizza oven or the ice cream or cannoli cart”, underlines Autorino. It’s true, the average length of stay for guests dropped slightly (3.2 nights compared to 3.3 in 2022), but in general overnight stays in accommodation facilities rose to 496 thousand (+14.5%).
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