My husband and I met in 2010 and were engaged in 2013.  Not to get too corny, but since being with him I can say that I now understand the term “you complete me”.  I love our life together and would not want to spend my years with anyone else!  That being said, neither of us wanted a large wedding when we got married.  We wanted something more personal, so we decided that an elopement was more our style.  I love Europe and Travis had never been, so we decided to take a few weeks and travel around to different cities before having a private ceremony and photo shoot in Rome, the last city that we would be visiting. 

Elopement Planning – Easy Enough, Right?

At the time I was thinking that an elopement would be fairly easy to arrange, but I quickly realized that I was wrong about that one!  If you think finding a photographer locally is tough, try finding one thousands of miles away in a different time zone!  I spent countless hours searching for the right person to take our photos, and I finally found Daniele Pierangeli with Jay Studio.  Daniele was very accommodating and we really enjoyed our shoot. If you need a photographer in Italy I would definitely recommend him!

Europe Here We Come!

So everything was finally planned and we were so excited!  We would first stay in Switzerland and visit Lucerne and Basel, then we would travel to Italy and stay in Milan, Venice, Florence, and Rome.  All of the hotels were booked and our plane tickets were purchased, the final thing was just figuring out how to get my dress half way across the world! I had heard stories about airlines not letting you carry the dress on, so I decided to ship it through the mail to our hotel in Rome. I had shipped things to Italy in the past so I wasn’t worried about shipping the dress.  The hotel staff was also very accommodating and assured me that they would store my package until we arrived.

Well, fast forward to a month and a half later – we arrived in Rome, but the dress had not!  Long story short, I talked everything over Daniele and he tried to quickly find a dress for me, but it is hard enough to find your dream dress once, let alone twice!

Postal Service 1, Me 0..

The day of our shoot arrived and the dress was still tied up in customs, so we decided to do the shoot anyways with clothes that we had brought along on the trip.  Although it was very disappointing that I did not get to wear my wedding dress, I still love our photos and will always remember our photo shoot throughout the eternal city!

We purchased some traditional Venetian masks during our time in Venice and decided to incorporate them into the photos for an added memory of our trip. 🙂

The history in Rome is amazing! Having a photo shoot among the ruins in the Eternal City was pretty unreal.

Some of my favorite shots were taken in these quiet neighborhood back streets. I really loved the old world feel of the buildings. How cute is the Pizzicheria store front?

After shooting for a while in the quiet suburban areas of Rome we traveled over to the Capitol, which was a definite change of pace.  The streets and monuments were filled with locals and tourists, however, most people didn’t seem to notice that a photo shoot was taking place.  This really got me thinking about how differently the shoot would have been if I was in my wedding dress!

So in the end, although I was pretty disappointed about my wedding dress not arriving, (all that time and effort that went into finding and fitting the dress!) we still had such a fun time and I’m so glad that we decided to go ahead with the shoot.

A little word of advice – If you are contemplating a wedding, elopement, or photo session in another country be sure to send your dress at least 4 months ahead of time to insure that it arrives.

A Happy Enough Ending

Luckily, although my dress didn’t make it to my hotel in time for the shoot, it did arrive about a week later and the hotel was kind enough to have it sent back to me.  I finally received it safe and sound 3 months later. Thankfully I didn’t lose the dress completely!

Hope you enjoyed viewing our photos as much as I enjoyed reminiscing while I was creating this post!

If you have any questions about elopement planning feel free to contact me or leave me a comment below! I’d also love to hear your wedding stories and see your engagement/wedding photos if you have some to share! 🙂

Until next time,