Some couples marry legally at home and celebrate in Italy afterward. Here's why, what it actually changes, and how to tell if a two-part wedding fits you.
Some couples decide early that they want to marry in Italy. Vows and paperwork, all in one place. Other couples land somewhere different. They handle the legal marriage at home. Then they come to Italy for the party itself. Neither way is more real than the other. One produces a marriage certificate from a courthouse. The other produces the day everyone actually remembers. This guide walks through why couples choose to split things this way. It covers what a celebration in Italy looks like once the legal step happens elsewhere. It also covers who this path actually suits.
What a Two-Part Wedding Actually Means
A two-part wedding splits two things that don’t have to happen together. One is the legal act of getting married. The other is the celebration of it. The legal part usually happens at a courthouse, registry office, or town hall back home. Often in front of a few witnesses, with almost no ceremony at all. The celebration happens later. Sometimes weeks later, sometimes months later, at the Italian venue the couple actually wanted. D’ori’s guides to eloping in Italy and to Italy’s legal requirements both touch on this option already, in passing. This post goes further into why couples take it, and what it changes about the day itself.
Once the legal marriage is done, the Italian event carries no legal weight of its own. Some couples call it a symbolic ceremony. Others just call it the wedding. Guests at the Italian event watch a couple exchange vows they’ve already made legally. They do it in front of the people who matter most, in the place they actually wanted to stand.
Why Couples Choose to Split It
The most common reason couples split the two is time. Marrying legally in Italy as a foreign national takes real paperwork: a nulla osta or equivalent document, a sworn translation, and sometimes an apostille. It also means a town hall notice period that runs for weeks. D’ori’s own guide to the legal timeline lays out the real window. Most nationalities need four to six months of lead time. Doing the legal marriage at home instead can take a single afternoon at a local registry office. That removes the whole legal timeline from the Italy side of planning.
There’s also flexibility to think about. A legal ceremony in Italy has to follow a set format. It usually needs an authorized officiant too. A celebration with no legal status can happen almost anywhere a venue allows it, at any time of day. Anyone can lead it: a celebrant, a friend, a family member. Nothing about the shape, length, or language of the ceremony is fixed by law.
Some couples carry paperwork that’s more complicated than most. A past marriage that needs extra documents can slow things down on its own. So can a home country that isn’t part of the Hague Apostille Convention. D’ori’s guide to apostilles and document legalization covers this in more depth. Marrying at home sidesteps most of it.
A smaller group of couples face a different kind of mismatch. Italy legalized civil unions for same-sex couples in 2016, under what’s commonly called the Cirinnà law. It hasn’t extended marriage itself to same-sex couples. A couple already legally married somewhere that counts their marriage as a marriage may want to keep that legal status exactly as it stands. That way, they never have to work out how a new ceremony in Italy would be classified. Treating the Italian event purely as a celebration avoids that question completely.
A Recent, Very Public Example
This isn’t a hypothetical path. In May 2026, Dua Lipa and Callum Turner legally married in a civil ceremony at Old Marylebone Town Hall in London. Multiple outlets confirmed it at the time. Days later, the couple held a bigger, multi-day party in Sicily. It included a vow exchange at a villa near Palermo, reported widely in entertainment coverage. The London ceremony made the marriage legal. The Sicily event came days later, built around a kind of setting a London registry office was never going to offer. It’s a well-documented, recent version of the exact split this guide is about. Most couples plan theirs on a much smaller scale.
What the Italian Celebration Can Actually Look Like
With no legal rules attached, the Italian event can take almost any shape. A villa courtyard works as well as a clifftop terrace. Neither needs approval from a town hall, because no government office is involved. The couple can write their own ceremony from scratch. They can choose their own reader or celebrant. They can set a timeline that fits the rest of the day, instead of squeezing a legal step in before dinner.
Guests generally can’t tell the difference. The vows, the rings, the walk down the aisle: all of it can happen exactly as it would at a legally binding wedding. The only real difference is procedural, and it isn’t visible. No one signs a government register at the end.
What You Give Up
The main trade-off is that the Italy day isn’t the legal anniversary. The courthouse date is. Some couples find that odd at first. Many come around to marking both dates, or just treat the Italy day as their anniversary anyway. Others don’t love it. That’s worth sitting with before committing to this path.
There’s also some awkwardness in timing two separate events instead of one. If the legal step happens first, it can feel like a formality to get through before the real day. If it happens after, the couple arrives in Italy not yet legally married. That can surprise guests who assumed otherwise. Either order works. Both just need planning, not an afterthought.
Who This Actually Suits
This path tends to suit couples working against a tight timeline. It suits couples who want full control over venue, officiant, and ceremony format. It suits couples whose paperwork, for reasons of nationality or a past marriage, would otherwise take months to sort out in Italy. And it suits couples who’d rather keep their wedding to-do list focused on the party, not on consulate visits.
It suits less well the couple for whom the legal act of marrying in Italy is the whole point. The ones who want their marriage certificate itself to say Italy on it, not just their photos. For that couple, the legal route in D’ori’s guide to marriage requirements in Italy is the more direct path, even with the longer runway it takes.
Deciding Which Path Is Right for You
Start with what actually matters to you about the word married. If the legal date and place matter, plan the full legal process in Italy and build the timeline around it. If what matters most is the day itself, the people in the room, and the place you’re standing when you say your vows, a two-part wedding cuts real friction without changing any of that. Either path ends in a wedding day in Italy. They just get there differently.
There’s no wrong order here. There’s only the one that matches what the two of you actually want from the day. If you’re trying to work out whether to handle the legal side at home or in Italy, get in touch. We can talk through what each route actually involves for your situation.
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