An Amalfi Coast wedding planner for couples arriving from the United States

There is no other stretch of Italy where the landscape does so much of the work. Positano falls down its own hillside in layers of ochre and pink. Ravello sits around three hundred and fifty metres above the water, with gardens that end in open sky. Sorrento, technically on the peninsula rather than the coast itself, is the flattest and easiest of them all, which is why a good number of weddings photographed as Amalfi actually take place there.

The coast is also the most demanding place in Italy to produce a wedding, and the two facts are the same fact. The height, the narrowness and the sea below are exactly what make the day difficult to build.

Four working areas, and choosing between them is mostly a question of how your guests will move.

Most of these properties carry a hard ceiling on guest numbers that has nothing to do with the size of the terrace and everything to do with how many people the kitchen can serve and how many can leave at midnight. Ask for that number in writing before you ask for anything else.

Late May, June, September and the first half of October. Those are the windows where the light is long, the sea is calm enough for the boats, and the road can be driven at a normal speed.

July and August are hot, and the coast road becomes a queue. In the peak weeks the traffic scheme on the coastal road restricts circulation, coaches are limited, and a transfer that takes forty minutes in May takes an hour and a half. From November through March most of the hotels are closed, and the sea decides whether the boats run at all.

Across Italy, the weddings we plan generally sit between roughly 50,000 and 500,000 euros and beyond. That is an indicative market range and not a price list: each project is quoted on its own scope.

The Amalfi Coast sits in the upper half of that range, and the premium is not glamour, it is labour and access. Suppliers price the drive. Florals, furniture and equipment often make the last hundred metres by hand or by small boat, because there is no service road. Hotel inventory is limited and priced accordingly in exactly the months you want it. Boats for guest transfers are charged by the hour and cancelled by the sea.

The two levers that control the number are guest count and geography. Sixty guests in one property for three days costs a fraction of what a hundred and twenty guests spread across three towns costs, and it produces a better weekend.

A civil marriage in Italy is legally recognised at home. It needs documents built on both sides: a sworn declaration of no impediment made before the United States consulate in Italy, an atto notorio where the comune asks for one, apostilled birth certificates and sworn translations, plus appointments at the comune. The comuni along this coast are small, their offices run on seasonal hours, and their requirements are not identical.

A symbolic ceremony carries no legal weight and no paperwork. Marrying legally at home first, in a ten minute appointment nobody dresses up for, is what most of our American couples do: it buys you the cliff terrace, the celebrant you want and a ceremony in your own words. A Catholic ceremony in one of the coastal churches runs through your home parish and the local diocese, and needs the longest lead time of the three.

We assemble and track the file and sit in the appointments with you. The practice belongs to the comune and the consulate, and we send you to both, because the requirements move.

Naples Capodichino is the arrival airport. It receives seasonal nonstop service from the United States East Coast in summer, and for the rest of the year guests connect through Rome or a European hub. From Naples it is roughly ninety minutes to Positano or Ravello without traffic, and considerably longer in August. Rome Fiumicino carries far more nonstop flights and sits three and a half to four hours away by road.

For a large guest list arriving on one day we frequently use Rome and put people onto a scheduled private transfer, rather than fighting over a handful of Naples seats. Once here, movement is by car with a local driver, by minibus where the road allows, or by sea. Sea transfers are faster and more beautiful, and they are the first thing the weather takes away, so they never carry the ceremony.

Hotel rooms on the coast are few, small and expensive, and they sell early. A hundred guest wedding in Positano is an accommodation problem before it is anything else. We usually anchor the wedding party and close family in one property, place the rest across two or three hotels in the same town or in Sorrento, and build the shuttle around that map.

Guests should be told in writing, early, what the walk from their hotel to dinner actually involves. On this coast that one sentence is often the difference between a good evening and a bad one.