Libby and Colin's Elegant Outdoor Villa Wedding in Sicily by Dazzled Events

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you have had a good week so far? What have you got planned for the weekend? Anything wedding related? are you getting married maybe, attending a wedding maybe, or getting some of those wedding planning jobs crossed off that list? It’s my husband Nik’s birthday on Monday but he is gong to Belgium on a works trip, so we are celebrating this weekend, we are doing an escape room on Saturday day, then out for dinner with his brother, Sunday we are off to Chatsworth. I hope you have a lovely weekend what ever you are up to. I am finishing the week off with this elegant outdoor Villa wedding from gorgeous Sicily. Libby and Colin chose a destination wedding and Sicily was their first choice of locations. They hired a villa and made the wedding a celebration spanning a few days. A wonderfully romantic day filled with beautiful touches and an abundance of delicious food. Big thanks to Dazzled Events for planning it so well and to Honey + Bee Photography for the photos.

Every single aspect was a million times better than we could have ever expected. We have never felt so much love and support at one time before and it was the most beautiful, special day of our lives.

Libby and Colin were married on 5th September 2024 at Villa Il Vignale in Reitano, Sicily – a tiny Sicilian town on the northern coast of the island about 1 hour from Palermo. The villa is an old stone farmhouse located on a small olive grove that is still actively producing olive oil! It was the first wedding at this villa and it ended up being perfect. It slept 20 people, had multiple outdoor spaces, and a brand new pool with views looking over the valley.
The day before the wedding we had a welcome dinner/pool party. It was so much fun and we are so happy we did that! We were able to catch up with a bunch of our guests and just hang out, enjoy the villa with no stress of it being the actual wedding day! We hired a local pizza chef to come to the villa to make pizzas, and they went all out! So many different types of pizzas and arrancinis and savory Sicilian pastries. We kept it simple with just beer and wine – it turned into a party and everyone had such a good time! Libby is American and Colin is Irish, we both love to travel extensively so we always knew we would have a destination wedding. We both have travelled to Italy multiple times.
We had 65 guests in total – there were a few people that we would have loved to attend, but unfortunately that is the price of having a destination wedding. It took just under a year to plan.

How they met
We met when we were 21 years old in Ocean City, Maryland, USA. I was living at the beach for the summer with some friends and Colin was there on a J1 visa for the summer. We worked together and that ‘summer fling’ quickly turned more serious. He went back to Ireland and I stayed in the USA but we kept in contact and I ended up moving to Ireland as soon as I finished my last year of college. Splitting time between Ireland and the USA (and lots of time apart) for 8 years.

Tell me about the proposal
Very unromantic…we didn’t have a proper proposal. Because of the long distance and trying to navigate visas and time apart, I (Libby) finally just said “f**k it, should we just start the paperwork to get married so we can finally just be together??”. It took 2 years after that to finally have the visa for us to get married. He entered the USA in April of 2023 – we eloped 2 weeks later! (We legally had 90 days to get married) so we have actually been legally married for 2 years!

How did you allocate your budget?
Finding the venue was the hardest part. We knew we wanted somewhere that we could rent for a whole week and would sleep both of our families, and could also accommodate up to 70 people for the ceremony/reception. We got SO lucky with Villa Il Vignale, it was absolutely stunning, but the owner (Dario) had never hosted a wedding there before – we got a great price for the week and I think we may have been sort of his trial run to then list the villa as an official wedding venue.
After the venue we knew food was important (but you also can’t get bad food in Sicily).
Our total budget for the wedding was $40,000 – that’s for literally everything! Flights, rental car, alterations, wedding planners, everything!

Where did you splurge and where did you save?
We definitely splurged on the food. It was by far the biggest chunk of our budget, but still actually very reasonable for everything that was provided!
Videographer, and DJ we also made sure were very reputable because we knew how important their roles are.
We saved a lot by doing all of our own stationary, I bought my dress online on sale. We had certain things that would be considered ‘traditional’ that just weren’t important to us
We also saved a lot of money by buying all of the alcohol for the wedding and the welcome dinner ourselves – and then just hired a bartender for the actual wedding to serve it!

How did you choose your photographer?
Another aspect of our wedding that we just can’t believe how lucky we got. Kenzie Hammock (Honey + Bee photography) based out of Nashville is a good friend of my moms and an INCREDIBLE wedding photographer. When she found out we were getting married in Italy she said she just absolutely had to come and wanted to be our photographer. She is now a part of the family and wow did she blow us away with the photos she delivered. She is a true creative and also just a gem of a human being, she made us feel so comfortable!

The dress
My dress was a discounted, discontinued dress by Vow’d for $800.

The suit and bridesmaids
Suit was by Suit Supply. We did not have a bridal party

Theme or colour scheme
We really tried to lean into the olive grove theme, with an olive green and white colour scheme. We wanted to keep it simple and have the venue and the views be the main focal point. Lots of white candles and olive greenery.

Flowers
A simple bouquet of white flowers with olive leaves and greenery.

Decoration
Kept it very simple with lots of white candles, olive greens, and wooden tables.

Food
We knew the food was going to be amazing but it BLEW US AWAY. The caterers went above and beyond what we thought we were receiving. Immediately after the ceremony we had a cocktail hour – it was a spread of traditional Sicilian canopies, a full leg of prosciutto being sliced in front of you, two separate tables of meats and cheeses, an entire wheel of Parmesan.
Dinner was a 3 course meal: first course – a wild herb risotto with caciocavallo fondue and crispy bacon. Second course – genovese pesto tortelli with burrata and confit tomato. Third course – Pistachio crusted filet with potato pie, asparagus cream and glazed asparagus.

Wedding cake
We actually weren’t expecting a cake, when we were talking about menus and the caterers we wanted a spread of Sicilian desserts but didn’t want to pay for a cake, it just wasn’t something important to us. But at the end of the evening the caterers brought out a stunning 3 tiered cake with white frosting and decorated with olive leaves! So simple and so beautiful. It was a really fun surprise!

Entertainment
Colins cousins and her husband played the violin and guitar for our ceremony. It was so romantic!
We had a local DJ (DJ Erik with Sicily Roots). He did a wonderful job, we would highly recommend him!

Who supplied the stationery?
We designed all of our own stationary to save money and it turned out to be so much fun to design it all ourselves!

Where did you go on your honeymoon?
With our budget we said we could either go on a 10 day luxury honeymoon somewhere, OR we could backpack Southeast Asia for 3 months…it was an easy choice! We travelled to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Bali, and the Philippines over a course of 10 weeks. It was such an adventure and we created lifelong memories along the way! The trip was very much on a ~budget~ but we would do it again in a heartbeat!

Personal touches
My favourite thing that we did as a ‘detail’ was we hand wrote a letter to every single one of our guests. It was sitting on their dinner plate when they sat down at the tables. It was definitely a huge investment of time, but we wrote them in the weeks leading up to the wedding. It was really important to us that we do something special for our guests. They spent so much time and money traveling half way around the world to show up for us and support our love, it was the least we could do. And I am so happy we did, so many guests came up to us throughout the evening saying their letter made them cry, or reminded them of past memories we had shared that they had forgotten about. It was my favourite thing that we did.
For our wedding favours we did tiny bottles of olive oil that had been produced right there on the property of Il Vignale from the previous years harvest! We loved that guests were able to take something home that was made in the venue, but also consumable and delicious!

Special moments
Because we are from two different countries it was just so surreal to see both of our worlds finally colliding. Seeing all of our friends meet each other and having so much fun was just the best feeling in the world.
Colin’s dad was our ‘officiant’ for the ceremony and it was so special. We took a lot of time to make the ceremony unique to us and put a lot of thought into the readings and poems and our vows. It was all very heartfelt and I think really showed .

Advice for other couples
The people are what make the day. Having all of your favourite people in one spot celebrating you and showing up for you is the most beautiful feeling. Enjoy it!
Sicily is extremely good value to have a wedding! This wedding would have cost us close to $100,000 in each of our respective home countries. So if you are on a budget don’t be discouraged, it’s absolutely possible to have the wedding of your dreams!
100000% hire a wedding planner. They made everything so easy and stress free for us. They were real professionals and I couldn’t imagine planning a wedding without them!

Biggest surprise
Colins entire family surprised us with their own rendition of the Irish song “My Irish Moll” but rewrote all of the words about Colin and I and it was SO cute. Including instruments! It made both of us cry.