Jacinta & Philip

The smiles from Jacinta & Philip's wedding day are infectious, so it's just a joy to share with you all this morning. The international couple have travelled and worked together all over the world, but decided that Italy was the best place to host their wedding day. Their venue, The Madonnina, is surrounded by a lake and mountains and has an incredible glass house, where they held their reception, and an underground disco where they partied until the small hours...which they did in style, with a whole host of people taking it in turns to DJ, including Philip himself. It's lovely to see a Bride looking gorgeous in a vintage-style gown too, and Jacinta looks beautiful in her gown made by the wonderfully named 'Fairy Goth Mother.' There's also a balloon release, a gorgeous red confetti moment and a scattering of brightly coloured blooms too...

Our Story

Jacinta The Bride: Philip and I met during the wine fest in Lugano (Switzerland) in October 1999. We were both attending our last year of high school. After that, Philip studied Economics in Milan and I studied Art History, Germanics and Economics in Basel (Switzerland). After a 5.5 years long distance relationship with infinite train rides and lousy Skype calls, we finally lived together again, first in Milan, then in Lugano (Switzerland) and in Zurich (Switzerland). In 2012, Philip received an interesting job offer in The Bahamas, so we packed our bags and cats and moved to that little paradise for 2.5 years. During a long weekend in New York, while we were in a park in Williamsburg with the skyline of Manhattan in the background, Philip dropped the question and, after a few seconds of total shock, I said yes! We got married five months later, one week after our 15th anniversary. Philip is half Swiss and half Iranian, I am half Italian half German, so we created a wedding website in German and Italian for our guests.

The Bride

When I asked my friend Kim to accompany me on my dress hunt, I am sure she didn’t expect a pink haired lady that calls herself the Fairy Goth Mother to welcome us in her boutique... I fell in love with my dress instantly! It has the sober elegance of the 1950s that I was looking for. Philip and I both wanted a wedding that would mirror our passion for the 1950s and 1960s, so I wanted a dress in that style. But I also wanted it to be new, so I am very happy with the dress that I found. My bouquet was composed by pink plastic flowers, original vintage of the 1960s, that my friend Laura got for me in Zurich. The golden earrings were my mother’s from the 1960s and the necklace originally was my great-great grandfather’s chain of his golden pocket watch.

The Ceremony

The emotional ceremony took place at the town hall in Agno (Switzerland). My friend Ambrogio took my Father and me to Agno in his Alfa Romeo 2000, and I entered the room with both my parents holding my arms. When I entered the room, my favourite song by Odetta was playing on a portable vinyl record player, and when Philip and I exited the room, “It’s just begun” by Jimmy Castor was playing. Philip and I exchanged vows and our witnesses of marriage read passages of love songs by Johnny Cash, Etta James, Gino Paoli and a poem by Christian Morgenstern.

The Venue

The Madonnina is a former post station from the 18th century that was converted into a historic and romantic location. Set in Cantello, a peaceful village in Italy next to the Swiss border, the Madonnina is composed by a romantic hotel, a cozy restaurant and a historic villa with a winter garden, in which our wedding took place. Since we had guests coming from Germany, Italy, England, USA and of course Switzerland, we booked the entire hotel to accommodate them. We had a precise image of what we wanted the reception to look and feel like, so Carla, the manager of the Madonnina, worked closely with us to arrange the flower decoration, the décor and the cake following our wishes. We used vinyl records for the tableau marriage and on the tables. We didn’t want a ‘classical Italian flower decoration’ with white roses, so we had a mix of all kinds of flowers, coloured and simple, on the tables. We bought the vases in vintage markets. We had a succulent for every guest, they functioned as name tag, decoration and little present all in one. My mother and my sister made the name tags, pompoms and paper flowers. My maid of honour Julia organised the red balloons with every balloon having a card on which the guests would write a note for us. Unfortunately, only three cards were returned, but apparently the balloons went very far from Cantello.

The Maid of Honour

My Maid of Honour Julia wore a blue vintage dress with white dots.

The Groom

Philip wore a navy blue tuxedo by Cerruti 1881. He wore a so called continental tie like Ray Charles ;) He looked sooooooo handsome I could not wait to marry him!

The Stationery

The design of our invitation card was a present by my incredibly talented artist friend & Maid of Honour Julia Bruderer. We printed the cards at Minted.com.

The Entertainment

This was the most important part of the evening for us. The Madonnina has a little private underground disco room just a few steps from the green house in which the reception took place, so after dinner all guest were invited to follow us into the “J&P Club” and party! Philip and I are very passionate about the music and culture from the 1950s and 1960s. Philip has been collecting vinyl records for forever, so it was very important to us to have the right music on our special day. It was an honour to have our friends DJ Brian & DJ Doc Spugna (Lost & Found - Varese) play their collection of all original 7 inches records of Rhythm & Blues, Soul, Beat and Ska. Philip and I had a short DJ set and our friend Diego also put on some good ones. We danced until 6 ‘o clock in the morning and had the best time ever!

The Photography

We had very high expectations of for the wedding pictures, so we did a long research to find the photographers who could understand our style. Chiara and Giuseppe from MouMou Photography in Milan were so exquisite before, during and after the wedding and the pictures came out so fabulous that we are so happy they agreed to be our photographers of the day!