Getting married in Florence

A Chianti or Val d'Orcia wedding is built around one property, with transport for everyone on every day. A Florence wedding is built around a city: guests choose their own hotels at their own price level, fill their free afternoons without your help, and walk home afterwards.

The trade is privacy. You are sharing the city with everyone else in it, which in June and September is a great many people. If the picture in your head is a long table in a vineyard with nobody else around, Florence is not that — Chianti probably is.

The Comune di Firenze celebrates civil marriages in its own approved settings: Palazzo Vecchio, the Giardino delle Rose, Museo Bardini, Santa Maria Novella and Villa Vogel. No private villa can match those rooms.

For non-residents the fee runs from €2,500 to €5,100, by setting, day and time. Cancellations within 30 days are not refunded.

Private villas in the Florentine hills are frequently not authorised for the legal ceremony. Villa Le Fontanelle states that civil ceremonies must be arranged with "the City of Florence that offers several rooms in which to celebrate the wedding" — the villa can host a symbolic ceremony and the reception, not the marriage. Assume that is the case and ask, rather than the reverse; comuni elsewhere do authorise private villas, Greve in Chianti and Lucca among them.

Documents are due at least four days before, you need two witnesses with photo ID, and if neither of you speaks Italian you must provide an interpreter at both the declaration and the ceremony. See the legal requirements guide.

Florence has its own airport, Amerigo Vespucci, connected to the city by the T2 tram: 12 stops, 22 minutes between Peretola and the Unità terminus, running roughly every four and a half minutes at peak. For guests with luggage, that is as easy as Tuscan transfers get.

Pisa is the region's other main airport, often cheaper to fly into at the cost of a longer onward journey. Florence is also on the national rail network — the one Tuscan wedding a guest can reach from Rome or Milan without hiring a car.

Inside the city nobody needs a car, which is fortunate.

Florence's historic centre is a Zona a Traffico Limitato, enforced by cameras that read number plates automatically.

Sectors A, B and O operate Monday to Friday 07:30–20:00 and Saturday 07:30–16:00, and from April to October an additional night-time ZTL covers all sectors on weekend nights. Some gates are closed to everyone, 24 hours a day.

In practice: a hired car, a guest's rental or a wedding car arriving at a hotel inside the centre needs permission arranged in advance through the hotel or operator. Guests who drive in without it are not stopped at the time — the fine arrives months later, at home. Tell them in writing, before they book a rental car they cannot use.

Florence sits in a river basin and runs warmer than the hills around it. In the 1991–2020 record, August averages a daily maximum of 32.5°C and July 32.2°C, with July the driest month of the year at 26.2 mm of rain.

May, at 24.5°C, and early June, at 29.1°C, are the most comfortable months for guests standing outdoors in formal clothes. September is lovely at 27.1°C but wetter than June, and October — often recommended — is the second-wettest month of the year here at 103.7 mm. See our best months guide.

August is when Italy takes its holiday, and the days around Ferragosto on 15 August are when much of the city closes.

Municipal settings for the ceremony itself, as above — the grandest option, booked through the comune.

Historic villas in the surrounding hills — Fiesole, Settignano, Bagno a Ripoli, the Arno valley — typically fifteen to forty minutes out, with gardens and views back over the city. Usually the reception venue, and often not the ceremony venue.

Palazzi and historic interiors in the city, for dinners rather than large parties, generally with firm limits on hours and noise.

Rooftops and restaurant spaces, which suit smaller weddings that want the skyline without hiring an estate.

Our venues guide sets out what to ask each of them.

Guests will not need a car, and should not hire one. Say so explicitly.

Hours are shorter than you expect. Historic buildings and a residential centre mean curfews on music and firm end times. Ask for the hour, in writing, before you plan the evening.

Book the comune first. The ceremony slot, not the reception venue, is the scarcest thing in a Florence wedding — and it sets the shape of the whole day.