© Rosario Di Maria – Motion Frame Studio – @sarodm
© Rosario Di Maria – Motion Frame Studio – @sarodm
Bridesmaids and roses were essential for the wedding took place on 28 April in a garden in Cassino, an hour south of Rome. The civil ceremony had been held a month earlier at the beautiful town hall of Aix‑en‑Provence, in the south of France. As I dreamt of a classical Provençal wedding, I wore an emerald‑green dress, with a matching hat and elbow‑length gloves, and carried a bouquet of fuchsia roses. Green is also traditional in Italian weddings as a bringer of good luck: it celebrates the beauty of new beginnings, like the first pure green that appears in the fields in spring, when nature comes back to life and beauty blooms all around. My engagement‑day dress was also green, and I must confess that green in all its shades is my favourite colour. It could not be missing from my garden wedding.
Luckily enough — luck is the magic word here — my bridesmaids agreed to wear green on the day. We chose a lovely teal hue during an unforgettable afternoon family women’s reunion at Atelier Emé in Frosinone. Maria Sofia, my niece, enchanted us in a Sanremo dress that seemed made for her, and Maria Grazia, my nephew’s fiancée, took our breath away when she walked out of the dressing room in a Roma dress. They chose sparkly headbands and granny‑style handbags that happened to match mine — this they did not know, of course, but it proved we were going in the right direction. They looked dreamlike together, and when thinking back to my wedding day, the moment they appeared together in my room is among my most precious memories. They were smiling, endearing, beautiful.
The bridesmaids walked—fierce yet romantic—down the garden path to the rose‑filled altar, preparing my arrival. The garden was filled with scented white roses. I had been preparing the scene for months, describing exactly how I wanted it to look so that our guests would be transported to a magical plateau where only pure love could be felt. Exactly as I had dreamt it, my husband and I exchanged vows and rings under a green‑and‑white arch: green for our new life together and white for the purity of our love. If the garden was all white roses, the ballroom was all pink roses. It was baby pink, designed to perfectly match my mum’s total Blumarine look: a double‑breasted jacket with a statement bow and wide‑leg trousers. She was the cutest, loveliest doll ever seen.
The wedding table was adorned with a cascade of pink flowers in every shade, with Pink Mondial roses standing out. I designed it as the backdrop for the perfect family picture: my mom was the queen of the garden.