Eloping in Tuscany: A Guide to Small and Intimate Weddings

The word "elopement" no longer means running away in secret. In practice a Tuscan elopement is simply a very small wedding — anywhere from just the two of you to a group of around twenty close family and friends — held at a private villa with the setting doing most of the work.

The character is intimate and unhurried. There is no seating plan to agonise over, no large reception to choreograph. The day tends to centre on the ceremony itself, an exceptional meal, and time in an extraordinary place. It is the wedding for couples who love Tuscany and each other and feel no need to turn that into a large event.

An important point couples sometimes miss: eloping does not reduce the legal paperwork. A legally binding marriage in Italy requires the same documents whatever the guest count — the Nulla Osta, valid passports, translated and legalised documents, the declaration of intent at the comune, and two witnesses.

With a very small group the witnesses are simply two of the people present, or arranged locally if it is just the two of you. The full process is covered in our guide to getting legally married in Italy. Many eloping couples also choose the practical route of a short legal civil ceremony plus a symbolic ceremony in the villa's most beautiful spot.

A large wedding needs a property that works as a reception venue; an elopement does not, which opens up a wider and often more characterful range of villas. A smaller farmhouse with a single perfect terrace, a hilltop property with an uninterrupted view, a villa with an intimate garden — these are ideal for a small wedding in a way they could never be for a hundred guests.

It also means the closest family can all stay together at the villa, since the guest list fits within the property's sleeping capacity. The wedding and the holiday become one thing. Our wedding villas collection includes properties well suited to small, intimate celebrations.

An elopement costs considerably less than a full wedding, for a simple reason: the two largest lines in any wedding budget — catering and venue scale — both shrink with the guest count. You are still hiring a beautiful villa and engaging the suppliers who matter, but a meal for ten is not a banquet for a hundred.

We would not, even so, cut the photography. For many eloping couples the photography is the point — the record of the place and the day. Our cost guide explains how the budget lines move, and an elopement essentially takes that structure and scales the guest-driven lines right down.

Because an elopement is unburdened by the logistics of a large event, it can be built around the landscape and the light in a way a big wedding cannot. There is time to drive to a second location, to catch the golden hour on a particular hillside, to let the photography breathe.

Many eloping couples plan the day around their photographer for exactly this reason. The result is a record of Tuscany and of the two of you that a tightly scheduled large wedding rarely has room for.

The intimate format also suits couples who are not having a first legal wedding — those renewing vows, marking an anniversary, or holding a symbolic ceremony having completed the legal marriage at home.

A symbolic ceremony carries no paperwork at all, which makes it the simplest celebration of any to arrange: just the villa, the setting, and the people who matter. For a vow renewal or a purely symbolic occasion, Tuscany offers all of its beauty with none of the comune appointments.