Angharad, a freelance copywriter and content strategist married Adam, a chartered accountant, in August 2025 at Masseria Angiulli Piccolo in Grottaglie, Puglia, Italy. They chose the venue for their destination wedding, not only for its setting among olive groves and vines but because Angharad already knew the building well, having written about its restoration years earlier for an architecture magazine.
The wedding was planned as a shared holiday with family and friends, with everyone staying together at the masseria in the days leading up to the celebration.
The couple live a laid back lifestyle centred around food, travel and time at the table with friends and family and this informed the style and vibe of their wedding day. Puglia was chosen as a destination to keeping the styling informal and unfussy and the atmosphere was kept relaxed rather than staged, with local supplier and long meals.
Angharad wore a minimalist design from the ready-to-wear collection by Sophie et Voila. Having worked in fashion for years, she chose not to visit bridal boutiques and instead ordered the dress online, drawn to its simplicity, and easy wearability during the August heat.
Photography was by talented Osman of Wolf & Co Photograpy who beautifully documented the day across digital and 35mm film. Enjoy!
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We’re both laidback people, and our favourite hobby is sitting around a table with family and friends enjoying a great meal and bottle of wine, preferably in a beautiful setting. We wanted the day to reflect that: relaxed and informal, but still meaningful.
The Venue & Location
Our wedding was at Masseria Angiulli Piccolo in Grottaglie, Puglia, Italy. It’s a beautiful old farmhouse that is surrounded by vines and olive groves. It has the perfect blend of traditional features and modern, organic minimalism, and we stayed there with family for the week leading up to the wedding, which was lots of fun.
I found this venue years ago, it was restored by an architect called Kristine Standnes, and I wrote an article about it for an architecture magazine. I loved the look and feel of the property instantly. When I was doing my research, I noticed that they do weddings, and it’s stuck in my head ever since.
Adam and I love to travel and we’ve lived all over the place, so we liked the idea of having a big holiday with our families and friends alongside the wedding. We love the laidback nature of Puglia, the food and wine, so it was the perfect spot for us.
Style-wise, the venue was a big inspiration. It’s stylish but in a very laidback, effortless way. That’s the kind of look we’re both drawn to – minimalist, but not in an austere way. We wanted the look and feel of the wedding day to complement our personal styles and the venue itself, and it all felt very organic and contemporary.
We hired Sona Weddings as our planners. They’re a husband-and-wife team, Thelma and Alessandro, based in Puglia. Thelma is Irish and it was really helpful having someone who knew both British/Irish and Italian wedding customs, so we could incorporate a bit of both.
Working with a local team was a real plus, too. They know lots of vendors that we wouldn’t have been able to find without them!
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The Ceremony
We had our legal ceremony at St George’s Hall in Liverpool. It was very simple and we only invited our immediate families (parents, siblings and nieces and nephews). For our celebration afterwards, we went to the pub and had dinner in my parents’ back garden. We used Fig and the Wild for our catering. They were incredible, super easy to work with and they created a real feast that our guests were still talking about for months after!
In Italy, we knew we wanted to do a bit more for our guests and spend as much time with them as possible, as they’d all made a huge effort to get there. The night before the wedding, we booked out a small wine bar in Grottaglie called Vineria dal Medico that we’d been to before and loved. They have a little courtyard and put on a great spread of Italian nibbles and wine.
My dad walked me down the aisle. He’s always a calming presence, so it was nice to have him on my arm in those first few moments. We hired a violinist and she played ‘Dreams’ by The Cranberries as we walked down the aisle. She played ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ by The Verve as our exit song.
We both wrote our own vows to each other. We ummed and ahhed over this decision because we didn’t want it to be cheesy! But we loved that we could say what we wanted to say, and make it our own.
We both spoke about what we love about our relationship. It was surprisingly emotional – in a good way.
We chose ‘Love is a Temporary Madness’, an extract from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières. We came across it while we were researching, and I love the book, so it felt like we had a connection to it.
This part spoke to us both, too, as we’ve been together for so long: “Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”
It’s so hard to say what my favourite part of the day was because it was all so magical. But if I had to pick one, I’d say the ceremony. I remember walking down the aisle and seeing Adam smiling back at me. I felt so calm and at ease, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Having my brother as our celebrant felt very special, as did saying our own vows we’d written to each other. We had a few laughs and a few tears, and I felt so much love around us.
Photography
Our photographer was Osman of Wolf & Co Photograpy. We wanted to look back on our photographs and think: “that’s exactly what the day was like”. It was important for us to have natural images that conveyed the day authentically, rather than having a series of poses (that we would feel very awkward doing!).
Osman from Wolf & Co. did all that and more. The photographs capture the day as it was, and they’re all incredibly beautiful. I can’t believe how many details he was able to photograph because he was so unobtrusive.
Osman was a joy to work with and put us completely at ease, too. It felt like having another friend with us on the day. I would recommend him to anyone in a heartbeat.
We met in 2009 on a night out in a very dingy bar in Newcastle. We were both students at the time, and we were together for 14 years before we got engaged. Neither of us was in a rush to get married!
The Proposal
Adam proposed during a trip to the Scottish Highlands in December 2023. We went on a hike in thick snow. It was freezing but beautiful, and very peaceful, and he’d packed a bottle of prosecco in his backpack so we could celebrate there and then. Completely coincidentally, the jeweller who made my engagement ring (and our wedding rings) lived really close by to our engagement spot, so it felt like it was meant to be.
Adam wanted a linen suit that he could wear again, so he didn’t want to get anything that was obviously a ‘wedding’ suit. He likes relaxed tailoring and tried this black linen suit on one day in Massimo Dutti. It was the perfect fit and, like me, he used accessories (a silver brooch) to dress it up a bit.
Adam didn’t want to wear a boutonnière but he did want to add something to his suit. It was his idea to wear a brooch and after a lot of searching, he found one on Etsy. It was a great touch. I’ve pinched it a few times myself since the wedding!
The Reception
The venue is naturally beautiful, so we didn’t use much decor beyond our flowers, lights and table settings.
We chose Rotondo, a local catering company. They’ve done a lot of weddings at Masseria Angiulli Piccolo and came highly recommended. We had a feast; incredible local wines that our guests were making a note of to look up back home, a huge aperitivo buffet, followed by two courses, and a big dessert buffet.
No request was too small, and they were very slick and professional on the day.
We got small, dark green pumi for our wedding favours. They’re ceramic rose buds and they’re a traditional gift in Puglia, said to symbolise new beginnings. We got them from a local shop in Grottaglie. Our guests loved them!
I found an editable stationery template on Etsy and used that to create all our stationery. It was a really cost efficient way of doing it. The template was around £10 and had various illustrations on it that we could move around. It was easy to edit in Canva, and they all turned out really well! Our wedding planner printed it off in Italy, so we didn’t have to take it over from the UK.
We chose Blomour as our florist, who was based very locally in Grottaglie. Fausta, the owner, used to work in architecture, and she brings that experience to her approach to floristry. One look at her Instagram and it was love at first sight, it suited our tastes perfectly.
I created a moodboard for the full look and feel of the wedding, then Fausta asked us to share further imagery around our general interests and tastes. She then came back with a few ideas, which were all wonderful.
We went for wild, natural grasses, with a few unusual white and dark red flowers too. I particularly loved my bouquet, which was long stipa grass. It felt like a bit of a risk (what bride holds grass??) but it paid off. I loved how it looked with my outfit.
Grottaglie is famous for its ceramics, so we knew we wanted to incorporate some of those in our day. We visited some of the local ceramicists about a year before the wedding and chose a few pots and vases that we liked from a ceramicist called Antonio Fasano. Fausta used them on our tables for our floral arrangements, and we bought a few to take home as a keepsake.
Our tablecloths, plates and glasses etc. were all supplied by our caterer.
We danced to Cerca De Ti by Hermanos Gutiérrez. It’s purely instrumental, so there are no words, but it’s really beautiful. It means ‘close to you’ in Spanish, which is very fitting for a first dance as husband and wife.
We danced to Cerca De Ti by Hermanos Gutiérrez. It’s purely instrumental, so there are no words, but it’s really beautiful. It means ‘close to you’ in Spanish, which is very fitting for a first dance as husband and wife.
Words of Wedded Wisdom
When you start planning, sit down together and talk about how you want your wedding to feel, then use that as your north star. It’s easy to get carried away and start adding things to your wedding just because you’ve seen it on Instagram, it’s a tradition you think you should be doing, or it’s what other people expect.
Whenever we made a decision, we’d go back to that original vision. Does it align with how we want our wedding day to feel? If not, leave it alone. You can’t do everything, and if you do try to cram a lot of things in, it could get messy!
It’s also important to relinquish a bit of control. There’s a chance something won’t go according to plan on the day – everyone I know who has got married has had something go “wrong”. We had really heavy rain on our wedding day which we weren’t expecting, given it was southern Italy in August. We had a plan B in place for rain, thankfully, but we’d always had this vision of a warm evening with everyone outside.
We could have got stressed and upset about it but we were both very calm. One thing you can’t control is the weather! Luckily, the rain cleared about five minutes before the ceremony was about to start, so we were able to have the outdoor bits that we’d planned. But I’m so glad I can look back on our day and think it was just a happy day, rather than a day I spent super stressed over the weather.
We loved everything. All the planning and various spreadsheets were worth it!
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