Your Secret Tuscany

Her process runs in six steps: a first meeting to discuss ideas, needs and likely costs; a budgeting phase built around a couple's actual priorities rather than a template split; venue and supplier selection from her own inspected database; the design phase itself, colour palette through to 3D floor plan; logistics, meaning transfers, accommodation and a precise timeline issued to every vendor; and coordination on the day.

Full-service planning runs to between sixty and two hundred and fifty hours of work per wedding, depending on scope: detailed timelines and floor plans, style brainstorming, vendor referrals and contract negotiation, budget management, hotel room block and transportation coordination, attendance at every vendor meeting, site tour and menu tasting, and management of the rehearsal itself. Federica is a certified wedding designer as well as a planner, so the same person doing the logistics also does the design work, rather than handing it to a separate stylist once the planning is settled.

Federica caps her own season: a maximum of six weddings a year with eighty or more guests, alongside up to ten elopements, ten marriage proposals and four luxury parties. No fee or pricing model is published; the fee is quoted only once she understands what a specific wedding requires.

The design process starts with a colour palette and mood board, then a 3D floor plan of the ceremony or reception space, and for couples who want to see it before it exists, a full digital rendering of the decorated venue, produced before a single flower is ordered.

Six real weddings are featured on the Your Secret Tuscany website. Elena & Fil married at San Galgano Abbey, Siena's roofless medieval ruin, on the 9th of May 2023, with the reception at Grand Hotel Continental in Siena. The team inverted the usual ceremony arrangement so the couple faced their guests instead of showing their backs, a first for that venue.

Three of the six are same-sex weddings. P&J married at Villa Valentini Bonaparte on the Tuscany/Umbria border, opening with a pool party for their guests and exchanging vows in the villa's amphitheatre to a string quartet. M&V, a Brazilian couple and opera lovers, built their wedding at Castello di Celsa around a shared love of the art form, with a Tenor opening the ceremony and a soprano performing at the cake-cutting. M&A married at Tenuta di Artimino near Florence in a burgundy palette; because one groom is Jewish, the design team built a Chuppah into the balcony above the villa's main door.

J&K married on Isola del Garda, an island reachable only by boat. Federica's team arranged taxi boats to move one hundred guests across from Sirmione, plus a separate limousine boat for the bridal party, for a celebration that ran three days.

C&K's Chianti wedding split across two venues: a welcome party at Villa Mangiacane, then the ceremony and reception the next day at Castello il Palagio, where the team restyled the castle's own garden into what they called a secret garden, dense with flowers in every corner.

Federica works primarily in Tuscany and also plans weddings across Lake Garda, Lake Como, the Amalfi Coast and Umbria, including Ravello and Positano.

Federica recommends April to October for outdoor weddings, and December for couples who want the Italian Christmas atmosphere inside a luxury property instead. Every wedding she plans carries a Plan A for outdoors and a Plan B for indoors, decided in advance rather than on the morning of the ceremony.

Couples work with Federica's selected network of suppliers, built up over more than a decade, rather than bringing outside vendors. Planning trips to Italy, typically two or three, are recommended, and a venue is usually confirmed six months to a year ahead of the wedding.

Jake and Kate Harper married on Isola del Garda in August 2022, the same taxi-boat crossing and three-day celebration described above. Afterward they wrote: "Amazing day. Federica we can't thank you enough! We started planning our wedding with you through your business and ended up with a good friend."

Pete Tomasino, who brought a hundred guests from the US to Italy for his wedding at Villa Valentini Bonaparte, wrote that Federica assisted every step of the way, from selecting a location to coming up with a vision and executing a plan.