Wedding dinner location _ Ristorante Al Forte _ Pastrengo

 We had our lovely wedding reception at Ristorante Al Forte in Pastrengo (VR). It's situated between Verona and the Garda Lake with views overlooking both. The restaurant is in an ancient fort from the 1850s. The internal rooms have beautiful brick arcs that give a warm and exclusive feeling. The external garden has a covered area allowing for dinners outdoors.
Our buffè was held in the outdoor garden which included a wide variety of cheeses, pies, hams, and other snacks as well as champagne to drink.
For the main courses we chose an indoor room that seats about 100 people. The room had direct and private access to the outdoor area. We had a lovely 3 course dinner inside and then we moved back outdoors for a cheese-buffe, lemon sorbet, cake and an open bar. The food was absolutely amazing! Everyone was asking for seconds despite the already generous portions.
The staff was extremely professional and you can tell that they're used to handling weddings. They have a brochure that lists all the things that they can offer, from personalized cakes, fireworks, a baby-sitter, dj, etc.
Despite I had many requirements (being the bridezilla that I was) they always did their best to fulfill them. I wanted everything to be the way I had invisioned when it came to decorations, flowers, cake design, etc.
I can highly recommend this location for your wedding in the area. Al Forte is a high quality restaurant that has everything you need. 

Wedding inspiration board

Inspiration boards are a good way of organizing your thoughts during the planning of your wedding. There are so many things out there to inspire you and one can imagine having the wedding in many ways. It's hard to actually narrow it all down and stick to a certain style. In fact in the beginning of my wedding planning my ideas were all over the place! In the end, I started realizing that there were certain elements that I had really fallen for and a specific style started to emerge.
The first thing we chose for the wedding was the wedding location, and after that we could start thinking of a specific vision that we wanted. The location for our civil wedding was the lovely Scaliger Castle in Malcesine on Lake Garda. Absolutely stunning, right on the lake, with a 180* view of the water and mountains.
I wanted a eco-friendly look, with many DIY elements. I hand-drew the invitation card together with one of Marco's best men, made all the table decorations myself, sew the flower girl dress(tutorial and result), made the ring pillow, made wedding program fans, a road sign with distances to where our guests had travelled to be there,  rice and lavender cones, designed my own wedding dress and had it made, had a song written for us by a good friend. So it was very personal!
To have a look at the final results of the decorations click here.  And for the wedding pictures as a whole (although not the official photos) check them out here.

This is the newer inspiration board that was made about 3-4 months before the wedding. Several things were still changed from this board but it is pretty similar to the final result.

This was the first inspiration board that I made before Marco even officially proposed! We had started talking about the wedding and this is what I envisioned. Not many of these details were actually used though. The skirt of the dress and the flowers remained the same, a location on the water (the country is different though), are the same.

The bridesmaids inspiration board can be seen here.

Bridesmaids inspiration board

This is the inspiration board I made for our wedding last August (2012). I had 3 lovely bridesmaids who traveled from afar to be there for my special day. Each one represented a special part of my life. Rosalie, my childhood friend from Australia, Michelle, my teenage friend from Sweden, and Aleksandra my adult friend from Italy.
I wanted them to chose their dresses themselves, as I wanted them to wear something they were comfortable wearing. Also, I've never liked the idea of everyone wearing matching clothes. It just feels so stale.
My 3 bridesmaids all chose lovely dresses and we all looked amazing on the day. We went to the hairdresser in the morning where we got our hair done in similar up-dos: Side chignon. Mine was a bit more elaborated but otherwise quite similar.
I had also made silk flowers for each of us to have in our hair, in order to make us all look similar despite the different dresses. In fact it all turned out very well.
(Official photos still to come). For general photos from the wedding check them out here to see the result!