Glam Events in Tuscany

That repetition is the most useful fact in the whole archive, because it is the agency stating its own method without saying a word. Glam Events was founded in 2009 by Ilaria Menichetti, out of what she describes simply as a passion for events, for the planning process itself and for the details most guests never consciously notice. She had already designed weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, birthdays and private and public events across Italy by the time a wedding in 2015 introduced her to Lara Paoloni, who was working as the events manager at the hotel hosting it.

The way the two women met matters more than it might first appear. Ilaria was on the planning side of that day; Lara was on the venue side. Between them they already understood both halves of a wedding before they ever worked on one together, and Glam Events has run as a genuine partnership since, both of them holding the title Production and Design Director rather than one founder and one deputy.

Ilaria's own description of what she brings to a project is research, drawn from textiles through to decor objects, and a preference for vintage, shabby-chic and contemporary atmospheres depending on what a couple actually wants rather than what is fashionable that season. She says she loves, first of all, deciding the palette and the mood together with her clients, because that single conversation is the starting point every other decision gets measured against. It is a small, specific claim, and it is borne out across the portfolio: no two weddings in it share a colour story.

Sixteen years across Tuscany and the rest of Italy is the figure the agency states for itself, and the portfolio backs it with range rather than repetition. A trattoria-style welcome dinner at Castello del Nero sets terracotta pots of dry spaghetti, vine tomatoes, basil and limes down a long table under string lights, playful and unmistakably local. A candlelit dinner at La Foce hangs a chandelier from the branches of a tree over a runner of wildflowers and whole lemons. A ballroom on Lake Como, frescoed ceiling and two vast crystal chandeliers, could not look less like either of them.

The method behind that range is stated plainly on the agency's own site: decide the palette and the mood together with the couple, before any vendor is booked. Everything after that decision, the florist, the linen, the lighting, the favours, gets built to fit it rather than pulled from a house style. It is also, deliberately, a smaller operation than the range might suggest. The agency limits the number of events it takes on each year specifically so that every couple gets its full attention, working solely with a network of vetted Italian vendors it has built over a decade and a half rather than pricing out to whichever supplier is available.

That range runs geographically as well as stylistically. Tuscany is the base, cypress avenues and stone villas and olive groves, but the agency names four further destinations it works in directly: Lake Como, the Amalfi Coast, Puglia and Veneto. A wedding under a centuries-old olive tree in a whitewashed Puglia masseria, string lights strung the length of its courtyard, sits in the same portfolio as a formal Lake Como ballroom dinner. Neither location resembles the other, and the agency's case is that its relationships with vendors travel with it into both.

The Amalfi Coast and Veneto sit on the same published list of destinations, a vertical run of cliffside towns on one side of the country and the villas and canals of the Veneto on the other, both a considerable distance from the Tuscan base and both requiring the same local vendor relationships a Puglia masseria wedding does. That is the practical argument for using a single agency across a country this varied: the couple deals with one team throughout, while the team itself is doing the work of five separate address books.

The process the agency describes for getting from an enquiry to a wedding day runs in four stages. First, a reply within two or three business days sharing planning packages and starting to learn the couple's story, followed by a video call once mutual interest is confirmed. Second, confirming the date and choosing a location from a shortlist matched to the couple's style and budget. Third, the vendor selection itself: colour palette, lighting, floral structures and every visual concept, worked out with hand-picked suppliers who the agency says are held to a standard higher than simply turning up. Fourth, the layer of detail that actually differentiates one wedding from another: entertainment, music, effects, guest gifts and the activities that fill the days either side of the ceremony.

On the ground, a dedicated planner and assistant planners stay on site for the whole of the wedding day, alongside a 24/7 concierge service for the trip around it. Welcome bags, favours, printed stationery, RSVP tracking and a wedding website are all produced inside the same service rather than sold as add-ons, and the team runs to seven now: Ilaria and Lara at the top, then Raisa in event production and graphic design, Klaudia in wedding concierge and guest management, Martina and Francesca in event production and supervision, and Rachele running social media. Budget consultation and vendor contract negotiation sit inside the same list, which matters most for a couple planning from abroad and unable to sit across a table from an Italian supplier themselves.

Venue scouting is treated as a discipline in its own right rather than a first step to rush through. The team's own account of it is a search across trusted Italian vendors for a fine selection of properties, filtered by what a couple's guest count, budget and style actually require rather than what photographs best. A floor plan and a digital mockup follow once a venue is chosen, so a couple can see the shape of their own wedding day before a single chair is hired.

The reviews carry the same names through rather than a generic team credit, which is itself a small piece of evidence about how the agency actually runs. On Google, where the business holds a five-star average across fifty-seven reviews, Danielle Fiorito wrote that from the very beginning, Ilaria was nothing short of amazing, citing her professionalism and warmth. Bianca Loureiro credited Ilaria by name for coordinating three separate events, a welcome dinner, a destination vow renewal and a birthday party, seamlessly. Leslie E. Liberman wrote that Lara and her team are truly a dream team, and that as Americans planning a wedding in Italy, she felt lucky to have found her.

What those three reviews share, beyond the star rating, is that none of them credits an anonymous agency. They name Ilaria specifically, or Lara specifically, which tracks with a business still run hands-on by its two founders sixteen years and several hundred weddings in.

The published portfolio itself runs to around thirty named couples, the great majority married in Tuscany and the rest split across Lake Como, the Amalfi Coast and Veneto, which is a working record rather than a curated handful of highlight weddings. It is also, by the agency's own account, a deliberately incomplete one: the stated limit on how many events it takes on each year means the archive grows slowly on purpose, a trade the agency makes in favour of attention over volume.

Pricing follows the same logic as everything else here. Nothing is published as a flat fee, on the agency's own site or on its directory listing, because the agency prices the wedding's individual elements, venue, catering, florals, music, transport, separately rather than folding the whole day into one number quoted before anyone has spoken. A couple's actual figure comes out of the enquiry conversation, once the destination, the guest count and the mood have been established, which is also the order the agency asks for that information in.

So the fit is fairly easy to describe. A couple who wants a wedding built around a specific mood rather than a fixed package, who is marrying somewhere in Tuscany, on Lake Como, in Puglia, on the Amalfi Coast or in Veneto, and who would rather work with a small team that turns weddings away than a large one that never does. The agency's own account of its style runs from vintage and shabby-chic through to bright contemporary colour, and the two versions of that one cypress-corridor statue are the clearest single piece of proof that both ends of the range are genuine.

Start with the destination and the guest count. Everything about how the wedding actually looks gets decided after that, together, which is the whole of the method.