We slept in this morning with last night being a late one, and we expect the same for tonight. Tonight is the actual wedding, whereas the past few nights have all been part of the celebration leading up to the big day. Dan, along with a few other friends, are ushers for the wedding which is as close to groomsmen for this wedding as there will get since there are no groomsmen. So the group of groomsmen spent the day with Ben before he needed to take off for the ceremony.

Before heading over to Ben's hotel room, Dan and Yvonne grabbed brunch at Ditta Artigianale since we enjoyed the food and coffee the first time around. After wrapping up at brunch, Dan grabbed his stuff and went over to Ben's where he and the other ushers hung out for the afternoon and grabbed some pizzas to hold us all over until the wedding. Ben took off in the late afternoon and the rest of the guys got ready and took off about an hour after Ben left. Everyone was bused to the wedding venue, Villa La Pietra, which was about a 10 minute drive from central Florence. The location is a florentine renaissance villa which made for an amazing home with some amazing gardens. The ushers were given their instructions in advance of the rest of the guests arriving. We were to help seat guests at the site of the ceremony since it was on grass terraces that made for some tricky steps and footing. Yvonne hung around the airbnb for the afternoon while Dan was out, and later grabbed a bus with some of our friends to get to the ceremony with the rest of the guests.

A bit deeper into the gardens at Villa La Pietra

They had some amazing weather all weekend, and the ceremony also had great weather, maybe just a little hot in the sun (which made for a pretty sweaty usher job). They had a Jewish ceremony, and their rabbi did a great job on explaining everything that was happening. Their rabbi ended up being a huge hit all weekend as he is a good looking guy that does triathlons, studied physics, and is an entrepreneur... and has a wife and kids... and is a rabbi. He joined us on the morning runs which is where Dan got to meet him for a bit.

After the wedding there was a great party. The group moved over to a neighboring garden for a cocktail party that was complete with a salad station, chef station, and a cheese station. The cheese station had more then 3 different types of mozzarella cheese!!! We spent an hour or two at the cocktail party before everyone moved to another neighboring garden where there were tents and wooden floors set up with some great market lights hanging between the tents. We had another great meal to cap off the weekend, a few more great speeches, dessert/coffee bars, and an overall great party. It ended up being another late night, but we had a blast while at the same time we had to say goodbye to our friends Labe and Norma as they were leaving early the next morning. We hope to see Norma when we go to Venice since she is staying a bit longer in Venice with Labe's parents.

Such an incredible and busy weekend. Hard to believe it is over now since there was so much going on, and every event continued to impress. It was also great for us to catch up with a bunch of friends. We now have one more day in Florence before we take off for the last leg of our trip in Venice.

Wedding Day

Dan Golembeski