“I Don’t Think I’ll Ever Quite Be Over It”: Lindsey & Elliott’s Wedding at Isola del Garda

Love Story

They met at The Drake, a restaurant and jazz lounge in Laguna Beach - the kind of place where a conversation can start easily and end hours later without either person noticing. Elliott asked Lindsey to sit down, they started talking, and from that moment on, as she puts it, “we never really stopped.” The connection was immediate, the conversation effortless, and by the end of the evening, he had already asked to see her again.
The second date was the very next night. He arrived to pick her up in a tuxedo, holding flowers. “Effortlessly smooth and romantic, which is exactly who he is,” Lindsey says. She was smitten - and four years later, entirely unsurprised to find herself on an island on Lake Garda, watching him wait for her at the end of an aisle lined with flowers.
The proposal came on the Amalfi Coast, at Casa Angelina in Praiano. As the sun went down, Elliott led Lindsey up to the rooftop, which had been transformed with florals and candlelight overlooking the sea. A singer began performing one of her favorite songs the moment they stepped onto the terrace. A photographer they had met on a previous trip to Italy was already there, quietly capturing everything. “It was completely overwhelming in the most beautiful way.” September in Praiano, the lights of Positano glowing below, the Faraglioni of Capri in the distance - they had the rooftop to themselves all night.

About Your Wedding

Thirty-five guests. One island. A vision that had been forming, quietly, since the day Elliott showed Lindsey a photograph of Isola del Garda while they were still dating and she said - out loud, without thinking - “Oh my God, where is this?! I would die to get married there.”
The fact that they actually did still feels surreal to her. The concept was clear from the beginning: cinematic, romantic, and distinctly Italian. An elegant garden party, timeless and refined, built around the architecture of the island rather than competing with it. One year of planning, two venues connected by water, and a timeline designed as much around photography as around the day itself. A letter-writing tradition sealed in a box during the ceremony, to be opened on their first anniversary. And a first dance that nobody in that room saw coming.

Morning Details

Lindsey and Elliott got ready in adjoining suites at Grand Hotel Fasano in Gardone Riviera - the same hotel, different rooms, neither of them seeing the other until the ceremony. The morning had a quality that Lindsey deliberately cultivated from the start. Rather than traditional getting-ready photos, she says, “it felt more like a high-fashion moment, infused with a La Dolce Vita spirit.” She had chosen a couture robe from Voir Bride that felt dramatic, glamorous, and unapologetically playful - “empowering, and it immediately set the tone and energy for the entire day.”
Tucked into her wedding day clutch were two things that never made it into any photograph: a cross necklace she had carried since childhood for her something old, and a ring that had belonged to her grandmother for her something borrowed. The invitations - designed in watercolor with hand-painted shimmer details by Momental Designs - had already done their own quiet work of setting expectations. Everything that followed was in keeping with them.

Bride Getting Ready

Lindsey didn’t try on a single dress until the venues were booked. “It was important to me that my gown felt completely in harmony with the setting,” she explains - and that meant knowing the setting first. Her vision was specific: A-line, lace, timeless and romantic, leaning into soft florals rather than anything heavy or traditional.
She found it at the Monique Lhuillier flagship store in Costa Mesa, California - and that was that. The gown came with a matching bolero jacket and a long veil, bringing everything together. Jimmy Choo shoes, a white parasol with a delicate floral detail, and hair and makeup by Elena Panzeri completed the look. Her bouquet was white roses - a quiet nod to her grandmother, whose name was Rose, crafted by Fiore all’Occhiello by Alessandro Piacenza alongside the rest of the day’s florals.
For the reception, she changed into a short Nadine Merabi dress with beaded fringe and white ballroom dance shoes. “I knew I wanted a look that could match the movement and energy of the dance” - and it did, entirely.

Groom Getting Ready

Down the hall at Grand Hotel Fasano, Elliott was getting dressed in his bespoke tuxedo by The Cutting Room Bespoke - handmade, precisely cut, and exactly right for a man about to steer a Riva boat across Lake Garda to his own wedding. The morning was his own, the day still ahead of him, the island waiting somewhere out on the water.
He wouldn’t see Lindsey until she walked down the aisle. That was the plan, and he kept it.

Photoshoot Before The Ceremony

The pre-ceremony shoot wasn’t a location - it was a journey. Lindsey and Elliott each arrived at Isola del Garda by their own boat, moving across the lake toward the island and toward each other, the cameras following from the water. Lindsey arrived by Riva Aquariva. Elliott chose a classic wooden boat - and somewhere on the way across, glided past the guests’ boat, waving, entirely in his element.
Two boats, one lake, and an entrance nobody on that island was going to forget.

Ceremony

“Isola del Garda was a dream before we were even engaged.” Standing on it now, with 33 guests gathered and Can’t Help Falling in Love playing on the violin, the dream had fully arrived.
The ceremony aisle was lined with flowers from end to end - lush, immersive, intimate, and grand at once. Above, arrangements were suspended between the arches of the loggia, adding what Lindsey describes as “a soft, ethereal dimension.” The intention was never to decorate the island but to frame it - “to create a setting that framed Isola del Garda’s beauty and our forever.”
The morning of the wedding, they had each written a letter to the other. During the ceremony, those letters were sealed in a box - to be opened on their first anniversary, with new ones written each year. Their vows, also written by hand and read aloud for the first time standing together, were the moment they’ll carry with them longest. “Our vows were the most special part of the ceremony for us.”

Photoshoot After The Ceremony

After the ceremony came the boat. Elliott took the wheel of the Riva, Lindsey sat at the back, her veil catching the wind as they moved across the lake from Isola del Garda toward Torre San Marco. The photographers followed from a second boat, cheering. “In that moment, it felt like the lake was ours,” Lindsey says - and in the photographs, it does. They stopped first on the island itself, using the loggia and gardens before moving to the water. The final portraits came upon arriving at Torre San Marco, on the staircase at Villa Fiordaliso - the transition from one part of the day to the next, captured at exactly the right moment.

Wedding Venue & Decor

“Isola del Garda was a dream before we were even engaged. One day while we were dating, Elliott showed me a photo of the island, and I remember my jaw dropping.” The fact that they actually married there, Lindsey says, still feels surreal.
The approach to decor followed the same logic as the dress: understand the setting first, then build around it. “The architecture of Isola del Garda is breathtaking on its own, so our intention was never to compete with it, but to quietly elevate what’s already there.” White, blush, peach, and green, with gold accents - hydrangeas, roses, dahlias, English roses, carnations, snapdragons - carried through every arrangement by Fiore all’Occhiello. At the reception, long tables in green and white toile linens, garlands running their full length, crystal candelabras, and candlelight that deepened as the evening went on.
The personal details ran throughout: fans on every ceremony chair, menus printed with each guest’s name, vintage Italian postcards sourced individually for a postcard guestbook. “It felt more personal, created a really meaningful keepsake, and tied in perfectly with the destination setting.”

Couple's Advice

“Work with a planner and vendor team who truly know the location. At a place like Isola del Garda, the logistics are unlike a traditional venue - everything from boat transfers to the way the light evolves throughout the day requires a thoughtful, well-executed approach. Once you’ve built the right team, trust the plan while staying flexible. A place like Isola del Garda has a way of creating its own magic, and being present enough to take it in is what makes it unforgettable.”

Cocktail Hour

Reception

Guests were transported by boat from Isola del Garda to Torre San Marco, arriving by water as the day began. An aperitif, then dinner, then a live seven-piece show band that kept the energy exactly where it needed to be.
And then the first dance. Mambo Italiano by Dean Martin, choreographed in full - Lindsey in the Nadine Merabi dress with beaded fringe, Elliott in his tuxedo, a routine they had spent weeks learning together. “Elliott isn’t a dancer, but he embraced it completely, and our dance lessons quickly became one of our favorite parts of the lead-up to the wedding.”Nobody in the room saw it coming. Nobody forgot it.
Toward the end of the night, fireworks over the water - an unforgettable grand finale to a day that had never once dropped below extraordinary. Behind all of it was planner Katiuscia Minozzi of Haera Events, the person who made a destination wedding spanning two venues, multiple boat transfers, a seven-piece band, and fireworks feel effortless on the day itself. “She made what felt impossible feel seamless,” Lindsey says simply. The photography and videography teams - Vivid Symphony and AG Studio - brought the same level of expertise, fluent in the particular demands of shooting on water and across changing light. “Everyone brought their A game and utmost professionalism, which allowed us to be fully present, knowing every detail was being handled by people who not only understood our vision, but elevated it.”