One Day, I Want to Get Married Here: Nadia & Mohamad’s Wedding at Villa Cipressi
- Author: Natali Grace Levine
- Wedding date: 09/08/2024
- City: Lake Como
Love Story
Nadia had dreamed of marrying in Italy since childhood, whispering the wish to herself on family trips long before she’d met anyone to actually marry. That dream stayed quietly in the background of her life until she met Mohamad, and the two moved fast in the best possible way. “Early in our relationship, during our first week of getting to know each other, we created a special memory with a road trip from Toronto to Niagara-on-the-Lake,” the couple says of those early days. This spontaneous drive turned into wandering charming streets, taking in lakeside views, and quietly realizing how natural their connection already felt.
That same stretch of Niagara-on-the-Lake ended up meaning even more than either of them expected. When Mohamad chose it as the place to propose, he wasn’t picking a scenic backdrop at random - he was bringing their story full circle, transforming the setting of one of their earliest memories into the place where their next chapter would begin. Engaged in the summer of 2023, the couple knew almost immediately they wanted to celebrate the following summer, giving themselves just enough time to plan the wedding Nadia had been quietly picturing since she was a girl.
About Your Wedding
On September 8, 2024, Nadia and Mohamad married at Villa Cipressi in Varenna, on the shores of Lake Como, surrounded by 60 of their closest family and friends. Coming from an Arab background, where weddings are traditionally grand, expansive affairs, Nadia had always pictured something different for herself - intimate rather than sprawling, but still rich with the luxury and elegance she associated with a proper celebration. “The vision for our wedding was timeless elegance with a touch of old-world Italian romance. We wanted the day to feel classic, sophisticated, and effortlessly beautiful,” the couple says of the concept guiding nearly every decision that followed.
Planning a wedding an ocean away from the venue itself brought its own real challenges. Managing vendors, visualizing details, and trusting choices made almost entirely from a distance in Toronto meant the couple had to lean heavily on faith in the people they’d hired - a leap that paid off once they found a team who understood their vision as clearly as they did themselves. What made the day work, by the couple’s own account, wasn’t just the setting itself but the way each space at Villa Cipressi unfolded into the next - ceremony, aperitivo, reception, and dance floor each carrying its own distinct mood, turning the day into something closer to a journey than a single fixed event.
Morning Details
Getting ready at Villa Cipressi, Nadia already had pieces of her story gathered around her, her dress from Toronto, her veil and hairpiece from two Iraqi designers based in Jordan, her shoes from London, her getting-ready robe from Dubai, each one waiting for its moment before the day even properly began. Every piece of her final look was chosen with real intention, tracing back to a different place that had shaped who she was long before she ever met Mohamad, Iraq, Toronto, Jordan, London, and Dubai woven together into a single, deeply personal story rather than scattered details most guests would ever think to trace back to their origins. Nadia was, quite literally, carrying pieces of her own history down the aisle with her.
The couple's wedding bands carried a similar sense of personal intention. Nadia chose a radiant-cut diamond set in a gold band, drawn to its timeless, elegant shape, while Mohamad settled on a classic silver band that matched his own understated style. Stationery from The Lights Factory tied the morning's smaller details together, with personalized menus later featuring delicate ribbon bows inspired directly by the bow detail on Nadia's own gown.
Bride Getting Ready
Nadia’s dress search centered on one clear idea: something timeless enough to match the classic beauty of Lake Como itself, without losing any sense of who she actually was. “I wanted a look that reflected the classic beauty of the Lake Como setting - sophisticated, romantic, and effortlessly refined… graceful, classic, and designed for a celebration I had always dreamed of,” she says. She knew almost instantly once she found it, requesting a few personal customizations, including a more elegant covered back, to make the gown feel entirely her own.
Her bouquet followed the same restrained, classic instinct - a gathering of white roses, timeless and understated, designed by The Garden of Love to match the all-white florals styled throughout the villa’s own breathtaking spaces. Every detail around her, from the candlelit dinner room glittering with chandeliers to the stationery’s delicate bow motif echoing her dress, was built to feel like a single, cohesive world rather than a collection of separate choices.
Groom Getting Ready
Mohamad got ready at Villa Cipressi as well, on his own side of the property, dressed and settled well before the first look pulled the two of them together for the first time that day. The morning stayed quiet and understated, matching the same effortless elegance running through the rest of the wedding. With the villa's grounds giving each side of the wedding party room to spread out, Mohamad had the same kind of unhurried, low-key stretch of time Nadia was having elsewhere on the property - no rush, no crowd, just the last quiet hour before the day properly began. By the time he made his way toward the gardens for the first look, there was little left to do but wait for the moment he'd later describe as making everything suddenly feel real.
First Look
The first look took place just outside the iconic gardens of Villa Cipressi, with Villa Monastero visible nearby and Lake Como stretching out behind them both. Mohamad waited in the scenery first, and by his own account, the moment hit him harder than he expected. “His heart started racing, and he was instantly overwhelmed with happiness,” the couple recalls - the instant it became real that he was actually about to marry the person he’d built a life with.
Nadia felt something just as immediate once she stepped into the gardens and saw him standing there, Lake Como behind him exactly as she’d always pictured it. “When I tapped his shoulder and he turned around, I couldn’t stop smiling,” she says of the moment that finally made the whole day feel real, after years of imagining it and months of planning it from thousands of miles away.
Photoshoot Before The Ceremony
Portraits before the ceremony stayed close to home, Villa Cipressi itself offering enough backdrop without needing anywhere else. Between the gardens, the lake views, and the villa's own architecture, there was more than enough variety on the property to carry a full portrait session without a single change of location. Every corner of the estate seemed to offer something different - a shaded garden path here, an open view of the lake there, the villa's own facade doing quiet work as a backdrop in between. Staying on-site also meant neither Nadia nor Mohamad lost any of their limited time before the ceremony to travel, spending those last stretches of the morning surrounded by the same scenery that would carry through the rest of the day.
Ceremony
The ceremony took place at Villa Cipressi, with the couple choosing a piano-and-cello cover of Coldplay's "A Sky Full of Stars" rather than a traditional processional. Since Nadia and Mohamad had already exchanged private vows, they built the ceremony around celebrating the people and moments that brought their families together, rather than following tradition purely for its own sake.
The ring exchange became the moment neither of them expected to carry so much weight. "During our ring exchange, I looked at Mohamad and quietly said, 'We did it.' He looked back at me and said the same words," Nadia says, a small, unplanned exchange that captured everything else they were both feeling in that instant. Their first dance as newlyweds followed almost immediately, set to Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love," before Nadia shared a father-daughter dance with her own father, who had walked her down the aisle earlier that day, dancing to "You'll Be in My Heart" by Phil Collins followed by "Daddy Cool" by Boney M. A mother-daughter dance with her own mother came next, joined partway through by both grandmothers dancing together to "Dancing Queen." The ceremony closed with cake cutting and an exit through a shower of petals, cheers, and the small, tightly gathered crowd of people who mattered most.
Photoshoot After The Ceremony
That portrait session actually took place the day after the wedding, as the final event of the weekend, a quiet boat ride from Varenna to a farewell lunch in Tremezzo that gave Nadia and Mohamad a rare, unhurried window to process their first full day as a married couple before the weekend properly ended. The ride itself felt genuinely special, a quiet moment for just the two of them to soak in the beauty of the lake, surrounded by nothing but water and each other.
The farewell lunch itself became a gentle close to the whole celebration, with guests gathering to relive favorite moments from the day before. It wasn't a grand final gesture so much as a soft landing, one last shared meal before everyone scattered back to Los Angeles, Dubai, London, Toronto, Amman, and everywhere else they'd traveled in from.
Wedding Venue & Decor
The wedding’s color palette stayed deliberately simple: classic white throughout, chosen specifically to feel timeless rather than tied to any passing trend. Planner Guja Pusterla played a central role in bringing that vision to life, coordinating every detail in Lake Como while Nadia planned the wedding almost entirely from Toronto.
Personalized touches ran through nearly every corner of the celebration. Guests received a custom wedding newspaper detailing the couple’s love story, along with personalized matchboxes as small keepsakes to take home. Instead of a traditional guest book, Nadia created custom postcards featuring Lake Como itself, each stamped with a personalized design bearing her and Mohamad’s names - a detail she specifically wanted to revisit for years, rather than a guest book destined to sit unopened on a shelf.
Choosing the venue turned out to be less complicated than the couple expected, once they actually found the right one. “Mohamad has always said ‘happy wife, happy life.’ He knew how much having my dream wedding meant to me, especially because I had envisioned a destination wedding in Italy since I was young,” Nadia says. After searching through other options, Villa Cipressi settled the question almost immediately - not just for its scenery, but for the sense that it could give their traveling families an entire memorable weekend, not just a single afternoon.
Couple's Advice
“The two biggest pieces of advice we would give to couples planning their wedding are to consider having an intimate celebration and to choose their venue first. We always dreamed of having an intimate wedding, and after experiencing it ourselves, it was truly one of the best decisions we made. A smaller celebration let us spend meaningful time with every guest while also creating so many special moments together as a couple. Our second piece of advice is to choose your venue and location first. Once you have that foundation, so many other decisions naturally fall into place.”
Reception
One moment that truly stood out was the reception room reveal. Walking into the space for the first time, we were completely in awe. The room was everything the couple had envisioned and more, and watching their guests react to it for the first time made the moment even more meaningful than they’d anticipated.
The couple made their entrance to “Sarà Perché Ti Amo,” carried in on the same energy and excitement radiating from everyone in the room. Later, moving from the reception into the dance floor, guests sent them off with a joyful napkin toss set to “Volare” - a small, spontaneous burst of celebration that captured the tone of the entire evening. Dinner leaned fully into classic Italian flavors, from a gnocchi starter through sea bass and beef tenderloin, closing with a five-tier all-white Chantilly cake alongside a full spread of Italian desserts, including tiramisù, cannolo siciliano, and panna cotta with red berries. Aperitivo had already set the tone earlier in the day, with a champagne tower that guests toasted beneath as the celebration properly began - the same champagne tower Nadia and Mohamad point to, alongside the ceremony itself, as one of the moments they’ll remember most clearly from the entire weekend.
Wedding Team
- Videographer AG Studio Videography
- Event Planning @gujapusterla.weddingplanner
- Photography @camillaanchisi
- Floral Design @thegardenoflove.it
- Beauty @thestudiocomo
- DJ @clarainjazz_music_agency
- Invitations @thelightsfactory
- Lights @upcomo
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