Getting married in Bardolino
Bardolino is a lakeside town on the eastern shore of Lake Garda, in the province of Verona, and it is known for its wine. The Bardolino DOC is made on the hills around it, and the town gives its name to the shore: a promenade, an old centre with narrow streets and a harbour, and vineyards that begin a few minutes from the water. Couples who marry here often combine a ceremony on the lake with a dinner at a wine estate in the hills.
The town has real age. Around 983 a castle was built here under Berengar of Italy, and in the twelfth century Bardolino appears as a free commune; the Scaligeri of Verona later enlarged the walls to enclose the whole village, and the Republic of Venice kept a naval base here. The church of San Zeno, from the middle of the ninth century, is one of the few Carolingian buildings in Italy and still has traces of its early frescoes, and San Severo, from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, has an early medieval crypt and frescoes from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. Around the centre stand nineteenth-century villas, among them Villa Bottagisio and Villa Guerrieri.
The Zeni Wine Museum, founded in 1991, and the Museo Sisàn, devoted to fishing and bird hunting on Lake Garda, show how much of the town is built around the lake and the vine. For a bride this means a wedding day that moves between stone, water and green, and light that changes from the harbour to the hills.
Wedding makeup artist in Bardolino: at a glance
- Artist
- Elena Potapenko, bridal hair and makeup, 18+ years of experience
- Based in
- Veneto, Italy; travels to Bardolino for weddings
- Specialty
- Bridal hair and makeup by one artist, with a trial before the day, plus hair and makeup for the mother of the bride and the bridal party
- Languages
- English, Italian, Ukrainian and Russian
- Booking
- Check whether your date is free
Where weddings happen in Bardolino
Bardolino offers a town hall, old churches, villas and wine estates. Each one asks something different of the hair and the makeup.
The town hall and the civil registry
Civil ceremonies are arranged with the Ufficio di Stato Civile of the Comune di Bardolino, which says that the date and the hour of the ceremony must be agreed with the office. The room is requested through the commune’s online service. The town council meets in the room on the first floor of Villa Carrara Bottagisio, one of the historic buildings of the town, so the registry will tell you which room has been given to you. That decides how many people are in the room before the ceremony and how early everyone has to be ready.
San Zeno and the old churches
For a Catholic ceremony the church of San Zeno, from the ninth century, and San Severo, with its crypt and frescoes, are the old churches of the town, and the parish church of San Nicolò and San Severo is from the nineteenth century. Church services follow the parish’s timetable, so the morning is counted back from the time the church gives you.
The villas and the wine estates
The villas in and around Bardolino, built in the nineteenth century, and the wine estates on the hills are where many couples hold the ceremony or the reception. The venues set their own rules and their own timelines, and some are a drive from the lake. If you are getting ready at the estate and marrying there, the getting-ready room and the garden are close together, and the plan is simple.
The lakefront and the harbour
The promenade and the old harbour are the places for portraits, with the lake behind and the town’s walls and towers to one side. The quiet hours are early morning and the last hour before sunset, when the stone and the water take the same warm light.
These are places where couples marry in and around Bardolino, not a list of Elena’s past jobs. If your ceremony is at another venue on the shore, the plan works the same way: write the venue and the time, and the morning is counted back from there.