An Elopement at Palazzo Nani Mocenigo in Venice
Their First Trip to Venice Was the One Where They Married
Rich and Maggie met on a first date in Napa, California, on 26 November 2021. Bumble brought them together; one evening decided the rest. They both say the same thing about that night — they knew. Both had been married before, and both had learned exactly what they were looking for.
Four and a half years later they boarded a plane for a city neither of them had ever seen. Venice was not a return, not a memory, not somewhere they were coming back to. It was new to both of them, and that was the whole point: they are adventurous people, and they wanted the place that would carry their marriage to be a place they discovered together, on the same day, at the same time.
Two People, a Frescoed Salon, and the Vows They Wrote Themselves
At two in the afternoon on 4 June, Rich and Maggie stood alone in a salon of Palazzo Nani Mocenigo. No guests, no aisle, no seating plan — just the two of them, their celebrant, and four Gothic windows opening onto the rooftops of Venice. Above them, a ceiling of eighteenth-century frescoes. This is what an elopement in Venice looks like when a couple chooses intimacy over spectacle.
They had written their own vows, by hand, on paper. Rich read his first and did not get far before he had to stop. Maggie read hers holding her bouquet of white roses and eucalyptus against her dress. Rich had also written a prayer himself and sent it ahead of the day — a Protestant blessing, in their own words, for a marriage they had both waited a long time for. Between them they have five children, and the ceremony held space for all of them.
Then the rings, the kiss beneath the frescoes, the certificate signed on the old wooden table, and the walk back down the red-carpeted marble staircase — husband and wife, still just the two of them.
Prosecco on the Grand Canal and a Kiss Under the Rialto
They stepped out onto the balcony first, above a quiet canal, the bouquet still in Maggie’s hand. Then down to the water, where a polished wooden taxi was waiting at the palazzo’s landing.
Rich opened the Prosecco somewhere along the Grand Canal, sunglasses on, palazzi sliding past on both sides. They toasted between the facades, and again as the Rialto Bridge passed overhead — two glasses, one boat, and a city that has been watching couples do exactly this for six hundred years.
From San Giorgio to the Bridge of Sighs, a Walk Through Venice
The afternoon belonged to Venice. They walked the stone quay on San Giorgio Maggiore with the campanile of St Mark’s standing across the water, stopped beneath the white marble of Palladio’s facade, and drifted under the Rialto in a gondola while the gondolier worked his oar above them.
Then Piazza San Marco, the basilica behind them, the arcades of the Doge’s Palace, and finally the Bridge of Sighs — where they stood forehead to forehead in the middle of the crowd and did not notice a single person. In ten years they see themselves as grandparents, still travelling, still madly in love. It started here. If you are dreaming of an elopement in Italy, Venice knows how to hold a promise.
OUR REAL VENICE STORIES
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