Alma Consort · Destinations
Italy gives a choir the building it was written for.
Alma Consort flies from London to sing nuptial Masses and blessings in Tuscany, on the Amalfi Coast, at Lake Como, in Puglia and in Florence.
What kind of ceremony are you having?
Almost every couple we sing for in Italy is British, Irish, American or Australian, marrying in a country they do not live in, and choosing the shape of the day themselves. What Italy offers is range.
A Catholic nuptial Mass is available if one of you is Catholic, and it gives a choir more to do than any other option. A Church of England service is possible too, and more often than couples realise: the Diocese in Europe has Anglican chaplaincies in Florence, Milan, Rome and elsewhere, and an English-language Anglican wedding in Italy runs on the order of service you would recognise from home, hymns included. A humanist or celebrant-led ceremony at a villa or garden has no liturgy at all, which leaves the music open. Many couples handle the legal marriage quietly at home and treat the Italian day as the ceremony that matters.
Tell us which of those you are having when you enquire, because it changes the programme more than the venue does. A Mass wants a sung ordinary; a humanist ceremony wants three or four pieces placed where the words stop.
Across a Tuscan or Amalfi weekend
Italian weddings are rarely contained in an afternoon. Guests arrive on the Thursday or Friday, there is a dinner in the town the night before, the ceremony and reception fill the Saturday, and a good many stay through Sunday lunch.
The thing worth knowing is that a consort which has flown out for the ceremony costs very little more to keep for the rest of it. The flights and the rooms are the expensive part and they are already paid. Singing at a welcome dinner in a courtyard on the Friday, then in the church on the Saturday, then again over drinks in the villa garden, gives your guests three quite different experiences of the same group, and in Italy the first two usually happen in different buildings, so the two sound quite different.
Italy’s one geographical quirk: the church and the reception villa are often twenty to forty minutes apart. Tell us the plan and we will work out whether we travel with the guests or go ahead. One sizing note: the villa set has to carry over a party in full flow, so it usually wants more voices than the church did, where everyone was silent and the stone was helping.
If you are having a nuptial Mass
A Mass is the most rewarding shape a choir can be asked to fill, and if it is the route you are taking it is worth understanding what it gives you. There is an entrance, a Kyrie and Gloria, a responsorial psalm and Gospel acclamation, the exchange of consent, an offertory, the Sanctus and Agnus Dei around the Eucharistic Prayer, communion motets, and a recessional. That is eight or nine points where music belongs, against three or four at a civil ceremony.
A wedding without a Mass, a nuptial liturgy with the rite of marriage but no Eucharist, is common where one partner is not Catholic, and shortens the middle of the service without changing its shape.
One practical point worth raising early with your parish: many Italian churches take a firmer line than English ones on what may be sung inside them. Requests for the Wagner and Mendelssohn wedding marches, and for secular songs during the service, are refused often enough that it is worth asking your priest before you plan around them. Sacred repertoire is never the problem, and there is a great deal of it. If your church says no to a piece you had set your heart on, tell us and we will suggest something that does the same job liturgically.
Latin, Italian, and a congregation split in two
The readings and the spoken rite will be in Italian, and if your guests are mostly British that is a large part of the service they will not follow. The sung parts are where we can even it out.
Our usual recommendation is to sing the ordinary — Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei — in Latin. Latin belongs to neither side of the aisle, it is what the building was designed around, and Italian guests recognise it as readily as the setting recognises them. Motets can then run in both directions: a Palestrina or Victoria at communion, and something unmistakably English — a Stanford, a Howells, an arrangement of a hymn your family knows — where the service opens out.
Where a bilingual couple wants the congregation to sing rather than listen, we usually pick one hymn everybody can manage and print the words in both languages.
What Italian churches do to a consort
An Italian stone church is close to the acoustic English choral music assumes. A Romanesque pieve with a barrel-vaulted nave will carry eight voices to the back without help, and the two- or three-second reverberation flatters polyphony written for exactly that. In these buildings you generally need fewer singers than you would expect, not more.
The exceptions are worth knowing. A small chapel in a villa garden has no reverberation at all and wants more voices to feel full. A baroque church with heavy drapes and side chapels can swallow sound. And an outdoor ceremony on a terrace gives nothing back, which is the single most common reason we recommend twelve voices where a couple had imagined eight.
Getting a consort to Italy
Italy is the most straightforward destination we sing in. Flights from London to Pisa, Florence, Naples, Milan and Bari run several times a day, and the consort can fly out on the Friday, rehearse in the church on the Friday evening or Saturday morning, and sing that afternoon.
As British musicians travelling into the Schengen area we work within the ninety-days-in-any-one-hundred-and-eighty limit and carry the social-security paperwork that applies to a short professional engagement. We handle that ourselves; it has never yet stopped a booking, and it is not something you need to manage. What we do ask is time: flights and rooms for twelve to twenty-four people on a summer Saturday in Tuscany or Amalfi need booking well before the venue would otherwise chase you.
A foreign couple marrying in Italy will also have their own paperwork — a nulla osta and, for a church wedding, permissions routed through your home parish. Your planner or the church will lead on that. It affects our diary only in one way: start early.
Where in Italy
Tuscany
The reason most couples ask. A country pieve outside Siena or in the Val d’Orcia gives you stone, a barrel vault and near-perfect conditions for Renaissance polyphony, and a consort of eight will fill it comfortably. Reception venues here are usually a drive from the church, which matters for planning: if you want us to sing again during drinks, build the transfer into the running order.
The Amalfi Coast
Cliffside churches with vertical approaches and, often, no vehicle access to the door. Ravello and Positano both work well musically, the churches are stone and generous, but tell us early if the singers face a long stair climb in August heat, because that belongs in the schedule rather than in the surprise. Terraces here are spectacular and acoustically dead; plan voices accordingly.
Lake Como
A villa wedding on Como is usually a symbolic or civil ceremony in a garden or a loggia rather than a Mass, so the music sits differently: an entrance, something during the vows, and a set during the aperitivo. Several villas have small private chapels, which are lovely and small. Eight voices is often the maximum the space physically allows, and it is enough.
Puglia
Masserie and baroque town churches. Lecce and the surrounding towns have some of the most flattering interiors in Italy for a choir. Bari and Brindisi are the airports; both add a drive, which is worth factoring into a Friday arrival.
Florence
City churches, short transfers, and the easiest logistics in Italy for a group this size. The trade-off is that central Florentine churches are heavily booked and often stricter about music than a country parish. Ask what is permitted before the programme is settled rather than after.
Questions about singing in Italy
Can we have a choir at a Catholic wedding in Italy?
Yes, and the nuptial Mass is the service that gives a choir most to do. What varies is the repertoire the parish will allow. Sacred music is never an issue; secular pieces and the two famous wedding marches are refused by some churches. Ask your priest early, and tell us what comes back. There is always a sacred piece that does the same job in the same place.
Should the Mass be sung in Latin or Italian?
We usually suggest Latin for the sung ordinary. It is neutral between a British and an Italian congregation, it suits the buildings, and it is what most of the repertoire was written for. The readings and spoken rite stay in Italian, and we can add an English motet where you want the service to feel like yours rather than a translation.
How many singers do we need for a Tuscan church?
Fewer than you would need at home in a drier room. A stone church with a vaulted nave does half the work: eight voices fill it, and twelve is enough for a substantial parish church. An outdoor ceremony or a garden chapel is the opposite case and wants more voices, not fewer. Send us a photograph of the space and we will tell you.
How far ahead should we book for an Italian wedding?
Nine to twelve months for a summer Saturday. The constraint is rarely the singers’ diaries; it is flights and accommodation for twelve to twenty-four people in Tuscany or on the Amalfi Coast in high season. A date closer than that is still worth asking about, particularly outside July and August.
Travel and permit information on this page last checked 29 August 2026. Requirements change and vary by venue, diocese and celebrant; confirm the current position with us before you fix a date. Other country guides.
Enquire
Tell us where in Italy you are marrying and when. If the date is free, Luca Wetherall will come back with what the music could be and what the whole engagement would cost, travel included.
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Thank you. Luca Wetherall will reply personally within one working day.