That promise, along with outstanding Google reviews of the hotel praising its attention to customer service, allowed them to take a chance—and book the venue without seeing it until they arrived for their wedding weekend. “I just kept reminding myself that if all else failed, at least we’d be in Switzerland with all the people we love,” Serina says. Luckily, they wound up loving the venue once they saw it, particularly its “unbelievable scenery” and easy access to Zurich; the journey was only an hour by train, car, or easily found Uber, making it simple for their guests flying into the city from New York, Chicago, Florida, Indiana, and more.
Sal compares the experience of finally seeing each space in person throughout their wedding weekend as “unwrapping a present.” “We had been planning for months, but we didn’t have the whole vision in front of us until the day of,” he says. “We got to see everything we’d talked about just unfold right in front of us.”
Get extremely organized
It might have been possible for Serina and Sal to be so chill about not seeing their venue ahead of time because their planning process was so thorough: After explaining their vision for the wedding and sharing a few Pinterest boards, the couple had weekly calls with their planners to look over recommended vendors while considering their portfolios, rates, and availability. Gaea used Trello, a project-management software that allows everyone on a team to follow the status of various items. “That’s the first time we’d ever used that, and it kept things super organized,” says Serina.
What about the look they wanted? “The three words we based everything off of were cozy, intimate, romantic,” says Serina, while Sal focused on a love of evergreen trees and the color green. Ultimately, their ceremony space was adorned with gauzy white and blush-colored curtains, wooden chairs, and explosions of rose and ranunculus in creams and icy pink (Gaea also designed the florals), while the reception featured deep green tablecloths laid with evergreen branches and lit by cream tapered candles and twinkly lights.
Find hands-on help
To make sure all their friends and family could book their travel to Switzerland with ease, the couple created a wedding website on Minted that aimed to address any possible issue that might come up for their guests. “We thought, ‘Okay, if we had never been to this city, and never used a train before, what basic questions would they have?’” Sal says.
And because the group was so small, it didn’t feel like a hassle to check in with them about bookings—a small price to say, ultimately, for the journeys they were taking. “I’m in communication with these people all the time because they’re my favorite people,” Serina says. “I would just reach out directly to see if they had any questions or to help them with navigating from the airport to our venue. I wanted everyone to feel like they could ask us any questions, because it is a big undertaking traveling to a different country for a wedding.”
Kick things off with cheese
For the first night of their celebration, the couple hosted a dinner to welcome guests and help them get to know each other. On their previous trip to Switzerland, they’d loved eating fondue. In case leaning into a bubbling pot of cheese together wasn’t enough bonding, the couple devised a game to get people talking, though they were shocked at how hilariously effective it was. They distributed a “Find the Guest” Bingo board that encouraged people to, say, figure out which of the guests was a cardiologist (the groom’s brother), and the result was “mayhem,” they say, as people ran around chatting. “We did not expect people to be that engaged, but the prize was that we would pay for a trip for someone to come visit us [in Tampa], and for some reason, that got everyone going,” Serina says.
Leave room for drama
Continuing their theme of creating very intentional moments of intimacy, the couple began their wedding day by getting dressed and then having private, separate prayer sessions with their own family members. Sal and Serina had their first look with each other in a small valley surrounded by the snowy peaks, after which they exchanged private vows. Finally, the couple and their guests boarded gondolas for the slow, stunning ride to the ceremony location on a higher peak. “The gondolas added to the excitement, and a lot of the kids especially had never been on gondolas going up that high,” says Sal. It made for a dramatic entrance to the ceremony and cocktail hour area; guests then rode them down again to enter the reception space for dinner in the hotel’s valley.
Craft an utterly unique ceremony
Choosing their officiant was a no-brainer: The bride’s sister-in-law Amanda is a teacher and former church pastor who is “magical with words,” as Serina puts it. She’d previously officiated their brother’s wedding, “And we turned to each other at that ceremony and were like, ‘Okay, this is exactly what we want for ours,’” Sal remembers.
