A civil ceremony in Italy requires paperwork. A lot of it. Embassies, police headquarters, municipal offices, apostilles. Sofiya handled it from Canada with the kind of determination that tells you everything about who she is.

The Mayor of the municipality came to the villa to officiate. It was the most Italian thing that could have happened — and it happened exactly as it should.

Sofiya, from Ukraine, and Eric, from Canada, brought their families to Casa Olivi for a wedding that felt rooted in the place it happened. During the antipasti, a trio of guitar, accordion and violin played the songs that Italy has been playing at its tables for a hundred years. The guests — Canadian and Italian-American on Eric's side — didn't need to be told what they were hearing. They already knew.

The ceremony was followed by a poolside dinner, a millefeuille assembled on site by the pastry chef, and fireworks that closed the evening the only way an Italian night should close.

The afternoon before the reception, photographer Lato Photography took the couple into Treia — a medieval hilltop town nearby, walls and monuments and narrow streets still going about their day. The couple walked through it all. The town didn't stop for them. That's what made the photos work.