A Lake Como wedding, and the invitation that belongs to it

For a wedding on Lake Como, Everleigh House, the London studio that designs digital wedding invitations, made Amore Lario. Your guests tap a gold wax seal, and a pair of ivory doors opens on a watercolour Lake Como. It suits the lake because a Como invitation asks for restraint, with warm ivory, a little gold and type that looks engraved, and the view does the rest.

That is the short answer. The longer one is about what your guests need from an invitation when the wedding is a flight away.

What should a Lake Como wedding invitation look like?

Start with the place. Como means villas with gardens that run down to the water, stone terraces, boats crossing in the afternoon and evening light on the hills behind. Your guests have seen the photographs. An invitation that tries to compete with that, with bright colour and big type, tends to look like a holiday brochure.

Restraint works better. Keep the palette to a warm ivory and one metal, gold or champagne. Choose a serif that looks pressed into paper, and give it room on the page. Use one painting or one photograph of the lake at a time, and let it be large. If you print anything, ask your stationer for a soft ivory card in place of a bright white. On a screen, the same rule applies to the background.

How Amore Lario was drawn

Amore Lario opens like a painting coming to life. The guest taps a gold wax seal, the ivory doors part on the lake, and a watercolour film carries them to a rose-lined aisle at sunset, where a painted couple walk on together. Every chapter after that is painted in the same hand. A music box turns for the countdown, the villa above your venue has its own painting, and a small drawing sits beside each moment of the day.

The palette was tuned against real stationery, so warm ivory and the barest gold read as engraved on a phone screen. Your story, the schedule and the details are paced like a printed card, a little at a time, so nobody meets a wall of text. Your designer personalises it with your names, your venue and your wording on Signature or Prestige. Open Amore Lario on your phone to see the opening for yourself.

What do guests travelling to Italy need from the invitation?

A guest at a wedding in their own town can work most things out. A guest flying to Italy cannot, and they will want answers before they book anything. The invitation is the place to give them.

• Which airport. Name the airport that suits your venue, and ask your venue or planner how long the transfer usually takes from there.
• Where to stay. List two or three hotels at different prices, near the venue or near the boat. If you hold a block of rooms, give the date it closes.
• How to reach the venue. Give the address, the nearest town, and whether guests arrive by road or by water.
• The timings. The ceremony, the dinner and, above all, the last transfer back to the hotels.
• Passports. British guests must check the Italy page of the GOV.UK foreign travel advice. In October 2026 it said that a passport must have been issued less than ten years before the day you arrive, and must expire at least three months after the day you plan to leave the Schengen area. One line on the invitation can save someone a wasted trip to the airport.

In the Writing Desk, travel has a chapter of its own, so none of this has to squeeze into the schedule.

Boats, and the last one home

If your guests will cross the water, find out who runs the boats. The public boats on Lake Como are run by Navigazione Laghi, which publishes a timetable for each season. Check the timetable that covers your wedding date, and do not assume the summer service in spring or autumn.

If your venue sits across the water from the hotels, the public boats may not run late enough for a wedding that ends after midnight. Navigazione Laghi also hires out its boats for private transfers and events, and private boat companies on the lake do the same. If you book a boat for your guests, put the pier, the departure time and the return time on the invitation, in that order. Your guests will read it standing on the pier, with a glass in one hand and a phone in the other.

When should you send a Lake Como invitation?

Earlier than you would for a wedding at home, because your guests must book flights and hotel rooms before anything else. We would send a Save the Date first, as soon as the date and the venue are fixed. A Save the Date starts at £79, and what you pay for it counts towards Signature, Prestige or Legacy within 12 months.

Then work back from the day you want to send the invitation. On Signature, your first design arrives within two to three weeks of your brief (up to four in the busy season), and each later design takes a few days. Every detail must reach your designer at least two weeks before you share the link. In practice, open the Writing Desk about two months before the day you want to send.

Two families, two languages, one link

If your wedding brings together two families from two countries, every package includes up to two languages at no extra cost, and the translation is included, so English and Italian can sit in the same invitation. Ask someone in the family who speaks Italian to read every Italian line before you approve.

The invitation travels as one private link, by WhatsApp, text message or email. There is no international postage, and no envelope lost somewhere between London and Bellagio. Each guest replies on the page for their household, with a meal for each course and any dietary needs if you ask, and every reply arrives in your guest list.

Our guide to choosing a collection that matches your venue covers other places and other moods. If it is Como, open Amore Lario on your phone and show it to whoever is coming with you to see the villa.