Pocket Billiards Anyone?

We've recently read in Tobias Jones' excellent commentary on modern Italy The Dark Heart of Italy that it is customary for Italian men to touch their testicles should a priest or other cleric cross their path. The belief is that since priests are forbidden to have relations with women, they are so jealous of lay men that they put a hex on their balls. This hex, however, can be warded off by making sure to give your plums a quick russle everytime clergy is sighted.

The issue of what happens at Italian weddings when man, wife and priest are all in close proximity, and are dependent on one another for a successful outcome (both on the day and in having future offspring) remains a mystery to us, so if anyone out there could let us know before Thursday, June 28th, we'd be much obliged. Naturally, we would not want to be furtively tossing our salad before God, his representative and the congregation present if custom forbade it, nor indeed would we want to risk a curse by failing to do so.

On a more serious note, and since we dearly want you all to be able to be there to witness said game of pocket billiards, here are some links to directions to the town of Bucine from various places.

In addition, we recommend that you purchase a road map of Tuscany or Italy to help you get to Lupinari and to other places in the vicinity. We think the best maps are the Michelin series available at most Barnes & Nobles and Borders.

To Bucine from Florence Airport (Amerigo Vespucci)

To Bucine from Florence (city)

To Bucine from Pisa Airport (Galileo Galilei)

To Bucine from Rome (city)

To Bucine from Rome Airport (Fiumicino)

To Bucine from Rome Airport (Ciampino)

For other routes, visit viamichelin.com and punch in your coordinates.


Visit Lupinari.com for a simple map of the area or click on the image at right to see a map showing how to get from Bucine to Lupinari. And, click here for easy to digest directions to Lupinari from Bologna, Rome and Florence.

Buon Viaggio!!

Practically, though not actually, related...

Thankfully, we're putting the finishing touches to the wedding planning and you'll be pleased to learn that you can help us do this by answering two very simple questions.

1. Do you have any special dietary requirements? [vegetarian/vegan, kosher/halal, macrobiotic(?), food allergies etc.] Please let us know so we can have the caterers fix up something appropriate and delicious for you.


2. Will you be at Lupinari on the evening of Tuesday, June 26th? We are planning a short wine n'cheese welcome / get-together, so please let us know if you will be around.

Note: The consumption of wine and cheese is not mandatory at said welcome event, and definitely not for those with certain food allergies. However, those among who you believe they are lactose intolerant will be reassured to learn that not only are very few of us so afflicted with this condition that we cannot drink a daily tall glass of milk without ill effects, but cheese contains no lactose. Lactose is a sugar found in milk, 98% of which is drained off with the whey (cheese is made from the curds) and the other 2% is quickly consumed by lactic-acid bacteria in the act of fermentation.

So, in two weeks time, let's eat (cheese), drink (wine) and be merry!

P.S. - the interesting cheese factoid comes straight out of Jeffrey Steingarten's witty and informative book, The Man Who Ate Everything. We highly recommend it to everyone, but especially those who are fussy eaters.

To Reiterate, I'll Say This Only Once

There are always problems with new technologies. Indeed, the older ones amongst you will remember the days when a man with a red flag had to walk ahead of every car to warn pedestrians of the death-trap rushing their way at, well, walking speed. This was but a bump in the road compared to the problem we've identified with blog software, which causes the older posts slip off the foot of the page and then searched for manually. Can you imagine the inconvenience?

In order to counter this problem we're having to repeat the very first post our little fingers ever typed on our, then, barely conceived wedding blog, back in January. We don't like to repeat ourselves so we're saying this only once. Read and absorb the details below as if this website were about to self-destruct, a la Mission Impossible, in five, four, three...


General Information

As a helpful reminder, in case the oh-so humorous Save the Date card we sent you in the fall happened to fall off your fridge, here are the basic details of our wedding again.

Location - Tenuta di Lupinari, "I Lupinari," 52021 Bucine, Arezzo, Tuscany
T: 055/9912011 F: 055/9911870

Date - Thursday, June 28th, 2007, ceremony at 6:00 p.m.

Attire - Business/lounge suits for gentlemen and dresses for ladies(hats optional).

Here's how the "big day" is going to shake out.

Ceremony - The wedding ceremony will take place outdoors on the property at Lupinari, adjacent to where guests are staying.

Cocktail Hour - The ceremony will be followed immediately by a cocktail hour at which our guests are invited to slake their thirsts with a selection of chilled beverages and take the edge off their appetites with a variety of hors d'œuvres and local cheeses.

Reception - Guests will be invited to take their seats for the reception at around 8:00 p.m. Speeches will be made and several people will probably be embarrassed. Dancing will follow the dinner, and is compulsory. We expect everyone to embarrass themselves at this point.

End - since we're all staying on the property, there are no carriages at a certain hour. We intend to party until we can go no longer and hope that some of you will still be there with us at the end.

Bucine - Piccolo, ma Corposo...

Lupinari as the better-informed amongst you will know is adjacent to the small town of Bucine (pronounced Boo-chee-nay, emphasis on the nay). At first glance, which is probably all you'll have time for, especially if you blink while driving through it, Bucine looks remarkably similar to many other small Tuscan towns, particularly those not on the tourist map. It seems prosaic and ordinary, without the wonderfully-intact medieval architecture of Montepulciano or Greve in Chianti - "fly-paper for tourists," according to ultimate travel nerd, Rick Steves - and in some ways it is.


However, it almost certainly has several things going for it that the more touristy towns do not - useful shops: butcher, baker, electrical supply store, florist, and food co-op (supermarket); a movie theater (open two days a week) - see at right; and a polo club. Indeed, scratch the surface and there is much more to Bucine than meets the eye. For example, according to local legend, Jesus Christ appeared to the villages' children, standing on an oak log at what is now the site of the sanctuary church of San Salvatore. Then, many followers then led a procession to the site carrying stones for the temple. These stones were all different shapes and sizes, and they can still be seen cemented around the gates of this rural church. Roots of an oak tree were found on the site during renovations in the 19th century and have been preserved for posterity in a display case inside.

For the less devout amongst you, who are looking to spend an afternoon poking around Bucine, perhaps walking off a large lunch of the local specialties, boiled meats and bread soup, you might be interested to visit the town's Palaeontology Museum. On the other hand, palaeontology might be a bit hard to digest, and so, after strolling around the town, you may be curious to know the meaning of the net in the shape of a seashell held by a lion you've seen in various places. Well, wonder no longer, wedding-bloggers, the symbol is the coat-of-arms of one of the former ruling family's of the area, and features this strange trap which was used to catch fish and small birds in the abundant local rivers and streams. The trap is known as a bucine, and is thought to be the origin of the town's name.

All in all, Bucine is perhaps more typical of modern Tuscan towns than the best-known places on the tourist trail. That's not to say that you should avoid one or the other, but that different towns cater to different populations. Bucine caters primarily to its residents and the local rural population, and Montalcino caters primarily to tourists fresh off the bus and jonesing to be shaken-down for souvenirs and over-priced lunches off the tourist menu. It's useful to bear these things in mind, that's all.

Anyway, here's a link to directions/map of Bucine, which is probably more helpful than most of the pointless witterings above.

P.S. - the post title means "small, but full-bodied," which I think fairly sums Bucine up.

The Elephant in the Room

If you know that a bellicose North African chap by the name of Hannibal has the distinction of being the only person in recorded history to have entered Rome on the back of an elephant, you probably also know that there are many more comfortable, though less grand, ways of entering the eternal city. Why then, we hear you cry, does this blog does not have any posts about Rome, Milan, Florence, or really any of the major Italian cities? Do its authors not think wedding guests will be interested in visiting these cities? Indeed, does this big-headed wedding blog think itself so superior as to willfully ignore such monumental and famous places? The very cheek of it!

The truth is, of course, quite the opposite. In acknowledging their limitations both in time and ability, the blog authors deliberately decided not to write anything about Rome, Milan, Naples, Turin, Florence or Venice for fear that such posts would be nothing but a gloss — barely scratching the surface of these complex and storied cities. After all, hefty books have been written about them, and it is not our intention to try to compete. But do not let yourselves be discouraged by the weight of literature in the same way as your weak-minded authors! We encourage you to check out as many of these places as you have the time and energy for.

We know that many of you are arriving in Rome as your first port of call in Italy, and while, like every guidebook, we highly recommend you visit the pantheon, the forum, the colosseum, campo di fiori, the Vatican City, etc, we also suggest you take a couple of hours to check out the monumental ruins of the Baths of Caracalla.

In their heyday, they were able to accommodate several thousand bathers at once and the sheer scale of the complex is staggering even today. Perhaps more amazing is that these leisure facilities were just one of several in the environs of ancient Rome, offering an insight into the size of the population of the center of the Roman Empire. For more information about the baths and the fascinating (seriously) engineering that allowed hot and cold running water in the second century AD, click here.

For a more general guide to Rome that offers advice on what to do and see in Rome in 48 or 96 hour stays, visit the official Rome tourist board website.

A Recurring Theme
A post on this website would hardly be complete without a reference to locally-available comestibles, so it is fortunate that Rome is a superb city for eating — one of our favorites, in fact. Trastevere is an excellent quarter of the city for authentic Roman restaurants, as is the Jewish Ghetto on the opposite bank of the River Tiber. Indeed, good food can be found in almost every neighborhood but, as in all cities that are on the tourist map, you can get very over-priced bad meals too, so you ought to show discretion about what you eat and where, especially if you find yourself with a hunger in the immediate vicinity of any of the major sights. However, Rome is a surprisingly small and compact city with a maze of intertwining streets, so within two minutes walk you can be completely off the beaten-track and seated at a neighborhood trattoria, paying locals prices.

For more details about Roman restaurants click here and for tips on typical Roman dishes to look out for, click here. Buongustaio!

Apropos of Nothing, A Show of Human Kindness

Warning: this post has nothing whatsoever to do with weddings or Italy, so feel free to ignore it if that’s all you care about.

Very clearly, though, it’s not all everyone cares about, and we were awakened from our own navel-gazing and hand-wringing over our wedding plans with a jolt this last weekend, when a very kind gentleman helped us out of tight spot just because he felt like it.

Our car was dead and wouldn’t be resurrected in spite of applying jump leads and high voltage, so we headed down to PepBoys Auto to see what could be done. Knowing the sum total of bugger all about cars between us, we were inquiring about a battery-powered jump-starting kit we’d seen on the internet, when another customer — a stocky guy with gold front teeth — suggested a way we could check to see if the battery was at the root of the problem, or if it was something more sinister. Moreover, when we told him that there was little chance of us being able to successfully perform said test, he told us that was no problem, he’d come and do it for us.

Pulling out a socket-set and a pair of gloves, Claude, for that was his name, set about testing our battery, and confirmed that it, and not the alternator, was at fault. He then told us we should buy a new one and he’d wait there and fit it for us when we returned with it.

Staggered by this selfless show of kindness, we at once felt hugely grateful and rather embarrassed that we had to rely on the charity of a total stranger to help us out. It did, however, confirm our belief in the innate good of humankind, especially when, as we thanked him profusely, Claude told us he was happy to help, saying, “If I wasn’t doing this, I’d just be at home arguing with my wife.”

So, thank you again, Claude. You were a real gentleman and a great help to us. We wish we could thank you properly but we’re sure you’ll get your just reward one day.

Another upshot of this situation was that we both know how to change a car battery now. So, it seems good things happen to good people, right? Right...?

Dancing Under the Stars

Vicky Pollard showing us all how it's done...

Many of us dream, we're sure, of whirling around a highly polished dance floor with aplomb, completely in step with a partner who is fleet of foot, erect of posture and minty of breath. Indeed, if you're like us, this may only ever be a dream, as the likelihood of straining knee or ankle ligaments, and/or head butting ones partner in the face, is far greater than the chance of successfully completing even the briefest of waltzes.

This should not dissuade you from shaking a leg come June 28th - quite the opposite in fact. For not only are all styles and ability levels welcome on the parquet, they are demanded. In submitting a request to have your fave tunes played at the reception, you, perhaps unwittingly, entered into an unwritten contract, committing yourself to abandoning any normal sense of decency and inhibition you might feel when bad music is playing. Maybe we should have made that clear when asking you for musical suggestions, but we didn't.

Some of you may be interested then, in working on your fancy footwork ahead of time and for those who do, we humbly submit this remarkable piece of footage for your consideration. We suggest you study this child's moves, they will come in handy should the music of a certain recently-divorced, serial-flasher, Louisiana-native, mother of two ring out during the reception...

You have been warned.

Yo Mamma Didn't Raise No Fool!

It's a dust-bunny... get it?

Congratulations to those among our wedding guests who have done themselves and their parents proud by paying the remaining balance for their accommodation on time (by May 1st). You are all at the top of the class, though given your obvious time-management and scheduling ability, that may not be an unusual feeling.

For those of you still furtively groping down the back of the sofa in search of spare change, we hope that you come up clutching something shiny and not something sticky and/or hairy. We also hope that in due course you will send us a check/cheque for the balance. The sooner we have all your money in, the easier it is for us to get that squared away with Lupinari ahead of the wedding, making it much more relaxing for you and us as the event draws near.

Once again, our thanks to those calendar-conscious over-achievers, and our encouragements to the bottom-feeding, ne'er-do-wells, amongst you. We're very much looking forward to seeing you all in less than two months!

Cheese by Any Other Name is Still Formaggio

Believe me, you will dance to this...


Yes, indeed wedding blog readers, when you ask a stupid question, you are bound to get a stupid answer. So when we recently invited our wedding guests to tell us their favorite wedding reception tunes, we were unsurprised to be deluged with more cheesy requests than a DJ at a college formal. We were surprised though, just how seriously you took our invitation, and so we expect you all front and center when the dancing starts.

This post, as much as it might want to, is not about to name and shame you for your cringe-worthy selections, instead we thought it might amuse you to find out some of the aural delights your fellow guests put forward. There's quite a variety of formaggio... Enjoy!

Ice, Ice, Baby - Vanilla Ice
I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) - The Proclaimers
Annie's Song - John Denver
Club Tropicana - Wham
Hit Me Baby One More Time - Britney
It Only Takes a Minute Girl - Take That
Livin' On A Prayer - Bon Jovi
Brick House - The Commodores

and, though we won't name names, (you know who you are Tim Hind) - Cotton-Eyed Joe by The Rednecks

Should you find that you're not as familiar as you should be with some of these "classics," you might decide to visit the toe-curlingly fabulous Am I Right.com where you can enter the lyrics you've been singing in the shower and find out what they really are.

Please note: that in asking you to submit your fave tunes, we understand that you'll be expecting to hear them. However, we feel it's important to add that some requests (Chaz & Dave, for example) were quite beyond the pale, and have been rejected for fear of reducing a fun-filled celebration to a groan-inducing headache.

Gimme What the Guy on the Floor's Having...

Unsurprisingly, for a place so full of good things to eat and drink, Italy is also famous for several distilled spirits and liquors. Perhaps the best-known, and most feared, is grappa -- a burning, cough-inducing, firewater made from the macerated skins leftover from wine-making. Similar to the French eau-de-vie, grappa is reputed to settle the stomach and cure what ails you, assuming you can remember what was wrong after drinking it.

Sambuca is another liver-busting spirit you'll be familiar with. Made from anise seeds (aniseed) and typically drunk over ice with 3 toasted coffee beans, it can be very enjoyable after a large meal -- it's strong flavor and sticky sweetness cutting through the fullness you're experiencing. It's also sometimes, unadvisedly, drunk (in the UK) as a shot at the end of a boozy night, and is never, ever a good idea.

There are, however, other strong waters that, when mixed together, while still likely to make you feel a mite tipsy, can be enjoyed without the physical symptoms caused by grappa or sambuca. The most famous of these cocktails is the Negroni. Invented in Florence in the 1920s, it was named for Count Camillo Negroni (1829-1913), who asked the bartender in his local to add gin to his favorite drink, the Americano. Negronis are made from equal measures of gin, sweet vermouth and Campari served over ice and with a twist of orange, and most frequently, consumed as an aperitif. In the US, negronis are often served with a splash or more of soda water. You can also buy ready made negronis, Negroni 1919, in the same way you can buy alco-pops, but we suspect that's more for the teenagers in the park than mature adults like ourselves. What? eh? oh...

Anyway, why not try a negroni at a Florentine cafe before dinner? Apparently, they are the perfect thing to relax with of a warm summer's evening, and work wonders in whetting the appetite.

And, just to round out this boozy post, an Americano is simply equal measures of sweet vermouth and campari, again sometimes diluted with a splash of club soda and served over ice. The drink was originally known as the "Milan-Torino" because of its ingredients - Campari from Milan, and Cinzano, the vermouth, from Turin - but in the early 1900s, the Italians noticed a surge in Americans enjoying it and renamed it for them. It seems only right then, that our wedding guests from the left side of the Atlantic do their bit for international traditions and order themselves an Americano, or two, just for kicks.