For Carla Alcamisi Wedding Planner, creating an Amalfi Coast wedding means turning each couple’s vision into a deeply personal celebration, shaped by the destination yet never defined by a formula.
Born, raised and based in Positano, she combines an intimate knowledge of the region with a bespoke approach, guiding international couples through every stage of their wedding experience in Italy.
For Carla Alcamisi Wedding Planner, every celebration begins long before the first design decisions are made: it starts with getting to know the couple, understanding their story and discovering what has drawn them to Italy.
From her base in Positano, Carla plans destination weddings across the Amalfi Coast for an almost entirely international clientele, bringing together different cultures, expectations and personal stories to create celebrations that feel entirely their own.
Her work goes beyond planning a beautiful event in one of Italy’s most sought-after wedding destinations. It is about understanding the Amalfi Coast from the inside, designing every detail around the couple and creating an experience in which the setting, the people and the celebration come together naturally.
Carla Alcamisi Wedding Planner: bespoke celebrations rooted in the Amalfi Coast
For Carla Alcamisi, weddings have been part of her world since childhood. She remembers playing dress-up in her mother’s wedding gown and staging imaginary ceremonies with her friends, long before that early fascination became a career.
After graduating in Communication and Management, she gained experience working in luxury hotels in Positano before founding Carla Alcamisi Events.
Today, she plans weddings throughout the Amalfi Coast while remaining firmly rooted in her hometown, where her company is based.
That connection to Positano has become an essential part of her professional identity, particularly when working with couples planning their wedding from thousands of miles away.
Around 90 per cent of her clients come from abroad, primarily from the United States. Some choose Italy as a way to reconnect with their family heritage; others have simply fallen in love with the country and dream of celebrating their wedding on the Amalfi Coast.
What they find in Carla’s work is an approach built around personalisation rather than ready-made formulas.
There is often a misconception that a wedding planner offers a pre-packaged service, which can result in weddings that all feel quite similar. My approach is completely different. I meet the couple and build the entire project around their dreams.
Every detail is personalised. It truly is a bespoke event.
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Planning an Amalfi Coast wedding starts with knowing the destination
Behind the effortless beauty of an Amalfi Coast wedding lies a destination whose distinctive geography calls for experience, local expertise and meticulous planning.
During the busiest months of the year, traffic, restricted-access areas, steep stairways and limited loading windows all become part of the equation. Some venues can only be reached on foot or by small local vehicles, while at more challenging locations, event materials may even need to be carried in by hand.
It is a side of the Amalfi Coast that couples rarely encounter when first discovering the destination through photographs, films or social media, yet it can make all the difference when turning an ambitious creative vision into reality.
For Carla, understanding these practicalities is just as important as recognising the creative potential of a venue.
Local regulations and landscape restrictions must also be taken into account, from limitations on fireworks and lighting installations to strict rules governing music and event timings.
“Knowing the area is essential. If you don’t understand the logistics of the Amalfi Coast, managing a complex wedding project can become incredibly difficult.”
From Destination Wedding to a three-day Italian Wedding Experience
For many international couples, travelling to Italy is no longer about celebrating a single wedding day.
Increasingly, the occasion unfolds over an entire wedding weekend, allowing family and friends to share several days together and experience the destination beyond the ceremony itself.
The celebrations might begin with a welcome party inspired by Italian conviviality, complete with pizza and freshly made mozzarella, or with a beach day or a day out on the water. The wedding day becomes the centrepiece of a wider itinerary, perhaps followed by a cooking class, a boat trip or another relaxed day by the sea.
This means Carla’s role often extends far beyond the wedding itself. For international guests, she can oversee accommodation and airport transfers as well as experiences ranging from Pompeii and the Path of the Gods to Capri and the Blue Grotto, alongside restaurant recommendations and a carefully considered selection of local activities.
They may have discovered the dream of the Amalfi Coast through films, social media or online. But experiencing it in person is something else entirely.
The result is an Italian wedding experience in which the destination becomes part of the couple’s story and the guests’ memories.
A destination wedding planner who starts with the couple
Before mood boards, flowers or tablescapes, Carla starts with a conversation.
The first meeting usually takes place over a video call. She asks couples about themselves, how they met and where the proposal took place. Far from being small talk, these conversations help her understand the people behind the wedding she is about to create.
For me, the human connection is fundamental. I could be the best wedding planner in Italy, but if I can’t connect with the couple and there is no chemistry between us, my work loses its meaning.
From there, the creative process begins. Whenever possible, couples travel to Italy for venue visits before their vision gradually takes shape through a colour palette, floral design, stationery, tablescapes, furniture and entertainment.
Mood boards and initial ideas are then considered alongside the realities of the chosen venue and the available budget. Not every idea can be translated literally into an Amalfi Coast setting, whether because of space, logistics or local restrictions.
Part of Carla’s role is therefore to find solutions that preserve the essence of the couple’s vision while making it both achievable and appropriate for the setting.
As the wedding approaches, the focus shifts from design to the choreography of the day itself. Ceremony music, the couple’s entrance, the cake-cutting and even traditions such as the bouquet toss are considered as individual moments within a carefully orchestrated celebration.
International couples, Italian soul: bringing cultures together
Working almost exclusively with international couples has made cultural exchange an integral part of Carla’s approach to wedding planning.
A destination wedding in Italy may be chosen because a couple wants their guests to experience Italian culture, but that does not mean leaving their own traditions behind. Instead, Carla looks for thoughtful ways to bring different cultures together within the same celebration.
Jewish rituals, American customs and family traditions can all find their place within an Italian setting.
At wedding in Praiano, for example, an Italian-American groom and a Dominican bride brought together Italian, American and Dominican guests. The celebration paired the spirit of the Amalfi Coast with Dominican music and cuisine, allowing both cultures to become part of the couple’s story.
For Carla, this exchange is one of the most rewarding aspects of working with international weddings. While she introduces couples and their guests to Italian culture, each celebration also gives her an opportunity to discover traditions, rituals and stories from around the world.
The human side of destination wedding planning
There is another side to Carla’s work that cannot be captured on a mood board.
Planning a destination wedding can involve months, sometimes years, of conversations, decisions and unexpected turns. Over time, the relationship between planner and couple naturally develops into something far more personal than a simple professional exchange.
Carla wants her clients to see her not only as the person overseeing their wedding, but as someone they can rely on throughout the entire journey.
I want them to see me as a point of reference, a friend, someone they can confide in. I want every client to feel cared for, listened to and never overlooked.
That connection sometimes continues long after the wedding day and Carla recalls former brides who still share milestones in their lives with her.
It is perhaps the clearest expression of why the emotional dimension remains so central to her work.
As wedding professionals, we live through love stories and happy moments. We share their love story and experience their dream alongside them.
And even after years of planning weddings, Carla still gets emotional when she thinks about her couples seeing each other for the first time down the aisle, emotionals fathers walking their daughters down the aisle and the moment when a project that once existed only as a sketch finally comes to life before their eyes.
The Amalfi Coast as Carla Alcamisi’s signature
If there is one element that runs through Carla Alcamisi’s weddings, it is not a particular flower, colour palette or signature aesthetic. It is the Amalfi Coast itself.
Its flavours, scents and traditions become details to be reinterpreted for each couple rather than repeated from one celebration to the next.
A lemon-shaped gelato cart might appear within an otherwise unexpected contemporary design and local touches can sit alongside an aesthetic inspired by Los Angeles, New York or the couple’s own cultural background.
The destination is never reduced to a decorative theme. Instead, it becomes part of a conversation between where the couple comes from and the place they have chosen for one of the most meaningful celebrations of their lives.
For Carla, this is also where the future lies: continuing to bring the Amalfi Coast into her work while searching for ideas that feel fresh, developing new projects and finding unexpected ways to interpret a place she knows intimately.
