The Italian Wedding Feast — Confetti, Courses, and Campanilismo

What it is

The Italian wedding feast is one of the most legendary food events in European culture — legendary in duration (Italian wedding dinners frequently run five to six hours), legendary in quantity (ten to fifteen courses is not unusual in Southern Italian traditional weddings), and legendary in the specificity of its regional variation. An Italian wedding tells you immediately and precisely where in Italy it comes from. The food of a Sicilian wedding is entirely different from the food of a Neapolitan wedding, which is entirely different from the food of a wedding in Bologna or Turin. Italy's campanilismo — the fierce local pride, literally "bell-tower-ism" (devotion to the area within earshot of your own village's bell) — is nowhere more visible than at the wedding table.

The confetti — sugar-coated almonds as matrimonial theology

The defining favor of the Italian wedding (and, by adoption, of weddings in much of the world influenced by Italian tradition) is the confetti — sugar-coated almond (mandorla confettata) — given to guests, typically in groups of five, in a small tulle or organza bag (the bomboniera). The five almonds are not arbitrary:

1. Health (salute) 2. Wealth (ricchezza) 3. Happiness (felicità) 4. Fertility (fertilità) 5. Longevity (lunga vita)

The almond itself is significant: it is bittersweet — the nut is bitter beneath the sweet coating, and this is intentional. Life and marriage, the Italian tradition acknowledges, are bittersweet. The couple shares not only sweetness but difficulty. The sugar coating is the love; the bitter almond is the truth.

The confetti as wedding favor appears in Italian records as early as the 15th century (the town of Sulmona in Abruzzo, which has been producing confetti since at least the Renaissance, remains the confetti capital of Italy and produces an estimated 70% of all confetti consumed at Italian weddings). The tradition spread through the Mediterranean — confetti are central to Greek, Lebanese, Tunisian, and other Mediterranean wedding traditions, and to Latin American quinceañera customs through Spanish colonialism.

Regional wedding food traditions

Sicilian wedding: The Sicilian wedding feast may be the most baroque expression of Italian wedding abundance. Antipasto spreads alone can last two hours and include dozens of items: grilled vegetables with olive oil, olives, caponata (sweet-sour eggplant), arancini (fried rice balls), pani câ meusa (in Palermo — spleen sandwiches, specifically for street celebrations), cold cuts, various cheeses, seafood preparations (marinated anchovies, smoked swordfish, bottarga). The pasta course features Sicilian pasta con le sarde (sardines, fennel, pine nuts, raisins — the complex Arab-Norman flavor signature of Sicilian cooking). The meat course may include roasted lamb, falsomagro (a rolled beef stuffed with eggs, cheese, and cured meats). The dessert is spectacular: cassata (the baroque ricotta-cream-marzipan-glazed dome cake of Palermo), cannoli, frutta di martorana (marzipan fruits so realistic they are displayed as centerpieces).

Neapolitan wedding: The Neapolitan feast centers on pasta (inevitably) — maccheroni al ragù or sartù di riso (an elaborate rice timbale layered with ragù, peas, meatballs, and hard-boiled eggs, encased in a crust of rice). The wedding dessert table features struffoli (honey-glazed fried dough balls with colored sprinkles), pastiera napoletana (the latticed tart of wheat berries, ricotta, candied citrus, and orange blossom water), and elaborate torte.

Northern Italian (Emilian/Bolognese) wedding: In Emilia-Romagna, the home of the world's greatest pasta culture, the wedding feast centers on tortellini in brodo (the ring-shaped fresh pasta in clear capon broth — emotionally the most important dish of Bolognese food culture), followed by bollito misto (a magnificent tradition of slow-boiled mixed meats — capon, beef, tongue, cotechino sausage — served with multiple sauces including salsa verde and mostarda), and finishing with a zuppa inglese or torta millefoglie.

Tuscan wedding: Bistecca alla Fiorentina (enormous T-bone steaks from Chianina cattle, grilled over wood fire), ribollita (Tuscan bread soup, served earlier in the day), pappardelle with wild boar ragù; desserts centered on cantucci (almond biscotti) with Vin Santo wine for dipping.

The duration — why Italian weddings take all day

Italian wedding meals are not efficiently paced. They are not supposed to be. The meal unfolds across hours because the meal is not a prelude to the wedding; the meal is the wedding, in the sense that the shared table is the central act of Italian social life. The story told at an Italian wedding is a food story: look at what we made, look at how much we have, look at how long we can sit together and eat. The wedding feast is the marriage announced to the community through the only medium the community fully trusts: the table.

Reference notes

• Related entries: Confetti almonds, Cassata siciliana, Cannoli, Arancini, Caponata, Tortellini in brodo, Bollito misto, Bistecca alla Fiorentina, Pastiera napoletana, Struffoli
• Related cuisines: Italian (Sicilian, Neapolitan, Emilian, Tuscan, Roman)
• Cross-links: Confetti → Latin American quinceañera wedding favors; Cassata → Sicilian desserts; Marzipan → confectionery of the world

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