The Bride Wore a Veil Crafted From Antique Lace to Marry at a 16th-Century Church in Naples

Italian noble Anna Virginia Visocchi Sanseverino di Marcellinara first met Corso Sestini Branca di Romanico of the Fernet Branca family over lunch with friends in Milan. “It was one of those instantaneous, powerful connections: an exchange of glances and words that lets you guess there is something special,” Anna Virginia recalls of their 2019 meeting. “But it was not yet our moment.”

A year later, the two met again in a similar fashion. “Same place, same energy, this time without obstacles,” Anna Virginia says. “We started talking about our passion for traveling to the most remote places in the world, and suddenly I felt an unexpected sensation: Corso seemed familiar to me, like someone I had known forever.” A chance third meeting cemented their future. “A chat that became a dinner, a dinner that became a love,” she adds.

The following week, Corso invited Anna Virginia on a trip to Lugano. “Like a true ‘old-fashioned’ gentleman, first he asked permission from my brother Giorgio, already his friend,” says Anna Virginia. “Giorgio, with his usual irony, answered: ‘Are you sure? My sister is very challenging… at your own risk and peril.’ Corso smiled. And since then, we have never left each other.”

On a late summer weekend, Corso and Anna Virginia traveled to Belgium together for a wedding. “Arriving in the splendid countryside surrounding the lake where we stayed, Corso spotted a small rowing boat,” remembers Anna Virginia. “He decided that it was the idea of the century to ‘borrow’ it without asking anyone. We left everything on the ground: phones, distractions, the world. Just us two, a pink sunset, and elegant swans as perfect extras.” Alone on the lake, Corso got down on one knee with a ruby ring that belonged to his maternal grandmother. He had asked Anna Virginia’s father for permission months before. “It was a unique moment: intimate, spontaneous, emotional… and also a bit dangerous. In the meantime, the little boat had started drifting away,” she says. “But it didn’t matter. The world was there in that meter-and-a-half of water and amazement. A perfect instant that I will carry with me forever.”

Deciding on the wedding venue was “simply obvious,” shares the bride. “We would get married at home, in the 18th-century Vesuvian villa to which I am deeply attached, thanks to the memory of my beloved great-grandmother Lilly, a wonderful woman who lived there and who made that place part of my soul.” While the Naples villa was being restored, it finished just in time for the July 5, 2025, celebration. The ceremony would first be held at the Church of the Gesù Nuovo—another location full of history for the bride. “The church, with its rusticated façade and almost suspended atmosphere, was once the Palace of Prince Roberto Sanseverino, one of my ancestors,” Anna Virginia explains. “Finding ourselves there, in the heart of a place so deeply linked to my family history, made every moment full of meaning.”

The bride admits she hadn’t always dreamed of a big wedding, so she turned to her mother, Selvaggia Sanseverino di Marcellinara, to lead the charge on planning alongside Carolina Pignata Lambert, owner of La Festa by Homeating. “Every time we arrived in Naples for [wedding planning] appointments, we found my mother completely absorbed in the preparations, brimming with ideas and surrounded by hundreds of meters of fabric—samples for tablecloths, napkins, cushions, and upholstery,” shares Anna Virginia. “I remember Corso was astonished when we chose the thread color to have 400 crochet doilies handmade in the Marcellinara family estate, one for each bread plate. It was our way to say: every guest welcomed with the same warmth as one who crosses the threshold of home.” Other family members pitched in to help their day come to life: Corso’s mother Ilaria Branca supported on invitations, his brother Carlo curated welcome boxes, and the bride’s brother Giorgio aided with music and seating. “Everyone put their heart and commitment into this collective creation,” shares Anna Virginia.