This Bride’s Venice Wedding Involved Blue Jimmy Choos and a Surprise Gondola Ride
Annastasia Seebohm Giacomini and her new husband Cristian are nothing if not international. Annastasia, the CEO of Brilliant Minds Foundation, is half English and half Greek and was living between the U.S. and Sweden when the couple first met. At that point, Cristian, a businessman, was dividing his time between his native Italy and Dubai. It seems fitting, then, that their romance began on a plane.
Cristian first set eyes on his future bride at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport, as they were boarding the same flight to Amsterdam. “Cristian was connecting on to his family in Venice, and I was connecting on to my family in Athens,” Annastasia explains. “Cristian had spotted me at the gate and by luck, we were sitting next to each other on the flight. We connected instantly, and had our first official date 10 days later under the Duomo in Milan.”
Last month, the couple exchanged vows in a similarly majestic setting, the 16th-century Palazzo Cavalli in Venice. Annastasia wore a Roksanda dress for the intimate ceremony for just a handful of guests, which was followed by a black-tie dinner at the St. Regis on the Grand Canal—a meaningful choice, given it was the scene of Cristian’s proposal. “We had returned to our suite after a Vivaldi concert, and Cristian had filled the room with red roses and romantic handwritten notes,” the bride recalls. “It was a complete surprise and utterly perfect.”
The day after the official service, Annastasia and Cristian had a Catholic blessing at San Giovanni Evangelista, with the bride wearing a Benveniste couture wedding gown conjured from 15 meters of Italian duchesse silk satin, and a romantic Chantilly lace veil with a rose motif. The intimate party then moved on to lunch at the “magical” (and Michelin-starred) Venissa, an atmospheric restaurant tucked away in a walled vineyard on the small island of Mazzorbo.
Annastasia, who was previously global CEO of the luxury concierge service Quintessentially, took full advantage of having two ceremonies when it came to planning her wedding looks. “I love fashion,” she enthuses, adding that “chic and elegant” was the aim, as well as dresses befitting the “dream views and majesty of Venice”. “I knew I could be more playful with the first dress, and then definitely wanted to be more traditional—with a long veil—for the church service.”
Roksanda’s Garance dress felt suitably classic for day one, but with a little added drama care of the gathered sleeves and open back, and faux pearls embellishing the cuffs. “I tried on a few dresses but this one felt the most elegant,” says Annastasia, whose “something blue” on the day was a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes, a gift from her best friends in New York.
As for her gown for San Giovanni Evangelista—which was sculpted over more than 150 hours in creative director Samantha Benveniste’s Kensington atelier—Annastasia chose to add classic nude stilettos by Dolce Gabbana. The deceptively simple dress also concealed some meaningful – and moving—touches: “The dress had a rainbow sewn into its train in remembrance of my late parents,” says the bride. “Whenever I see a rainbow, I always think of them.” The sleeves of her gown, meanwhile, each had a small lace flower, “sewn in from lace previously given to me by my late father”.
This level of attention to detail informed every aspect of Annastasia and Cristian’s wedding celebrations. Their wedding bands—bespoke designs by Manhattan-based Zameer Kassam—were engraved with tiny symbols representing their love story: a white diamond for the Dolomite mountains where they love to ski, and hand-carved vines inspired by the Murano glass chandelier at the St. Regis in Venice. “At the center of my band are the words ‘love me’ in Cristian’s handwriting, and in his ‘like you do’ in my writing, which celebrates our favorite love song,” Annastasia says, referencing the Ellie Goulding ballad featured on the soundtrack to the 2015 movie adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey, starring Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele and Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey. “It’s not lost on us that our names are Annastasia S and Cristian G!”