"I Do" at 3,000 Metres: Cortina d'Ampezzo Turns Its Ski Lifts Into Wedding Venues

The classic destination wedding formula — a villa in Tuscany, a garden on the Amalfi Coast, golden hour over a vineyard — is getting a high-altitude rival. In Cortina d'Ampezzo, couples are increasingly saying "I do" thousands of metres up, in mountain refuges reachable only by chairlift, gondola or cable car, with the Dolomites themselves standing in as both venue and backdrop.

Italy's appetite for hosting other people's weddings shows no sign of slowing. According to the 2025 Destination Wedding in Italy Observatory — produced by Convention Bureau Italia and Italy for Weddings, and presented through Italy's Ministry of Tourism — the country hosted roughly 16,700 weddings involving foreign couples last year, a 9.8% jump on 2024 that keeps Italy among the world's most sought-after countries to get married in. That follows a similar climb the year before, when just over 15,000 foreign couples married in Italy in 2024, itself an 11.4% rise on 2023 — a trajectory that has made wedding tourism one of the more reliable growth stories in Italian travel over the past three years.

Historic villas and period estates still dominate the bookings, but the Observatory points to a clear shift in taste: more couples, Italian and international alike, are choosing dramatic natural settings over manicured gardens, and the Dolomites have become one of the primary beneficiaries. The demand has gotten heavy enough that some alpine municipalities have had to start capping the number of ceremonies they'll allow at certain sites — a rare problem for a mountain destination to have, and a fairly direct signal of how quickly high-altitude weddings have gone from novelty to genuine competition for the coast and countryside.

The Lift Ride as Part of the Ceremony

What sets Cortina apart is infrastructure most wedding destinations simply don't have: a network of cable cars, gondolas and chairlifts, run under the Cortina Skiworld consortium, that can carry a bride, groom and their guests directly from the town centre to some of the most photogenic terraces in the Dolomites. Rather than treating the lifts as a logistical afterthought, local venues and planners have started building them into the experience itself — the first chapter of the day, as much a part of the occasion as the ceremony that follows.

Autumn is when the pitch is strongest. As the beech and larch forests turn and the light sharpens, the mountains take on a quieter, more intimate character that's increasingly being marketed as the ideal backdrop for a wedding rather than just a scenic bonus.

Among the venues drawing the most demand:

• Rifugio Scoiattoli (2,255m), reached via the Bai de Dones–Rifugio Scoiattoli chairlift in the Lagazuoi–5 Torri ski area, opens onto a 360-degree panorama taking in the Tofane, Averau, Nuvolau and Croda da Lago — landscape that becomes part of the ceremony rather than simply framing it.

• Masi Wine Bar al Druscié (1,778m), accessible directly from central Cortina via the Freccia nel Cielo gondola, offers a terrace large enough for bigger receptions, with the option to send guests further up — via two additional cable cars — to Ra Valles (2,475m) and then Cima Tofana (3,244m), one of the highest points in the Dolomites reachable by lift, for a champagne toast above the clouds before returning to Druscié for the reception. The nearby Helmut Ullrich astronomical observatory adds an evening option for stargazing through professional telescopes.

• Chalet Tofane, at the base of the Lacedel–Socrepes gondola, is built for larger guest lists and includes a dedicated children's area with inflatables, trampolines, a pool and a tubing run — letting parents actually enjoy the reception.

• Rifugio Pomedes (2,303m), overlooking the Schuss and Olympia pistes that hosted last winter's Olympic and Paralympic women's Alpine skiing events.

• Capanna Tondi (2,327m) in the Faloria ski area, reached by cable car and a short walk (or quad transfer), offers a more intimate, secluded setting ringed by the Cristallo, Sorapìss and Croda Negra peaks.

• Rifugio Lagazuoi (2,752m), reached in just three minutes from Passo Falzarego by the Lagazuoi cable car, pairs sweeping views across the Tofane, Fanes, Marmolada, Sella group, Civetta and Antelao — and on clear days, as far as the Pale di San Martino — with an on-site exhibition space and terrace bar for guests to explore before the ceremony.

• A Post-Olympic Second Act

The timing isn't incidental. Cortina hosted Alpine skiing events at the 2026 Winter Olympics in February and closed out the Winter Paralympics in March, and the town has been explicit about not wanting the Games to be, in the words of local tourism officials, a "one-shot" moment — a brief spike without lasting follow-through. Since the Olympics wrapped, Cortina's tourism board has talked about building what it calls an "all-season lifestyle destination" narrative, opening up newer international markets including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and the Middle East, with early bookings data for the following summer season described by local officials as encouraging.

Framed against that backdrop, the push into destination weddings looks less like an isolated marketing angle and more like part of a deliberate strategy: converting a few weeks of global television exposure into a longer-term reason for people — not just skiers, but couples planning one of the biggest days of their lives — to keep choosing Cortina long after the medals have been handed out.