Inside Cassandra Scerbo and James MacMillan’s Cinematic Sicilian Wedding

For actress Cassandra Scerbo, getting married in Sicily was never simply a matter of choosing a beautiful destination. It was a way of coming home.

In the autumn of 2025, Scerbo and James MacMillan exchanged vows in Taormina, surrounded by just 28 guests and the landscape that connected the celebration to the bride’s Sicilian heritage. Of full Italian descent, with roots largely in Sicily, Scerbo had long imagined saying “I do” with the sea behind her. Her late grandfather’s family came from Borgetto, a small town near Palermo, making Sicily a deeply personal choice for the couple.

The result was an intimate wedding weekend that felt less like a traditional ceremony and more like a cinematic love letter to the island, to family and to the bride and groom themselves.

The celebrations began with a welcome dinner at Ristorante Rosmarino in the centre of Taormina, hosted by James’s parents, Deborah and Bill. Cream florals, signature cocktails and the charm of the Sicilian city set the tone for the celebrations to come. The following day, the couple and their guests sailed across the Ionian Sea, with Mount Etna rising in the distance. They shared a traditional Sicilian feast at sunset before Scerbo spontaneously jumped into the water.

On the eve of the ceremony, the couple took a quieter moment for themselves at the Grand Hotel San Pietro Spa, followed by room service and some private time with their personal vow books. It was a final pause before the celebrations began in earnest.

For the wedding day itself, the couple chose UNA Hotels Capotaormina, where the ceremony took place on a terrace overlooking the Ionian Sea and Mount Etna. The aesthetic was deliberately timeless: ivory, cream, white and soft gold, with cascading roses, hydrangeas and baby’s breath framing the panoramic view.

 

Scerbo walked down the aisle to the “Love Theme” from The Godfather, performed by a string quartet – a fitting choice for a bride marrying in Sicily and an actress with a lifelong love of film. Her older brother, Johnny, officiated the ceremony, while her sister Alaina served as matron of honour and her nieces and nephews took on roles throughout the ceremony.

The couple also incorporated a unity sand ceremony, using sand collected from Taormina’s beaches and volcanic ash from Mount Etna. The elements represented different aspects of their identities – “La Terra e il Mare”, the Earth and the Sea, for James, and “Il Fuoco e la Montagna”, the Fire and the Mountain, for Cassandra. Once combined, the sand and ash created a new pattern, while a small amount remained in each individual vessel, symbolising the idea of maintaining individuality within a shared life.

For her walk down the aisle, Scerbo wore a custom Pnina Tornai gown in antique white. The romantic design featured an illusion bodice, hand-embroidered lace and floral appliqués cascading down the skirt and train, finished with an off-the-shoulder neckline and fitted sheer sleeves.

The dress was chosen at Kleinfeld just three months before the wedding. Scerbo’s stylist had initially avoided Pnina Tornai gowns because of the tight production schedule, but her mother spotted one particular design and brought it to the stylist. The moment Scerbo tried it on, she knew it was the one.

She personalised the look further by transforming a piece of lace removed from the hem into a custom choker, finished with a cross as a reference to her Catholic Italian upbringing. A shorter embroidered veil completed the bridal ensemble.

Her beauty look was equally rooted in Italian cinema. Inspired by Sophia Loren, one of Scerbo’s lifelong icons, she opted for glowing skin, a neutral smoky eye and a nude-rose lip, paired with a voluminous updo and soft face-framing pieces. In the months before the wedding, she had also dyed her naturally blonde hair a deeper brunette, embracing what she described as a more distinctly Italian allure.

James MacMillan wore a bespoke suit in dark green Italian wool by Pierce Ross for Jaxon Pierce Bespoke. The jacket featured a black satin peak lapel and a custom silk lining printed with intimate photographs of the couple, while their wedding date was embroidered inside. An ivory Egyptian cotton tuxedo shirt completed the look.

After the ceremony, the newlyweds left in a vintage Auburn convertible for one of the most cinematic moments of the weekend: La Passeggiata degli Sposi. Accompanied by Italian folk singers and dancers, they made their way through the streets of Taormina as locals and tourists stopped to cheer them on. Their procession ended at Dolce & Gabbana’s Macamba Bar, which had been reserved exclusively for their guests.

At the iconic Dolce & Gabbana Macamba Bar, the celebration took on a distinctly Italian fashion-world atmosphere. With the space closed exclusively for the wedding party, the newlyweds and their guests were treated to signature cocktails, small bites and time to explore the Dolce & Gabbana boutique. The experience became such a memorable part of the wedding weekend that Scerbo and MacMillan later recreated the Dolce & Gabbana bar for their second celebration in Denver, bringing a piece of their Sicilian wedding back to James’s home state.

Back at Capotaormina, the cocktail hour introduced a more playful interpretation of Sicilian style. White and ivory flowers were complemented by green accents, yellow craspedia and fresh lemons, arranged in traditional white Sicilian ceramics alongside Teste di Moro, one of the island’s most recognisable decorative motifs.

Then came the evening’s most dramatic reveal.

The reception took place on the hotel’s private beach, accessible through a cave carved into the rock. Almost 200 candles illuminated the entrance, while cream florals, fairy lights and architectural lighting transformed the space into something that felt almost otherworldly. At the centre stood a double-width imperial table beneath four crystal chandeliers, covered with oversized white hydrangeas, baby’s breath, gold candles and gold-trimmed place settings.

The couple had rented the beach exclusively for the evening, creating a private setting that felt almost hidden from the world beyond the cliffs. Guests entered through the dramatic rock-cut cave, where nearly 200 candles and romantic cream-coloured florals led the way to the reception. Overhead, fairy lights and four crystal chandeliers framed the long imperial table, while cascading white hydrangeas and baby’s breath, together with floating gold candles, added to the sense of understated opulence.

The menu continued the Sicilian theme, from Aperol, Limoncello and Hugo Spritzes to local wines and Champagne. One of the evening’s signature dishes was “Mare e Monte”, a Sicilian interpretation of surf and turf pairing lobster with beef. The three-tier wedding cake followed tradition, featuring Chantilly cream and tiny wild strawberries.

The music was personal, too. The couple’s first dance was Peter Frampton’s Baby, I Love Your Way, a song that had become theirs during the early years of their relationship. Scerbo had also asked each guest to submit several favourite songs before the wedding, turning the evening’s playlist into a soundtrack of memories shared by the people closest to them.

The photography followed the same cinematic philosophy. Scerbo chose photographers Rosa Lipari and Michele Lo Giudice for their ability to capture emotion without making a moment feel staged, while cinematographer Giulio Cantarella documented the celebration on film. Their visual approach was intentionally timeless, mixing high-contrast black-and-white imagery with warmer colour photographs and allowing the Sicilian landscape to become almost another character in their story.

Even the couple’s most private memories were given space. One of the ceremony chairs was intentionally left empty, marked with a memorial ribbon in honour of loved ones who could not be there. Scerbo also wore her mother’s pear-shaped diamond earrings as her “something borrowed”.

And although Sicily was always the heart of the celebration, it was never intended to be the only one.

Several months later, Scerbo and MacMillan continued their wedding celebrations in Denver, Colorado, James’s home state, allowing a wider circle of family and friends who had been unable to travel to Italy to celebrate with them. The two celebrations offered the couple exactly what they wanted: an intimate destination wedding rooted in Cassandra’s heritage, followed by a larger gathering closer to home.

Together, the two weekends tell a story that feels increasingly familiar in modern weddings: one defined less by a single traditional formula than by the people getting married. For Scerbo and MacMillan, that meant weaving together Sicily, family, cinema and fashion against the backdrop of the landscapes that shaped their lives.