Marry in Italy, Land of Romance, and Save £6,000

The sun shone in a cloudless sky. The food was fresh, delicious and cheap. The turquoise sea sparkled along the rocky coastline and the faded ochre villas and gently swaying palm trees provided the perfect photo backdrop.

For Sophie Wilkinson and Ian Smith, their wedding this summer in Ravello, on the Amalfi coast south of Naples, was blissful. Neither of them had ever been to Italy before or spoke the language, but the wedding was stress-free and exactly what they had imagined.

Their friends and family turned up well on time - thanks to no-frills airlines - a cheerful interpreter deciphered the Italian marriage vows for them and at the end of the day they wandered to their hotel, past the 11th-century duomo, to begin their honeymoon.

'It's been perfect,' said the bride, 24, who works for Asda in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. 'Everything has been organised for us. We were told we could have as little or as much as we wanted. We've saved about £6,000 by having a smaller wedding than in England.'

The Caribbean and Las Vegas are now passé for the modern wedding experience. The Smiths are one of thousands of British cou ples flocking to Italy for a low-key, romantic wedding with guaranteed sunshine and a view. 'Everyone gets married in the Caribbean. Telling people you got married in Italy is a little different,' said Sophie.

The foreign wedding boom is good for everyone in Italy's most scenic spots, which have been suffering from a post-11 September tourism slump. Priests and their crumbling churches are benefiting, taking 'donations' of up to €300 (£199) a time.

Five years ago, according to the British consulate in Naples, 20 British couples married in Italy; so far this year there have been nearly 1,000. The sudden popular ity has spawned 80 or so 'dream wedding' agencies that have opened in Italy in the past four years. In Britain, too, high-street travel agencies are including Italy in their paradise wedding packages.

Italy has quickly learnt how to cut the red tape and to cater for every taste, from traditional church ceremonies in the shadow of the Vatican to underwater weddings. Depending on the scale, Italian weddings can often be as cheap as €5,000. In Britain, the cost of the average wedding is £14,000.

In Sorrento, where most of the 'package' weddings are celebrated, a romantic cloister has been opened to cater for up to eight foreign marriages a day, most of them British.

'We've got this boom of foreigners,' said Antonina Maresca, administrator of Sorrento's civil ceremonies. 'I have never worked so hard in 20 years doing weddings.

'It's good business for the town,' Maresco explains, because foreigners pay €250 for the ceremony.

Italy, unlike other European countries, does not require couples to be resident, and local priests and wedding organisers have the right contacts to speed up the paperwork. For Catholics, priests in Britain agree to a couple's request to marry and their Italian counterpart accepts their decision. For civil ceremonies, it is sometimes enough to fill in an online form, send credit card details and turn up on the day.

'There is a great art to giving people a personal service,' said Mario Capuano, whose company, Wagner Tours, organised the Smiths' wedding. 'Weddings aren't products in a supermarket. No two should be the same.'