Your Big Day, Now in Theatres

MOIFETTA, Italy, September 26, 2008 -- Imagine the glitz and glamour of a film premiere. Guests wearing their smartest clothes walk down the red carpet to the movie theater. Among a crowd of smiles and cheers the movie stars arrive...they just got married.

The silver screen is ready to show a new and original production: wedding videos.

Have you ever thought that you could be a movie star on the best day of your life?

Well, Roberto Pansini has. The 30-year-old employee of an advertising agency has convinced the old cinema Odeon in the center of Molfetta, Puglia – a region in the south of Italy – to show wedding videos to the bride, the groom and all their guests.

"People are thrilled to watch themselves on a cinema screen and everybody feels an actor for one night," said Pansini in an interview with ABC News.

In the south of Italy now, showing all the guests the wedding video, once it's been edited, is an unmissable tradition.

But weddings with hundreds of guests are also an unmissable tradition and this means that the couple may take a few months and dozens of viewings of the same footage before they will have shown the movie to all their friends and relatives in rounds at home.

For about $600 the viewing can be transformed into a premiere-style social occasion and a whole new party gets started, this time in a cinema.

"There were 400 people at the first night, and only 200 had been invited. The others were only attracted by the event. There was also a limousine outside the cinema, to make it more appealing," said Pansini.

The first night has been such a success that now at least 50 couples have booked the celluloid reruns of their nuptials and the idea is convincing wedding planners in the rest of the country to follow suit.

"You know what?" said wedding planner Alessandra Magistrelli, "Italians are partygoers, especially in the south of Italy we would do anything to do a little mess and party. This just looks like the perfect occasion. It's the event in the event."