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."

The Italian family-oriented culture also helps to turn any family occasion into a happening even if it entails only watching a video. But the idea doesn't have the same degree of appeal in other countries and cultures.

Kelly Chandler organizes weddings in London. Although the idea makes her smile, she doesn't think it will work in countries like the United Kingdom where, "People have international backgrounds here and guests come from all over the world for a wedding."

"They are never going to come back only to watch a video," she told ABC News.

And what about the cost involved in having all the guests come back, sending out invitations again, organizing drinks? Adeola Ademakimwa, a wedding planner in London, is focused on keeping the costs down and no matter how original, the idea of a silver screen wedding is not tempting enough. "What we would do is to make a copy of the video and send DVDs around to guest who wish to get them," she pragmatically concluded.

In a world where multiplex cinemas are sweeping away thousands of historic city center screens, the old cinema Odeon in Molfetta, Puglia is leading a successful battle to survive, thanks to Pansini's idea.

The idea to get cinemas involved in the personal lives of people is really appealing for old cinemas in other countries. In London Greg Eden-Field manages The Gate Cinema, a beautiful old movie theatre in the heart of Notting Hill, an area that became famous after the movie "Notting Hill," starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant, was released.

The Gate Cinema has hosted funerals in the past. A woman gathered her friends from all over the world to remember her husband. Eden-Field finds the idea of showing the wedding on a cinema screen appealing. "People can enjoy a further celebration, dress up, see themselves on the silver screen and it's even better to leave it a month or so to allow reminiscence of what sort of wedding it was."

Eden-Field goes beyond what catholic Italy would ever contemplate: he is considering the idea of hosting actual weddings in his cinema for couples who are mad about the movies, and about each other.