This article was originally published on Crafting Your Home. A human contributor also wrote and edited the post.
Selena Gomez just celebrated her first birthday as a married woman, and by the looks of it, her husband Benny Blanco made sure it was one to remember.
According to a new exclusive from People, Gomez’s 34th birthday getaway in Italy was filled with thoughtful surprises from Blanco, who reportedly went above and beyond to make the celebration feel personal rather than flashy, favoring meaningful experiences over grand gestures for the milestone occasion.
The couple, who tied the knot in September 2025, spent Gomez’s birthday week traveling across Italy together, packing in everything from countryside cooking classes to yacht outings on the water.
A source close to the couple told People that Blanco “always goes out of his way to make things special for her,” a sentiment that seemed to play out in nearly every stop along their trip.
A Tuscan Cooking Class Fit for a Queen
The centerpiece of the celebration took place at Il Borro, the Ferragamo family’s sprawling estate in Tuscany, where Blanco reportedly organized a special birthday celebration for Gomez after traveling to Europe to join her.
According to the source, Blanco didn’t just show up for the occasion; he made the effort count. “Not only did he spend his days traveling by boat to be with her in England, he also planned a special birthday for her in Tuscany,” the insider said.
Rather than opting for a lavish party, the couple chose a hands-on approach to celebrating, signing up for an Italian cooking class at Il Borro’s Osteria del Borro under executive chef Andrea Campani.
Blanco documented the experience on TikTok, sharing a video of the pair rolling out fresh pasta dough by hand before feeding it through a pasta machine together. “Let’s make an Italian feast for my wife’s birthday,” Blanco announced at the start of the clip.
The duo didn’t stop at pasta. They also prepared cheese-stuffed squash blossoms and eggplant parmesan, with Blanco taking a particular liking to the latter dish. “My baby makes the best eggplant parmigiana,” he said in the video, before scooping a bite onto a slice of bread.
“That’s the best thing I’ve tasted in Italy so far.” Gomez, for her part, made sure to share the credit, replying in the clip, “No, we made it,” a small moment that fans quickly picked up on as evidence of just how in sync the newlyweds seemed throughout the trip.
Yachts, Horses, and a Trattoria Full of Compliments
Beyond the cooking class, Gomez and Blanco packed their Italian getaway with a wide range of activities that took full advantage of the country’s countryside and coastline.
The couple was seen relaxing aboard a luxury yacht at one point during the trip, and Gomez’s own social media posts showed the pair playing a game of Scrabble out on the water, a low-key touch that felt right in line with the “meaningful over extravagant” theme running through the celebration.
Their itinerary also included horseback riding and sightseeing through Florence, where Gomez was photographed blowing out a birthday candle in front of the historic Chiesa di San Frediano in Cestello.
Food, unsurprisingly, played a major role throughout the trip. The day before Gomez’s birthday, the couple stopped for dinner at Trattoria della Santa in Bologna, choosing to sit outdoors beneath the city’s historic porticoes rather than at a reserved private table one of Blanco’s team members had arranged.
Restaurant owner Riccardo Lelli told People that the pair left quite an impression on the staff, describing them as “absolutely amazing, very lovely, good-hearted people” who complimented both the food and the service throughout their meal.
Their spread that night reportedly included eggplant parmesan, mushroom tagliatelle, buffalo-cheese ravioli, and balanzoni, a filled pasta closely associated with the Bologna region, and Blanco reportedly enjoyed the food enough to get up and share it with members of his own team.
The couple also made a stop in Florence at Ino, a gourmet sandwich shop where Blanco reportedly declared he’d just eaten the best sandwich of his life, keeping his streak of enthusiastic Italian food commentary alive throughout the trip.
Between the yacht days, the horseback riding, and the steady stream of pasta and sandwiches, the getaway read less like a typical celebrity vacation and more like two people who genuinely enjoy spending unstructured time together.
A Milestone Birthday and a Cause Close to Her Heart
Turning 34 carried extra weight for Gomez this year, marking her first birthday celebrated as Blanco’s wife following their wedding last September.
Beyond the celebrations in Italy, Gomez also used the occasion to reflect on a different kind of milestone: the sixth anniversary of her Rare Impact Fund, the initiative she founded through her Rare Beauty brand to support youth mental health resources.
Gomez took time during her birthday to thank fans for their continued support of the fund, tying a deeply personal cause to a day otherwise filled with pasta, yachts, and Tuscan sunsets.
The overall picture painted by the trip lines up with what fans have observed about the couple’s relationship in recent months.
According to the source who spoke with People, Blanco consistently favors thoughtful gestures and shared experiences over extravagant displays, putting genuine effort into creating memories that feel personal to Gomez rather than simply performative for an audience.
Whether it’s flying across continents to surprise her or signing up for a cooking class instead of booking out an entire restaurant, the approach seems to reflect a partnership built more on quality time than grand spectacle.
For Gomez, who has spent years navigating fame, health challenges, and high-profile relationships in the public eye, this particular birthday appears to have offered something simpler: a low-key, food-filled celebration in Italy with the person she now calls her husband.
Between the pasta-making, the yacht days, and Blanco’s now-viral eggplant parmesan endorsement, it’s clear this was a birthday built around connection rather than spectacle, and fans following along online seemed just as charmed by the trip as the couple appeared to be with each other.
The public reaction to the trip has been overwhelmingly warm, with fans flooding both Gomez’s and Blanco’s social media posts with comments praising the couple’s easy chemistry.
Many pointed specifically to the moment Gomez corrected Blanco’s eggplant parmesan credit, calling it a small but telling glimpse into a relationship that seems to run on genuine partnership rather than performance.
Others highlighted the Scrabble game aboard the yacht as a favorite detail, noting that it felt refreshingly ordinary for a couple whose lives are anything but.
It’s also worth noting how far Gomez and Blanco’s relationship has come since they first sparked dating rumors in late 2023.
What began as speculation fueled by a handful of social media clues has since evolved into a marriage, a very public partnership, and now a birthday trip that doubled as both a romantic getaway and a quiet celebration of a cause Gomez has spent years building.
That evolution, from rumored fling to newlywed milestone, has played out largely in front of fans, many of whom have followed every step of the relationship in real time.
As Gomez heads back to her usual schedule of acting, music, and running Rare Beauty, the Italy trip will likely remain one of the year’s more talked-about celebrity getaways, not for its extravagance, but for how unmistakably happy the couple looked throughout it.
If Blanco’s approach to birthdays is any indication, fans can probably expect more low-key, food-centered celebrations from the couple in the years ahead, rather than the kind of over-the-top spectacle often associated with celebrity milestones.
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