Dog eats groom’s passport, putting South Boston couple’s Italian wedding in jeopardy

Donato Frattaroli and his fiance Magda Mazri went to City Hall to fill out Intention of Marriage forms on Thursday, just days away from flying out to Italy where the couple is set to tie the knot in two weeks.

Hours later, a worst nightmare unfolded at their South Boston home.

“Our extremely cute 1.5-year-old Golden Retriever decided that maybe she doesn’t want us to go away to get married, so she hopped up on the counter and decided my passport was a nice new toy to play with,” Frattaroli told the Herald on Friday.

“Chickie,” short for chicken cutlet, bit out the first four pages of Frattaroli’s passport as well as a few in the back, including a stamp from Mexico where he and his bride got engaged over a year and a half ago.

Frattaroli’s reaction to the chaos: “I don’t think I was that polite, but I mean, she’s a 1.5-year-old Golden Retriever puppy, couldn’t be a cuter culprit.”

Instead of putting her soon-to-be hubby in the dog house, Mazri stayed even-keeled during the catastrophe, Frattaroli said. She contacted U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch’s office to see what the congressman could do to help out in a pinch.

Lynch and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey’s offices had been in contact with Frattaroli throughout the day Friday, but the North End native said nothing has been set in stone.

“Had she not gotten at those and just left me with the bite marks on the outside, which are pretty minimal, I would’ve been pretty confident in just leaving,” Frattaroli said. “Shame on me for not putting it in a drawer.”

Frattaroli filled out a privacy form and sent proof of travel and the destroyed passport as well as a copy of the wedding invitation to Markey and Lynch, “to show a sense of urgency so that the State Department could prioritize the request.”

The earliest he could be seen for a passport appointment is Thursday in Atlanta. If it can’t be rearranged to earlier in the week at an office closer to home, Frattaroli said he’d fly down and then come back to Boston, just in time to board a plane to Italy.

It takes about 8 to 11 weeks for a passport to be processed and delivered on routine service, and 5 to 7 if expedited. Arrangements could be made for it to be obtained sooner as long as it’s within a 14-day window of the travel date, according to the Fulton County Clerk of Superior & Magistrate Courts, which partners with the State Department to assist customers with processing passport applications in Atlanta.

“I’ve heard in some instances that you could walk out the door with a passport. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I would leave that office without one,” Frattaroli said. “The most important day of my life is coming up, I’ve got to make sure I’m there for it. It’s almost like the ‘Dog ate my homework’ excuse but with slightly bigger ramifications.”

Frattaroli and Mazri have been together for four years, meeting through mutual friends via work. Frattalori and his family own several restaurants across Boston, and his fiancee is in medical device sales.

The couple plans on getting married Aug. 31 outside at the picturesque La Torre di San Marco, an old watch tower overlooking Lake Garda in Gardone Riviera, in northern Italy. Frattaroli’s father was born and raised there before coming to the states at age 14.

One way or the other, it is a destination wedding, with 86 people flying out from the U.S., four from Australia, four from Italy and another four from Morocco.

“I am fine dealing with the costs spent for the event itself, but all of those people that are traveling, that’s an expense in itself,” Frattaroli said. “To me, it’s 1.) I want to make sure I’m standing at the end of the aisle getting to see my fiancee come down it in her dress, and 2.) If worst comes to worst, and that doesn’t happen, all of the people making the trip for us, is not wanting to disappoint them.”

As for Chickie, “She’s been kind of curling up right next to us, maybe it’s her way of saying that she either wants to come with us or if she can’t come with us, then we can’t go,” Frattaroli said.

Will the golden pooch end up going? “No, we can’t take her that long on a flight.”