Villas, jetties and lights on the water

Wedding photographer
on Lake Garda

If there’s one place I can call home without ever having lived there, it’s Lake Garda.

My grandparents had a house in Sirmione and as a child I often spent my Sundays there. The ritual was more or less always the same: after lunch I’d go for a walk with my great-aunt and we’d end up by the water, feeding bread to the swans. Nothing special ever happened, and yet when I think back to those afternoons I get that sweet kind of nostalgia I know so well (which, incidentally, is what most of my way of photographing is built on).

A few years later the lake came back into my life through another door. My closest friend is from Toscolano Maderno, and that’s where I spent some of the happiest years of university. Since then work, families and everything else have come along, but on Sundays we still meet up there, all together, for a swim. Some things, luckily, don’t change.

Almost a sea

People who aren’t from here are sometimes surprised: Lake Garda is so big and so lively that in places it feels like the sea, even in its plants and trees, more Riviera than mountain lake.

But walk down to the water and you notice the difference straight away, because the air doesn’t taste of salt: it has that lake smell you’d recognise with your eyes closed, if you grew up with it.

Servizio fotografico matrimoniale sul Lago di Garda

Matrimonio a Villa Fiordaliso, Lago di Garda – bacio degli sposi sulla scalinata della villa

Historic villas

Weddings on Lake Garda often have an elegant feel, and many venues are historic villas right on the water, like Villa Bettoni in Gargnano or Villa Fiordaliso in Gardone Riviera, which forms a single whole with the Torre San Marco next door. At Villa Fiordaliso the reception was right on the shore, a few steps from the tower, and for most of the evening the lake was the backdrop to everything that happened.

And then there’s Isola del Garda, which is a world of its own. I’ve photographed two weddings there, but those photos belong to the couples: they were private weddings and, out of respect, I don’t publish them.

Evenings on the water

My favourite part comes after dark. The lights of the villas and villages reflect on the water, sometimes the cake is cut on the jetty, and now and then the couple slip away for a ride on a motorboat between one part of the party and the next. For someone who photographs without directing, it’s the ideal place: the scene is already there, and all I have to do is be in the right spot.

Why it matters to me

When I photograph a wedding on the lake, sooner or later I think back to those afternoons with my great-aunt. I barely remember anything we said to each other, but I remember the light on the water, the swans coming closer and the bread that always ran out too soon.

That’s what I’d like to happen to you twenty years from now, looking through your photos: not so much seeing what the villa looked like, but finding again what it felt like to be there, that day, with the people you love.

How we work

On the lake we work the way we always do: we tell the story of the day as it is, without directing it, and almost always there are two of us, Ilaria and me.

How I photograph weddings

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