wedding | little home by hand

It seems we’re always on the move this year, driving and visiting. This last friday we went to a wedding (I was also the photographer). The venue was a beautiful castle with gorgeous rooms.

The bedroom we were staying in was a real step back in time with the wood furniture and the flowery wallpaper…exactly like I picture rooms in the 1930’s or 40’s (and it may have been untouched since then, as the castle has been the property of the local university since 1949).

I have to say the winding wooden staircase leading up to the upper floors freaked me out a little. It was so old that each step creaked loudly and the whole staircase was tilting heavily towards the middle.

We had a wonderful time, but between driving down, taking photos all day and driving back up we took all of saturday to recover (I did anyway) and we’re taking it easy for the rest of the weekend.
True to my words from last post, as soon as I sat down at my sewing machine last weekend I couldn’t stop and have been sewing up a storm in the evenings, resulting in a summer skirt, a blouse and a silk dress. No wonder I’m exhausted 🙂 I’ll try and get photos soon, but first, it’s back to editing the wedding!

Ok, here goes the promised wedding post!
I went to Tuscany the weekend before last to photograph my friend Katrin’s wedding. I met her in university, but she has since moved to the UK to be with her fiance Mo, who is british with an indian background. And as if that wasn’t multicultural enough, they decided to get married in a beautiful little town in Tuscany, Italy!
Now, I am definitely of the opinion that shooting weddings should be left to the pro’s and not be done by little hobby photographers. So when Katrin first asked me to shoot her wedding I declined. But then a couple of weeks later she asked again and said they were really really sure they wanted me to do it. So here I was, shooting a wedding!

I brought tons of equipment: my own Canon 450D along with my smaller prime lenses (Canon 50mm 1.4 and Sigma 30mm 1.4) and my dad’s Canon 5D as a “back-up” (my own cam has been doing some funny stuff lately, it might be nearing the end of its lifetime) with his huge Canon 70-200mm 2.8 lens.

Needless to say, the back-up cam didn’t stay back-up long and I ended up shooting nearly all of it with the 5D! So much for the technical side of things…
The wedding was held outside, in a pavilion on the balcony of the town hall of Palaia, overlooking Tuscany.

Katrin and Mo were a beautiful couple.

After the ceremony it was back to the gorgeous location they chose for themselves and all guests to stay in for drinks at the pool and party on the terrazza. We also had a half an hour to spare for pictures.

This one is my very favourite!

The evening went on with a multi-course dinner on the terrazza by candlelight.

Everyone, family and friends, german and british and irish and indian, sat together and talked (in various languages) and got to know each other.

The cake was cut,

and the dancing started.

I had been meaning to write at length about how wonderful and exciting and challenging and scary shooting a wedding is but I am already late getting ready for work so I’ll just end with saying again what a wonderful, happy, multicutural day and weekend it was! Thank you so much Katrin and Mo, for letting me be part of your wedding!