Some wedding days feel inseparable from where they take place. For Rosalind and Matt, that place was Puglia.
At Masseria Quadrelli, mornings move beneath olive branches. Sunlight settles across old stone. Dinner stretches into the evening beside the pool. Rosalind and Matt traveled from Virginia with their closest friends and family, and it was exactly where they wanted to begin their marriage.
For three days, the masseria became theirs: a place to gather, celebrate, eat, drink, dance, and finally, say the vows that had brought everyone across the Atlantic. The celebration was coordinated by Mediterraneo in Love, with each detail working beautifully within the relaxed, romantic atmosphere of Puglia.
Champagne by the pool. Friends gathered beneath the olive trees.A custom gown against centuries-old stone. The beautiful kind of wedding where the setting was extraordinary, but the people remained the focus.
I photographed their weekend across digital, 35mm film, and Super 8, letting the medium shift with the story. The stillness of Rosalind getting dressed belonged beautifully on film. Digital let me follow everything unfolding around them without interruption. And Super 8 held onto the things that were meant to move: olive branches in the wind, the sweep of a custom gown, glasses lifted over dinner, and a dance floor well into the Italian night.
The result feels a little like the place itself: romantic, tactile, cinematic, and touched by nostalgia.
Under the Olive Trees
Rosalind and Matt both spent the morning at Masseria Quadrelli, getting ready in different parts of the old house while the wedding slowly came to life around them.
The masseria feels almost like a small castle tucked into the Puglian countryside. Arched doorways, quiet rooms, and olive groves surround the property. There was so much visual interest that we never needed to leave in search of somewhere beautiful to make photographs.
Staying in one place gave the morning room to unfold naturally. Friends moved in and out. Final details came together. Rosalind got dressed upstairs. Her hair and makeup done by Giaccari I Parrucchieri. Matt prepared elsewhere in the house. Outside, the landscape softened everything.
These quieter hours are where I especially love moving between digital and film. Digital catches the pieces happening quickly around the room, while film asks for something a little slower: the dress waiting in the light, a portrait by the window, the details someone spent months choosing. Together, they hold both sides of a wedding morning. The anticipation and the stillness before everything begins.
It was unmistakably Puglia.
And then there was the dress.
Rosalind’s wedding gown was custom designed in Virginia by Studio I Do Bridals, and it was absolutely incredible.
Dramatic against the background of the old house, it had the kind of presence that could hold its own against the scale of the masseria. Paired with Jimmy Choo shoes and Chan Luu jewelry, the finished look felt editorial without losing its softness.
Matt wore a classic Jos. A. Bank suit, giving the two of them a timelessness against the sun-washed colors of the Italian countryside.
Their portraits played with that contrast. The formality of a custom bridal gown and tuxedo against a place softened by age. Strong Italian sun falling into shadow. Rosalind's dress moving through rooms that had existed long before any of us arrived.
Her bridal portraits became some of my favorite film frames from the weekend. There is something about the softness and texture of film against an architectural setting like this that feels inherently editorial. But the gown was just as beautiful in motion. On Super 8, it became less about the perfect frame and more about the way the fabric moved behind her as she walked through the house and out toward the olive trees.
Nothing needed much embellishment.
Then it was time to get married.
There is something about a destination wedding that makes the ceremony feel especially intimate. Everyone standing beside you has chosen to cross an ocean, make a trip of it, and be fully present for these few days.
Rosalind and Matt exchanged vows beneath those trees with their friends and family gathered around them. The ceremony moved between the polished and the completely unscripted. The wide view of everyone beneath the grove, a hand reaching for another, someone's expression changing in an instant.
Those are the moments where having more than one medium becomes especially interesting. They don't tell three separate versions of the ceremony. They remember it differently.
Long Tables by the Pool
After the ceremony, the pace changed.
Dinner was set beside the pool, with the old masseria rising behind it and the Puglian countryside surrounding everything else. Florals and the wedding cake were created by the team at Masseria Quadrelli, allowing the table to feel like it belonged exactly where it was.
And then everyone settled in.
This part of the evening needed very little from me. It was better observed than orchestrated.
Glasses lifted across the table. Friends leaned toward one another mid-conversation. Plates moved between guests. Someone laughed from the other end of dinner. The last of the daylight disappeared while no one seemed particularly interested in watching the clock.
It was the kind of dinner you imagine when you imagine getting married in Italy.
Not because it was perfect, but because everyone had nowhere else they needed to be.
Puglia on Film
I brought both digital and film cameras to Puglia, along with Super 8.
Film felt particularly at home here. There is already a softness to the masseria, a patina to the stone and olive trees that makes the entire place feel a little removed from time. Film leaned into that rather than polishing it away.
Super 8 gave me something else entirely.
A photograph can hold Rosalind's dress in a doorway forever. Super 8 lets you watch it move through one.
There are flashes of the weekend that feel especially right that way: fabric catching the breeze, people crossing the courtyard, glasses raised at dinner, bodies moving on the dance floor. Small pieces of motion, grain, and light that don't need to be perfectly sharp to bring you back.
The digital photographs gave the story clarity. Film softened its edges. Super 8 let some of it flicker.
Together, they feel more like memory.
After Dinner
Later, Rosalind changed out of her custom gown and into a second dress from Show Me Your Mumu.
It was the unofficial signal that dinner was over.
The polished edges of the day began to loosen. Drinks from Joe Bar Catering made their way into hands, Rinaldi Production took over the music, and the masseria shifted from candlelit dinner to party.
This is where I tend to step back even more.
Once the dance floor fills, I want the photographs to carry the same energy as the room. A little movement. A little blur. People halfway into the frame. Expressions that disappear a second later.
Less perfection. More evidence that everyone had a very good night.
The Days Before & After
Rosalind and Matt didn't come all the way to Puglia for a single day.
Their wedding sat in the middle of three days together, beginning with a rehearsal dinner and ending with a boat day after the celebration. I photographed all three.
By the time the wedding morning arrived, everyone had already had time to settle into Italy and into one another. There were familiar faces behind my camera instead of a room full of strangers. The wedding felt like the middle of a story already in progress.
And the next morning, it didn't simply end.
There was still a boat waiting.
That is part of the beauty of an Italy destination wedding. The ceremony may be the reason everyone gets on the plane, but it doesn't have to be the only part worth remembering.
The Kind of Weekend You Travel For
Rosalind and Matt dreamed of getting married in Italy. So they brought their people to Puglia and made more than a wedding day out of it.
Three days. An old masseria hidden among the olive groves. Rosalind's custom gown against sun-warmed stone. Vows beneath the trees. A long Italian dinner beside the pool. A second dress and a late night. A boat waiting the next day.
Some of it held still in photographs. Some of it moves in the grain of Super 8.
All of it was theirs.
