Jackson & Lauren’s Wedding at Villa Pianciani: Notes from an Umbria Wedding Photographer
I still remember the moment I first saw that stone temple at the end of the lawn. I really needed to stop. I actually stopped walking. Whoever built that thing knew exactly what they were doing, and I found it just incredible seeing something so beautiful as a backdrop for a wedding in a Villa that’s definitely not famous enough.
Anyhow, they knew, as it turns out. I did some research when I got back to the office, while downloading the memory cards. Villa Pianciani, just outside Spoleto, was designed in the late 1700s by Giuseppe Valadier, the same architect behind Piazza del Popolo in Rome. Count Alessandro Pianciani commissioned the whole complex to celebrate his marriage to Costanza Collicola. Two hundred and thirty years later, it’s still doing exactly what it was designed for. Jackson and Lauren got married on the same lawn, under the same columns, in front of the same hills. It’s a family-owned complex, five buildings and a historic park that can accommodate about 40 people, still being carefully restored, still hosting maybe thirty weddings a year or more, which tells you something about how protective the family is of the place. I’d send any American couple there without a second thought.
Umbria: Tuscany’s quiet twin
Here’s the thing I keep telling couples who write to me asking about Tuscany, before they’ve even considered anything else: Umbria is right next door, same hills, kind of the same cypress-lined roads spread here and there, same golden light in the late afternoon, but with a fraction of the tour buses. If I had to put it simply, Umbria and Tuscany feel like they were dealt from the same deck of cards, just shuffled a different way. The region is often skipped for one simple reason: people haven’t heard of it yet. That’s changing, but slowly, which for now works in your favor. The handful of venues everyone already knows in Tuscany get booked a year and a half out and priced accordingly. Umbria still has places like Villa Pianciani, genuinely historic, with its outstanding neoclassical style, and not yet on every wedding planner’s shortlist, which tends to mean more availability and a gentler final invoice. So, if what you’re actually chasing is Italian history and the Dolce-Vita atmosphere more than the name recognition, Umbria gets you there for less money and fewer crowds.
I work as an Umbria wedding photographer, based between here and Tuscany, and I get asked a lot what I mean when I say I go for something timeless. People assume I mean the wedding itself has to look old-fashioned, muted, safe. That’s not it at all, and this day is a good example of why.
The look of the day
Jackson wore a white dinner jacket and a mustache that belonged in a 1970s film. Lauren changed, later that night, into an ivory lace dress lined in glossy satin for the party, the kind where the lace carries the eye but the satin underneath keeps things tasteful, which is about as current a bridal choice as you’ll find right now. The tables were set under string lights in front of the temple. The whole evening had this Dolce Vita feeling to it, a little bit pop, a little bit old Hollywood, friends in gold and burgundy satin smoking in front of the open bar.
None of that is timeless, by the way. The mustache is a trend. The lace-and-satin dress is a trend. My black and white, if anything, is usually the most timeless thing I do, close to what you’d get straight off a roll of film, shadows kept open, nothing pushed too hard. For this story, I leaned it just a little tiny bit further than I normally would, a bit more contrast, a bit more edge, winking on purpose at that harder, more graphic Dolce Vita look. That’s the one place I let the moment nudge my own style. I want to be honest about all of it, because I think “timeless” gets thrown around by photographers as a word that means nothing (same with “editorial,” “unposed,” “photojournalistic,” they’re all just trends dressed up as principles), and I’d rather tell you what it actually means to me.
What I mean by timeless
What doesn’t age is what’s true. Jackson and Lauren danced barefoot in a room with red walls because they’d kicked their shoes a couple of hours earlier. Lauren laughed with a mouth full of cake and didn’t try to hide it. Even the shots where they look right into the camera, and there are a few, are not performances. Pretending they didn’t know I was there would be dishonest. The second you know a camera’s around, some part of you wants to pose, and I’m not going to claim otherwise. What I try to do instead is make sure that you’re not struggling with it, and that my presence never feels like a job for anyone. We talk, we laugh, we spend actual time together, and the pictures happen almost as a side effect of that. That’s the part of my job I take seriously: if a couple ever feels forced into doing something for my camera, I’m the one getting it wrong. I can put a couple in front of a Valadier temple with perfect evening light, and that setting can carry all the editorial weight in the world, but the moment I ask two people to fake something, the photograph is dead the second I take it. So I don’t. I just wait, and I watch, we talk, enjoy the moment together, and I let the day be whatever it’s going to be. That’s the whole idea, and it’s the closest I can get to explaining what I actually do for a living. The packaging can chase a trend on purpose: that setting can carry all the editorial weight in the world, that bold magazine atmosphere, some neat black and white, a bit of flash to underline a great dress or a good moment; the way this wedding leaned into a certain 60s and 70s glamour. But the thing inside the frame, two people actually living their day, feeling what they’re feeling, doesn’t belong to any era. That’s what stays timeless. Not the wardrobe. The truth in it. Unperformative.
If you’re planning a wedding in Central Italy and you’ve been stuck, thinking the only options are Tuscany or nothing, Umbria, and specifically Villa Pianciani, is worth knowing about. Curious about shooting your own wedding here, or somewhere else in Umbria? Feel free to reach out. No pressure, no expectations, just happy to talk it through.
Love, Fra
TAG/CREDITS
Design & Planning @leonorawedding– Floristry @salottoverde Photographer @francescospighi Catering @apollinarecatering DJ Set @bettydjstaff_tuscany Venue @villa_pianciani Open Bar: @pour_barsolution