A Three-Day Hindu Wedding at Villa Medicea di Lilliano, Tuscany
There are weddings, and then there are events. Sonum and Fede's three-day celebration at Villa Medicea di Lilliano was firmly in the second category — a carefully built, deeply personal fusion of Indian and Spanish heritage, played out across an historic Tuscan estate just outside Florence, with a hundred or so guests who had travelled from across the world to be part of it.
We started, as the best things often do, in Florence itself. The day before the wedding, we met Sonum and Fede in the city — talking through the days ahead, getting a feel for each other — before the evening pulled everyone up to the villa for the opening celebrations.
The Riviera Roving Band played live on the terrace as guests arrived, and the energy was incredible: anticipatory, warm, the first mixing of very different groups of people finding a way to connect over handmade pizza and gelato, with the Tuscan hills spreading out below and the faintest outline of Florence on the horizon.
Villa Medicea di Lilliano is a genuinely extraordinary place to shoot. The central courtyard, planted with ancient trees and framed by warm stone walls, offers an oasis of calm. The arched hallway with its painted frescoes, leading out toward the grounds, offers sublime light and an anticipatory walk into the gardens.
The road running alongside the estate — straight, cypress-lined, with Florence just visible in the distance — is simply tuscany distilled, and as a whole it makes for one of the best places for couples' portraits we have found anywhere in Europe. And the reception space, when the lighting rigs are up and the evening is in full swing, looks like something from a film.
Day two was the Mandap ceremony, and Tuscany had a surprise in store. August in this part of Italy is usually reliably warm — the umbrellas that had been arranged for guests were intended for shade, not shelter.
When the rain came in, heavy and sudden, the staff and some of the guests rose to the occasion and ran through the crowd distributing as the cloth covering of the mandap held off the worst for the ceremony.
Sonum and Fede stayed completely composed. The Mandap held above them, the ceremony continued, and the guests — now variously sheltered, damp, and thoroughly entertained — watched it through. And then the lightning came. A single strike, directly behind the Mandap, in the middle of the ceremony. We had the camera in the right place at the right moment, and the resulting image is one of the most striking frames we have ever taken — proof, if it were needed, that the best photographs are usually the ones nobody planned for.
What followed was one of the most memorable moments I have ever caught on camera. With the ceremony in full swing, I stepped back from the Mandap and shot wide. Looking on, I could see lightning strikes on the nearby hills and decided to take a chance — I started rolling slow-motion video of the scene. A minute or two later, a strike hit directly behind the Mandap. I pulled a freeze frame from the footage. It is one of the best single images I have ever taken, and I doubt we'll ever see the confluence of circumstances to capture a similar image agin.
Day three was the finale. Speeches that landed, fireworks that earned their moment, and a dance floor that required absolutely no encouragement from anyone. The reception space at Lilliano, lit up and full, looked extraordinary — two cultures, two families, 150 people who had travelled to be there, and three days that had given them more than they came for.
Sonum and Fede set out to unite two expressive, colourful traditions in one celebration of everything they love in each other. Across three days in Tuscany, they did exactly that — and then some.
