Villa Sola Cabiati wedding photography

Villa Sola Cabiati is a private ducal villa at Tremezzina, let whole rather than by the room. It is eighteenth-century, small by the standards of the lake’s grand houses, and still furnished as a family home — frescoed ceilings, a Murano-glass room, period furniture and a walled garden. Because it is taken in its entirety, a wedding here is genuinely private in a way that a hotel wedding is not.

The photographic problem it sets is the opposite of a large terrace wedding. There is no crowd to work within and no long view to fall back on; the pictures are made in rooms, on stairs, in doorways and in a garden you can cross in a minute. That rewards a photographer working with available light and a short lens, and it rewards a guest list small enough that the rooms do not feel packed.

Plan it as a house party rather than an event. Getting ready in the bedrooms, a ceremony in the garden, dinner in the frescoed dining room and the whole thing unfolding within a few walls is the shape that suits the building. The light indoors is window light and nothing else, which sets the useful hours — and which is exactly why the rooms look the way they do in photographs.