Maren & Santi
Three days on the Tagus, from a tiled courtyard welcome dinner to the last song beside the pool. Two families arriving from four countries, one terrace, and a schedule that kept moving later every night.
It started with dinner two nights before the ceremony.
Maren’s family flew in on the Thursday. Santi’s had been in the city for a week already. The welcome dinner was set in the courtyard behind the main house, under a fig tree and about two hundred candles, and it ran until the caterers started stacking chairs around the guests.
We photographed all three days on the same terms: a clear plan for portraits and family groups, and no attempt to direct the parts that were already working. By the Friday afternoon nobody was looking at the camera any more, which is the point of arriving early.
The details
Three days, in the order they happened.
Nothing about it was rushed, and nothing about it was late.
The plan had one hour of protected time in it: portraits and family groups, straight after the ceremony, while the light was still off the water. Everything else was left open on purpose.
That meant the hour before the ceremony was quiet enough to photograph properly — the empty terrace, the seating cards weighted down against the wind, Santi’s grandmother arriving first and sitting alone in the front row for ten minutes. It also meant that when dinner ran long, nothing had to be cut.
Three days is long enough that people stop performing. That is the whole reason to book it.
The last two hours were a different kind of wedding.
The band finished at midnight and a cousin took over the speakers. Shoes came off on the tiles. The pool lights stayed on and about a third of the guests ended up sitting on the edge of it with their feet in the water.
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