Tuscany wedding photographer

You can tell you're in Tuscany by the clouds

It sounds strange to say it, but we know we've crossed into Tuscany by the clouds. They form differently here softer, more grouped, as if the sky over this part of Italy has its own grammar. After a decade of weddings in the region, we still notice them every time.

Tuscany is the most photographed region in Italy, which is exactly why it's the easiest to get wrong. The cliché is always close, the lemons, the sunflowers, the romanticised cartolina. But the real Tuscany doesn't need decoration. It's the green that dominates everything: the cypresses, the olive groves, the layered hills that change colour three times between morning and evening. And it's the villas. Centuries of Tuscan nobility left behind a density of estates and palazzi that no other Italian region can match. They carry the place's history in their walls, and the best work we've done in Tuscany comes from letting the territory speak instead of dressing it up.

We work across the region, but most of our Tuscan weddings happen in three areas: the Val d'Orcia, which we think is one of the most beautiful corners of Italy; the Chianti and the countryside around Florence, where many of our American couples find their first venue; and the Val di Chiana further south. Each has its own light, its own rhythm.

We have a small private game, the two of us, every time we drive into a new venue. The worse the road, the better the place. Tuscan back roads are notoriously narrow beautiful, but tight and the best estates almost always sit at the end of the worst of them. We've photographed at Villa Corsini a Mezzomonte, Borgo Stomennano, Castello di Celsa, Villa Monaciano, Villa Gamberaia, Villa La Selva, Borgo Santo Pietro, Belmond Villa San Michele and Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco, among others. Most of them required, at some point, holding our breath while a delivery van came the other way.

About timing: May, September and October are the months we would choose if it were our own wedding. The light in spring and autumn is meaningfully softer than in summer, the difference is real, not romantic. Tuscany in August is still beautiful, but you'll spend more of the day moving around the heat than enjoying it.

What we keep returning to is something we noticed early. The couples who come to Tuscany and feel most at home are the ones for whom this isn't a destination so much as a return, often Americans with an Italian last name somewhere in the family. One of the weddings that stays with us was Olivia and Nicolas, at Villa Corsini a Mezzomonte. Olivia carried her grandmother's name, and on the day she chose to wear her grandmother's veil. The ceremony was set under a mountain of red roses. There was nothing performed about any of it, it just was, and we photographed it accordingly.