The one traditional wedding photo I realised I needed

When I started planning my wedding, there were a few non-negotiables. I had decided on the groom, the destination, my brothers as bridesmen and the style of photography – everything else was open to discussion. I wanted to get married in the Sicilian city of Catania, my spiritual second home and a place I’ve returned to since discovering it in my early twenties. The photography needed to feel alive and kinetic, approaching the day with a journalistic eye. Alongside the key moments, such as the exchanging of vows and the first dance, I wanted the in-between bits, too.

No one can be everywhere at once at their own wedding and I was determined to capture micro-observations that might otherwise have passed me by. I wanted the photographs to encapsulate the spirit of the day from start to finish. Catania is a soulful, scrappy place, and the images had to get to the core of the city’s character. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given I’m an author and journalist, I wanted them to tell an unvarnished story – in essence, I had absolutely no interest in anything posed.

One of the advantages of marrying in your late thirties is that you’ve attended enough weddings to know precisely what you like and dislike. I’d seen too many couples disappear from their own celebrations for an inordinate amount of time while they assembled for traditional photographs. This was going to be the party of my life, and there was no chance I was going to miss a moment of it.

My mother was appalled. “Those pictures of everyone together will matter more than you think,” she said, with quiet authority. After one fraught wedding-planning evening, we reached a compromise. She conceded that there would be no more than two ABBA songs, and I agreed to two traditional group wedding photographs – one after the ceremony with our immediate family, and one of the entire wedding party outside the venue.

In the months that followed, everything fell into place. Dame Zandra Rhodes, who I was writing a book with, kindly agreed to lend me a dress from her archives to wear on the day. The food would be handled by a friend of a friend based in Sicily. The flowers would be simple, largely olive branches and eucalyptus, with a few white alstroemeria threaded throughout. (The Sicilians were horrified, questioning why I would choose their equivalent of a commonplace weed as the centrepiece.)

We chose the unthinkably beautiful Palazzo Biscari as our venue. My husband and I are not the sort of people to get married in an ornate Baroque palace, but there was a personal connection. Four years earlier, we had stayed in an Airbnb beneath the palazzo in what would have been the servants’ quarters, a vaulted basement not overburdened with light. We had been living in our modest apartment for two months when we befriended the family who reside in the palazzo – descendants of its original aristocratic owners. They generously opened their private courtyard for the ceremony and suggested we use the rest of the palazzo, often hired for special events, as the wider wedding venue. 

Finding the right photographer proved harder than expected. After sifting through countless florid portfolios, we found Noemi Alessandra, a Catania-based photographer who had an eye for natural, candid images. Her work is the opposite of staged – she beautifully captures a couple and their world.

The big day came and went, and was better than either of us could ever have dreamed. Walking through the streets of the city I love the most with my family, to marry the man I love, is one of the best memories of my life – and it only got better from there. We feasted on platters of pasta and introduced our 18-month-old to the singular joy of arancini. We danced on ornate balconies and beneath fresco ceilings to DJ Luck and MC Neat. The two posed group photos were taken so swiftly I barely registered them, a testament to our photographer’s skill. The days following the wedding felt like a natural high, as we continued to bump into our guests, who folded our wedding into a holiday. 

A few months later, the photographs arrived and, one Friday evening – each with a Moretti in hand – we combed through them. They perfectly captured the big and small moments: little toddler hands reaching for squares of pizzette; my grandad on his feet, handkerchief waving above his head, as we entered the reception to the sound of garage music; my husband and I kissing with our son sandwiched between us; my brothers and I hugging after their speeches.

Among them was a group photograph of all 120-plus guests standing on the steps of the palazzo before the reception began. Noemi must have asked us to shout something, because everyone is laughing – with the exception of our son, who appears on the brink of a meltdown. People from every chapter in our lives are there – friends from nursery, school, university and work, as well as siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, godparents and parents. My husband’s mother died not long before our wedding, so I can’t say that everyone we loved was present – but the photograph is a sum of our parts, a visual record of the world we had built together. 

When I look at this image, I am overwhelmed by the number of people who travelled hundreds of miles to be with us that day. There is something powerful about the sheer scale of it. All these people who matter to my husband and me in a million ways, large and small, each one a crucial character in our shared story. There is a reason most couples end up framing their version of this shot. It shows exactly who was there at that precise moment in time, a photographic census of who they were, and who they are. It represents the best of us.

Not long ago, my parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary, and out came the wedding album. My brothers and cousins looked through it together, carefully examining each picture. There was my beautiful mother in her wedding dress (made by her grandmother), my father inexplicably decked out in a red cummerbund, sporting a moustache he’d grown to look older, but unfortunately made him resemble a Spanish waiter. They look so happy, so in love. 

There are no lively dancefloor pictures, no candid shots of children charging about – but there is the group photograph. My mother talked us through the key players, and those who were no longer around, whether they had passed away or simply drifted out of touch. I had seen the picture many times before, but now, with my own wedding behind me, I had a newfound appreciation seeing each and every person who had meant something to my parents on their wedding day.

It has only been 18 months since we got married, and already we have lost someone very dear to us – someone in that picture who died far too young. I am so very glad he is a part of that photograph, smiling into the camera holding his two children. 

He may not be interested, but I look forward to showing our son that image – which is also a very good reminder to finally have our photographs printed into an album. My husband and I will point out his uncles, grandparents, godparents and the younger versions of children who he will, I hope, still love playing with. He’ll probably say something exasperating like, “You look so young”, or, “What are you wearing?” – which is the correct response to any image of your parents taken more than a few years ago. And I’ll tell him the same thing that my mother told me: “Mark my words, you’ll want the same picture on your wedding day.”