Four Days in the Chianti Hills: A Villa Mangiacane Wedding
Sister, I had a dream:
I'm telling someone about the limestone quarry I used to live near in Pennsylvania. I'm explaining how expansive it was and how you could basically see it from anywhere you stood? Yet also an image of the fence, and an aerial view. And how you were always aware of it but couldn't actually look into the depths.
I'm riding a bicycle down a very thin curb or fence or something, I'm holding an umbrella over my head. On one side of the line is grass just a few inches lower than the curb. On the other side is a steep drop into a cavern or quarry. I'm using the umbrella to cover my face from the audience who, as I look up, is sitting in attendance, as if in a theater or seated in folding chairs perhaps, watching me. I'm having a lot of fun. The umbrella feels like it's shading me from their attention or from embarrassment. I'm being seen while simultaneously trying to hide my face. After I've finished my ride, a dream figure explains this is what I'm doing with money right now, riding right on the line. -June 2026
Alexi and Max’s magical Tuscan wedding came right on the heel of my fortieth birthday. On the cusp of a new decade, at the sunset of my fertile years, my dream of finding my soul mate was as elusive as ever. I had spent twenty years trying to fix the parts of me that felt absolutely terrified of intimacy (not that I had words for what I was experiencing) and I felt an immense amount of grief and loneliness. Part of my confusion was the realization that aside from the nebulous goal of falling in love, I had very little vision for what my life beyond forty would look like.
My identity crisis expressed itself partially through a body dysmorphic drive to be smaller. I became (temporarily) entranced with intermittent fasting as both a means to lose weight and as portal to spiritual ascent. I fasted forty hours on my flight to Italy. I didn’t plan the forty hours to be symbolic of my birthday, I merely had an overnight layover in London and it seemed like the perfect window to abstain. In retrospect, depriving oneself of sustenance is an isolating experience. Food is meant to be shared and enjoyed as one of life’s necessary pleasures. Thus, I arrived in the motherland hungry for connection.
I knew a handful of people attending this wedding. It was an intimate affair with only forty guests. Alexi & Max had generously reserved Villa Mangiacane for the entire weekend — a sprawling Tuscan estate with a villa, a guest house and two pools, all soaked in soft velvety Italian light. I was staying on the property with the wedding party and their guests. Everyone was asked to wear white, so part of my preparation for the trip was finding a dress. I chose a linen off the shoulder piece with frills at the neckline and at the bottom. Exquisitely feminine, deliciously comfortable, I felt deeply beautiful. The line between guest and photographer — blurred.
I felt lonely. My best friend was there. Alexi is her sister-in-law. We serendipitously booked ourselves on the same connection from London to Florence and I tagged along with her family for a few meals before we arrived at the villa. Quickly I started to feel like an intruder. I found myself wanting to give them space to catch up without me. I didn’t account for needing to recover from my fast. I felt like I needed to recharge right when I felt called upon to work. I felt this dizzying sense that one foot was standing inside of connection and one foot was outside of it all in isolation.
I didn't know there was going to be a wedding planner. Every conversation I had with Alexi & Max leading up to the wedding implied I would have complete creative freedom. For some weddings a planner is the greatest gift you can ask for, they offer invaluable support and much needed structure. But I had journeyed halfway across the world imagining I would document this day from the inside, unfettered by industry expectations. The morning of the wedding the planner sat me down and presented me with a shot list of details I wouldn't capture even at my most formal weddings. I felt crestfallen, frustrated, constricted. I didn't have a second photographer there with me. I felt suddenly obligated to do the jobs of two people in one. The property was expansive; I kept running back and forth between the olive grove and the dining area, the bedroom and the terrace. My head and my heart were at odds. I wanted desperately to be in the kind of flow where I could follow the energy, feel where I was needed. Instead I had this list in my head that I needed to tick off between the shots that I knew really mattered and the ones I felt obligated to deliver. My body wanted to dance in one direction, but my mind kept pulling me back.
To my surprise none of the other vendors wore white. I suppose my choice to don a white dress exposed my desire to be included. There is an othering feeling that can come from stepping into the role of witness. To be inside of an experience and outside of it at the same time is a dance that has tormented me my entire career. Perhaps beyond my career, perhaps I felt well suited to photography because of a preternatural talent for witnessing while feeling unable to participate directly. Observing two individuals declare their love over and over while feeling completely excluded from the experience myself is the recurring dream of my life. And yet… I love this work. I love bearing witness. I adore offering myself up in service to love.
There are wedding days where there is so much joy in the air I can feel it crackling against my skin. Where all of my problems disappear into the background and I am transported into a field of love beyond anything I can imagine. Where my nervous system, the one that swears she doesn’t know how to be in a relationship, is retuned on a level beyond my reach, due solely to the gift of being present. This miracle I have experienced over and over again.
On this day, however, I danced between the two extremes. One part of me stuck feeling small, constricted, and wanting to disappear; the other part dancing around in a blur of light, capturing the essence of something I can never truly name — something way, way bigger than myself.
I’m now two years into my forties. I still haven’t met my person. I still don’t know if I will. The gaping unknown is still hovering at the edge of my consciousness, yet experiences like this wedding remind me that the line between vulnerability and connection — between the desire to disappear and the desire to be seen — can truly be danced.
See the full wedding gallery from Alexi & Max's celebration at Villa Mangiacane. And if this way of moving through the world resonates, I've written more about dreams and witnessing in Dream Weaving and How it Inspires your Wedding Photography.
