Merry and Sean | Vow Renewal at Palazzo Avino

Merry and Sean had already been married for years. They were not planning a first wedding. They were renewing their vows, which is a different kind of commission entirely. There is no nervous energy, no first-time anxiety, no family politics about the seating chart.

A vow renewal is two people who have already built a life together choosing to say the words again, in a different place, with a different light, and meaning them differently than they did the first time.

They came from Newport, Rhode Island, in late September with a handful of close friends. They chose Palazzo Avino because the scale felt right: intimate enough for a group of ten, elegant enough that the setting carried its own weight without needing production.

The ceremony would happen on the Terrazzo Vimini, the hotel’s wicker terrace overlooking the coast. The rest of the day would be the two of them, the palazzo, the streets of Ravello, and Villa Rufolo in the first days of autumn.

The Ogive Suite

Merry got ready in one of the upper suites at Palazzo Avino, the one with the ogive balcony. The ogive is a pointed arch window, Gothic in proportion, that frames the coast like a painting with a stone border. The window is tall enough that a wedding dress hung from the top of the frame fills the entire opening, with the sea and the Lattari Mountains visible through the fabric.

Three Angles on the Ogive

I shot the dress hanging in the ogive from three positions: from inside the room looking out, so the mountains and the coast glowed through the white fabric; from the side, where the stone arch created a dark frame around the bright opening; and from the far corner, where Merry in her robe was visible reflected in the mirror on the opposite wall while the dress hung in the window behind her.

The suite has hand-painted tiles on the floor and antique furniture that adds texture to every background, but the ogive window is the architectural element that makes this room different from any other getting-ready space on the coast. The light enters through that single tall opening and creates a directional beam that sculpts everything it touches.

Merry’s dress was a beaded long-sleeve gown, fitted and detailed, with a pattern that caught the light at every angle. Long sleeves in September in Ravello are unusual: most brides choose strapless or off-shoulder for the heat, but by late September the air is cooler and the sun is lower, and the sleeves gave the images a formality and a texture that bare arms would not have produced. The beading reflected small points of light from the window, visible in the close-up shots of her arms and the bodice, adding a surface quality to the fabric that a smooth satin dress would not have offered.

Her shoes were white satin heels with pearl and ribbon embellishments, and the wedding stationery, which I photographed on the desk near the window, had a coastal Italy theme: cream card stock, muted blues, hand-drawn illustrations of the coastline.

These detail shots, the dress, the shoes, the stationery, the bouquet on the tiled floor, form the opening sequence of the gallery. They set the visual tone before any person appears in the frame. For a renewal, the details tend to be more considered than for a first wedding because the couple has already been through the process once and knows exactly what they want this time.

The Bar

Before leaving the suite, I brought Merry downstairs to the Palazzo Avino bar for a set of solo portraits. The bar has a polished wood counter, a gilded back wall lined with bottles, and a warm, low-lit atmosphere that feels like a different era. It is not a space most photographers use for bridal portraits, but for a vow renewal where the mood is more relaxed and less traditional, it worked.

Merry stood at the bar holding her bouquet, a mix of white baby’s breath, roses, and trailing greenery. The dark wood and the amber tones of the bottles behind her created a contrast with her white dress that was the opposite of the bright, airy ogive window upstairs.

I shot at a wider aperture to blur the bottles into warm color behind her, keeping her face and the bouquet sharp. Then I moved to the far end of the bar and shot the full length: Merry leaning against the counter, one hand on the wood, the beaded sleeve catching a reflection from the gilded mirror behind the bottles. The composition placed her at the intersection of the bar’s old-world glamour and the bright archway leading to the terrace, two worlds of light in a single frame.

Solo at the Bar

The bar portraits have the feeling of a fashion editorial: a woman in a wedding dress at a bar, alone, composed, before the ceremony begins. It is a sequence that a first wedding rarely produces because the bride is usually surrounded by bridesmaids and family. A renewal gives you these quiet, solo moments because the stakes are different and the pace is slower. There is no urgency. There is no schedule bearing down. There is just the bride, the bar, and the ten minutes before she walks out to the terrace where her husband is waiting to hear the words again.

The Vow Renewal at Palazzo Avino

The ceremony happened on the Terrazzo Vimini, a terrace with wicker furniture and a direct view of the coast. Sean was waiting in a light tan suit with a white shirt, no tie, his hands clasped in front of him. The officiant stood between them with a leather folder. The guests, fewer than ten, sat in a loose semicircle behind the couple.

Both Merry and Sean read their own vows. In a renewal, the vows are not prescribed by a liturgy or a celebrant’s script. They are personal, written by the couple, and they tend to be more specific and more grounded than first-wedding vows because they are based on experience rather than hope. Sean’s voice caught more than once as he read. Merry laughed through part of hers, which made Sean laugh too, and the guests relaxed into a warmth that a formal ceremony takes longer to reach.

I shot the ceremony from two positions. From behind the couple, looking outward, the image shows the balustrade, the sea, the mountains, and the small group of guests in the foreground with their backs to the camera.

From the side, closer, the frame is tighter: Sean’s face as Merry reads, his eyes steady and his jaw set in the way people hold themselves when they are trying not to cry in front of other people. Or Merry’s hands holding the paper while Sean listens, the beaded cuffs of her sleeves catching the afternoon sun. The terrace is small enough that I could cover both angles without a second photographer by moving during the pauses between readings.

The officiant’s book, Sean clasping his hands with his rings visible, Merry waving hello to the guests as she arrived on the terrace: these are the details that fill the gaps between the formal ceremony frames and give the gallery its candid texture. In a renewal with ten guests, every person in the frame is someone who matters to the couple. There are no distant cousins, no colleagues, no plus-ones who arrived an hour ago. Every face in the background is a face the couple chose to bring across the Atlantic, and that changes what the wide shots feel like.

Villa Rufolo in October Light

After the ceremony and a round of toasts on the terrace, we walked to Villa Rufolo for couple portraits. Late September in Ravello is the beginning of a color shift. The greens of summer start to turn golden at the edges. Cyclamen appear along the garden paths. The chestnuts begin to fall. The light at this time of year arrives lower and warmer than in July, and the golden hour starts earlier, around 5:30 PM, which gives the portraits a warmth that a summer session at the same hour would not have.

The October Palette

We found the gardens nearly empty. By late September the tourist numbers have dropped, and at 5 PM on a weekday the paths were ours. I shot Merry and Sean walking through the upper gardens with the umbrella pines above them and the sea visible through the gaps in the trees.

The autumn foliage was just beginning to turn: the edges of the leaves going from green to gold, cyclamen appearing in pink clusters along the base of the garden walls, and the first chestnuts falling on the gravel paths. The palette was warmer and more muted than a summer session at the same spot, and the images have a softness that June light, with its harsher contrasts and more saturated greens, does not produce.

At the Belvedere, where the view opens to the full coastline, the sky was turning from blue to a soft pink. The last frames of the day were shot in that narrow window where the light turns everything warm and the shadows go soft: Merry and Sean at the stone railing, his arm around her shoulders, both of them looking out at a coast that was turning the same color as the inside of a wine glass.

VOWS RENEWAL

EMILIANO RUSSO

Ravello stands out as one of Italy’s most charming places for a sophisticated wedding..

SECRET GEMS

We understand special spots in Ravello, and your romance deserves nothing less than perfect.

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Experience an elegant wedding alongside an unforgettable adventure along the Shoreline

The wind had picked up, which moved Merry’s veil and gave the final frames a sense of motion that the still, sheltered terrace ceremony earlier in the day did not have.

The gallery ends with those wide Rufolo frames: two people who have been married for years, standing at the edge of a 13th-century garden, watching the same view that Wagner saw when he wrote Parsifal, looking like they were exactly where they were supposed to be.

Merry and Sean renewed their vows on a wicker terrace in late September and walked out into a Villa Rufolo that was turning gold. A renewal does not need the lead time or the logistics of a first wedding. It needs a terrace, a view, and someone who knows the light. Send me your dates and I will tell you what that afternoon looks like at Palazzo Avino.