Catherine and Kay: A Wedding at La Tagliata

The rooms themselves helped that mood along. Rather than the uniform, hyper-modern suites of a typical hotel, La Tagliata’s guest rooms are individually decorated, each with its own mismatched furniture and personality, which meant Catherine and Kay were getting ready in genuinely different spaces rather than two identical rooms on the same corridor. I moved between them slowly, catching Catherine’s sister working through the last details of her hair, Kay simply standing at his window for a long stretch, watching the light change over water he could see but not yet share the moment with.

A Handkerchief With Its Own History

The handkerchief Catherine’s sister tucked into her bouquet had been passed down through several generations of their family before that morning, delicate lace worn soft with age and handling. It’s the kind of detail that means nothing to a stranger glancing at a bouquet in a photograph and everything to the family who knows exactly whose hands it passed through before reaching Catherine’s. I photographed it close, on its own, before it disappeared into the folds of the bouquet for the rest of the day.

The Long Walk Down to the Church

Rather than taking a car, Catherine chose to walk the entire route down from Montepertuso to the church in Positano herself, accompanied by her father and sister down the long run of stairs and alleyways connecting the upper hamlets to the town below. A bride walking through Positano in a full gown is rare enough that locals genuinely stop to notice, and Catherine’s descent drew exactly that kind of attention, neighbors calling out from balconies, a fruit seller along the way stopping his work entirely to hand her a single flower without either of them sharing a language to explain the gesture.

That walk took the better part of an hour, considerably longer than a car ride would have, and I stayed a few paces back for most of it rather than directing anything. The real material of a descent like this one is almost entirely unplanned, a bride catching her breath at a landing halfway down, her father’s hand steadying her on an uneven step, the specific quality of light in a narrow alley that only lasts a few minutes before the sun moves past the gap between buildings. None of it can be staged convincingly, which is exactly why it’s worth the extra time compared to skipping straight to the church by car.

What a Walk Like This Requires From Everyone Involved

Couples considering the same kind of descent should think honestly about their own stamina and their dress’s construction before committing to it. Catherine’s gown had real structure and weight, though nothing so heavy it became unmanageable, and her father and sister both played an active role in helping her navigate the steeper, more uneven sections rather than leaving her to manage a long train alone. A day like this rewards a couple who wants the walk itself to be part of the story, not simply a means of getting from one location to the next.

Portraits Along the Coastal Path

After the ceremony, we worked our way toward the water for portraits, passing beneath a stone archway thick with trailing greenery along one of the paths connecting Marina Grande to the quieter stretch near Fornillo. I shot Catherine and Kay from behind as they walked through it, her train spilling across the stone underfoot, boats scattered on the water visible through the arch’s opening. Later, as the evening settled in, we moved onto Positano’s main promenade itself, the town’s colorful houses stacked up the hillside behind them, string lights just beginning to switch on along the waterfront restaurants.

That stretch of promenade is one of the most photographed few hundred meters on this entire coast, and it takes real patience to work it without a crowd of tourists drifting through every frame. We caught it at the specific hour when the day’s foot traffic thins but the evening restaurant crowd hasn’t yet arrived, a narrow window that shifts slightly depending on the season and that I’ve learned to anticipate rather than discover by accident. Catherine’s tiara caught the last of the daylight just as the streetlamps behind her started to glow, giving that single portrait two distinct light sources working in her favor at once.

Back Up the Mountain for Dinner

A vintage car carried us back up to La Tagliata as the sky moved through violet and burnt orange, guests already gathered on the terrace with prosecco and appetizers pulled straight from the property’s own gardens. Dinner ran long and unstructured in the best way, course after course of the same handmade pasta and grilled specialties the restaurant has built its reputation on for decades, family-style rather than plated, which suited a couple from Alabama who understood exactly that kind of hospitality from their own upbringing.

Photographing a family-style Italian dinner is a different rhythm than covering a plated, timed reception. Dishes arrive when they’re ready rather than on a fixed schedule, and the pace of conversation ebbs and flows around the table rather than pausing for scheduled toasts. I stayed loose during that stretch, working the natural gaps between courses rather than forcing formal moments, catching Vincenzo’s food arriving at the table, guests reaching across each other for the next dish, the specific chaos of a meal nobody’s rushing through.

Speeches Between Courses

Rather than a single formal toast section, speeches from both families threaded through the meal in pieces, a story here, a toast there, whenever the mood in the room called for one rather than at a scheduled interval. It gave the whole evening a looser, more genuine feeling than a reception built around a rigid timeline of announced speeches, and it meant I had to stay alert throughout dinner rather than relaxing between two fixed points on a schedule.

A Neapolitan Folk Group Takes Over

After the cake, a folk group arrived with mandolins, an accordion, and a tammorra, the large traditional frame drum that anchors most Campanian folk music, and led the entire party through a tarantella, the courtship-and-celebration dance with roots reaching back centuries in this region. Watching a table full of Alabama relatives who’d never heard a tammorra in their lives get pulled into that same rhythm, Catherine’s own father included, was one of the more genuinely joyful things I’ve photographed on this coast, two very different traditions of community celebration turning out to have more in common than either family expected.

Photographing a tarantella properly means anticipating movement rather than reacting to it, since the dance builds momentum quickly once the tammorra’s rhythm takes hold, guests pulled one after another into a widening circle. I worked from the edge of the group rather than trying to move through it, using a wider lens to catch the whole scene, the accordion player mid-motion, hands clapping in time, faces genuinely surprised at how naturally they’d picked up steps none of them had ever attempted before. It’s the kind of chaotic, high-energy sequence that rewards staying physically out of the way and simply following where the energy actually goes rather than directing it.

A Detail That Stuck With Catherine’s Family

Catherine mentioned afterward that her father, normally the quietest person at any family gathering back home, talked about that tarantella for months afterward, a detail that says something true about what actually sticks with people after a wedding day ends. It’s rarely the formally posed portraits or the carefully planned photo locations. It’s the unscripted five minutes when an entire family, thousands of miles from home, got pulled into a centuries-old dance they’d never heard of that morning.