T+D from Peru and FranceMulticultural Wedding from Lake Como to Château de la Bretonnière
Nantes & Bellagio
France-ItaLy - 2023
Above: Wedding Film of T&D by Il était un Pixel in Chateau de la Bretonnière, France, 2023
Below: Photos by Il était un Pixel
Some couples carry their story with them, and T and D's crosses an ocean and a sea: she Peruvian-born, he French, and a meeting place you could not invent, Lake Como. So when they saw, at my stand at the Nantes wedding fair, my photographs of the lake among images from around the world, the decision took minutes: their engagement session would happen where everything had begun. It is a scene I live regularly at wedding fairs, and it never stops moving me: a couple leafing through the album, stopping on a page, exchanging one look, and needing no further words. The lake had chosen for them long before I did.
Two days around the lake
We traveled to Lake Como for that engagement session and spent two full days photographing around the water: at Villa Melzi, whose gardens descend the hillside to the lake on the Bellagio shore, and in Varenna across the water, in a setting that needs no introduction. Two days instead of a two-hour session makes all the difference: time to change shores with the light, to wait for evening in Varenna as the façades switch on, and to let a couple forget the camera entirely. An engagement session at the place of the meeting is not a backdrop: it is a joyful pilgrimage, and the images carry the difference.
Act two: la Bretonnière
The wedding itself was held at Château de la Bretonnière near Nantes, the handsome château above its stream, in the green-and-water setting I describe in my Nantes venues guide. The multicultural open-air ceremony below the château carried immense emotion: two families, two continents, two languages, and that particular energy of weddings where Latin America meets France. It is the kind of ceremony where the photographer works both sides of the aisle at once, because every reading moves two rows at a time, in two languages. We covered the day in photo and film, and the film conveys what words struggle to: the fervor of a celebration uniting two worlds, all the way to a dance floor where the two cultures finally became one.
It is the kind of ceremony where the photographer works both sides of the aisle at once, because every reading moves two rows at a time, in two languages. We covered the day in photo and film, and the film conveys what words struggle to: the fervor of a celebration uniting two worlds, all the way to a dance floor where the two cultures finally became one.
Wedding Team
Photo/Video: Il était un Pixel, Jérémie
Venue 1: Villa Melzi Lake Como, Italy
Venue 2: Chateau de la Bretonnière
Officiant: De l’événement dans l’air
Catering: CK traiteur
Gown: Leskyscouture
Suit: L’atelier 5
HMUA: Eugénie Grandhomme
Two acts, one gallery
What this wedding demonstrates for couples weighing a similar structure: the two acts do not compete, they compound. The Como chapter gave the gallery its cinematic register, water, villas, evening façades, and the Bretonnière chapter gave it its emotional one, family, ceremony, dance floor. Neither could have carried the whole story alone, and together they read like the couple's actual life: born on the lake, lived in France. That is the honest promise of the two-chapter wedding, and this gallery is how I show it.
"Thank you Jérémie for your excellent work. It's moving to look at the photos and videos of the wedding and engagement session every time. We are so happy to have been able to work with you!"
- T+D, 2023
A story that continues
T and D belong to the couples I see again across the years and the chapters: a few years after the wedding, they drove from Nantes to my studio for their newborn session. Watching a couple arrive whose Italian meeting, Nantes vows and now first child you have photographed is the most concrete summary of what this profession builds over time, and one of my quiet prides.
And for your wedding?
If your story also spans two countries, or if a meeting place deserves its own photographic pilgrimage before the big day, the two-chapter wedding is one of my specialties: the format comparison and the lake's full guide are the right next reads.