Journal · Regensburg and the Stubai valley · July

Two days, two places.

Two days, registry office and reception Two places, Regensburg and the Stubai valley 1.560 edited images delivered 37 of them here 3 to 4 weeks until delivery

Anyone can show a best-of. This is one whole wedding in the order it happened — including the parts where nothing is happening.

Most photographers’ sites show twenty high points from twenty different weddings. It looks magnificent and answers none of the one question a couple actually has: What will our day look like once it is over?

This wedding took two days and two places: the registry office in Regensburg, the reception in the Stubaital in Tyrol. The ceremony was not in a church but on a terrace under a marquee, looking down the valley. And everyone was in Tracht — which changes something photographically, because loden green, linen and silver buttons take light differently from a white dress.

Those two days produced 1,560 edited images — everything that was technically sound and not a duplicate, not a selection from them. Thirty-seven of them are here.

Go through the images in this order and you do not just see photographs. You see how a wedding runs when it takes its time — and you can draw conclusions for your own day from that. Alongside the story from Kitzbühel this is deliberately a very different day: no nave, no carriage, no white train.

A wedding party in Tracht rises under a marquee as the couple enter — The entrance under the marquee. Everyone stands up at the same moment.

Day one: the registry office

The official part is the shortest of the whole weekend and therefore often underrated. Twenty minutes, a table, two signatures. I get there early and photograph the things nobody will look at again in a moment: the candle, the rings, the empty table. Those images carry the album later, because they are the only record of how carefully somebody prepared that room.

What is on the table before anyone is in the room

The smallest guests care least about the paperwork

The signature. The glass is already waiting.

Suddenly the bouquet is beside the point

Out

Then the door opens and inside becomes outside. Balloons, sun on the cobbles, everybody talking at once. In that minute I do not walk with the couple, I walk against the current: the faces looking towards them say more than the couple does. And in Tracht a square in Regensburg looks like no other square.

Day two begins in the valley

There are kilometres between the registry office and the reception: Regensburg, then the Stubai valley. Day two starts in two different rooms at once, and I am in both. Not for completeness, but because the hour before getting dressed is the only calm one of the day. What happens there is quiet and gets looked at most often afterwards.

Eyes closed. The only quiet moment of the day.

The first glass, still in the dressing gown

The ceremony under the marquee

The ceremony is not in a church but on the terrace, under a marquee, looking down the valley. That changes everything: there is no aisle to work along and no dark nave to sort the light for me. There is daylight, beer benches and people sitting very close together. I stand to one side and wait. The moment when everyone stands up at once comes only once.

Everyone stands. That is exactly why I am standing to the side.

Congratulations

Then comes the part no running order allows for, and at a wedding in Tracht it turns out especially warm: an hour of embracing. Here I photograph almost entirely by the light in the parlour, without flash. It costs frames and it produces images that look the way the room felt.

Stealing the bride

Then the bride is gone. Whoever finds her pays the bill — that is the custom, and in the valley it is taken seriously. Half the wedding party walks down the road in the rain under umbrellas to the next inn, and I go with them. This is the point in the day where a photographer has to choose: stay with the groom and photograph the search, or disappear with the bride and catch the hour where she sits among her own people and nobody is looking at her. I go with the bride. The groom turns up anyway.

Half the wedding party, in the rain, down the road

Arrived. The bride is sitting somewhere else now.

Found. From here on somebody is paying the bill.

The hour for two

Somewhere between the congratulations and the meal the two of them are alone for the first time all day. We walk twenty minutes away from the house, onto a wooden bridge over the stream. I give almost no directions. Two people who have just married do not need a pose, they need a few minutes without an audience. And I deliberately photograph part of it from far away, so you can see how small two people are allowed to be on their biggest day.

The bridge in the woods, two very small people

Table, speech, dance

From here on the room goes dark and I stay with the light that is there. A speech where you can see the speaker has practised it. A dance floor that hesitates and then does not stop. And around half past one a buffet that nobody quite remembers the next morning. That is why I stay this long.

Half past one. There is still something to eat.

The facts

Registry office: Regensburg, Bavaria
Reception: Stubai valley, Tyrol
Ceremony: Free, under the marquee
Month: July
Length: Two days
Dress: Tracht
Delivered: 1,560 edited
Delivery: 3 to 4 weeks

Your day happens once.

If you have read this far, you already know fairly precisely how I work. The next sensible step is not a price list but the question of whether your date is still free at all.

Check the date Introductory call, 15 minutes

MUNICHPIXART · Christian Heil · Munich Passion for photography ch@munichpixart.com · +49 176 14651982