Palais Schönburg: a Vienna wedding film
“Baroque streetscapes and imperial palaces set the stage for Vienna’s artistic and musical masterpieces alongside its coffee-house culture and vibrant epicurean and design scenes.”
Welcome to Vienna… described affectionately by The Lonely Planet … and featuring as the fifth real wedding in our series!
As an international wedding videographer, I absolutely love travelling to new places to film and exactly one year ago I had the pleasure of filming my first wedding in the capital of Austria.
Known as the ‘city of music’, this grand, yet very cool, European city was the PERFECT location for the wedding of Ewa and Peter.
The venue: Palais Schönburg. “Typically Vienna flair – an old-style Palais with wonderful architecture and a beautiful garden.”
I was recommended to the couple by photographers Isabelle and Natascha from Belle & Sass and the instant I met them I knew that their wedding was going to be epic.
Peter and Ewa are jet-setters, with ‘homes’ all over the world, including Los Angeles, but their roots in Austria. A fun-loving couple and extremely laid back and they had a determination that their wedding would be the greatest, crazy party of the summer for all their friends and family.
They both love life and laugh a lot. When they are not kitesurfing, they are eating meals together and generally living life to the full.
All Photography on this page by Belle & Sass
Getting to know you
Despite their relaxed and uber cool attitude to life …. and their wedding day plans … there still had to be a lot of organising ahead of the day to ensure their plans ran smoothly and looked, well, ‘unplanned and unrehearsed’.
Ahead of each wedding as well as spending time getting to know my clients we also go through the day in fine detail, so I can put together a ‘call sheet’ of timings, which allows me to know where I need to be and when. Once this is in my head I can relax about the logistics and be creative and capture moments spontaneously as they unfold throughout the day.
My ethos is to capture the essence of a couple and their day. To tell a story. So that my films are a reflection of that day. If you’re having an intimate celebration with your close family and friends or an elaborate party with 100 of guests, which goes on until dawn … then that is the story I will tell.
I also don’t ‘force’ anything upon my couples. If they don’t want a ‘portrait’ or posed session and instead want just candid moments captured, then that’s fine by me. Everything we do is inspired by you and your wishes.
Planning makes perfect
What is worth bearing in mind is if you have something you’ve planned and even rehearsed before the wedding like a choreographed first dance or surprise singing waiters for the guests, then I need to make sure I am discreetly in position and ready to record to ensure I have the best coverage for your film.
Peter and Ewa wanted to make an unusual entrance to their reception… her bring brought in carried by a ‘bouncer’ and Peter playing Moth into the Flame from Metallica on the electric guitar. Apart from the bride, groom, photographers and myself no one had any idea about the ‘stunt’ until it happened. Which meant a fantastic surprise for the guests and great footage for me.
Ewa and Peter’s wedding day was a reflection of them as individual and their relationship together – ‘laid-back and a little bit crazy’ – and it was as un-staged as Peter’s proposal.
“The proposal was very unconventional. No knee fall, no ring. But full of love. We were at home in our ‘we chill at home clothes’ and I was on my way to the kitchen, when Peter stopped me, took me into his arms and told me how much our relationship means to him and that we wants to spend the rest of life with me. I thought he just had a ‘love-fit’. That happens sometimes between us… So he had asked again: ‘No, seriously Ewa, do you want to be my wife?’ What?? Of course I wanted to – he is my most favorite person! I never thought, he would ask. We then went to Tiffany to buy the ring together and got drunk on champagne.”
-Ewa
As an introduction to their wedding trailer, while filming with Peter and Ewa the day before the wedding I noticed she had a tattoo, which said “stufen”… it means Steps, from the title of her favourite poem Step by Step by the German poet Hermann Hesse.
Ewa + Peter // Steps from Story of Your Day
Ewa and Peter say they chose Story Of Your Day because “we dislike cheesy ‘Gaussian Blur’ pink romance, tears-in-eyes, boring wedding memories” and fell in love with the films on your website.
Whatever your style of wedding, get in touch so we can start planning together how to make it into a beautiful and cinematic film.
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