The couple in the arcaded courtyard at the Encore Event Center, San Diego, late in the afternoon
California · October 2025 and July 2026

October in Laguna,
July in San Diego

Heisler Park, Laguna Beach · Encore Event Center, San Diego

Nine months apart and sixty miles down the coast: an evening on the Laguna Beach cliffs in October, and a wedding in a Spanish courtyard in San Diego the following July. The same two people, twice — which is the whole case for photographing a couple before the day itself.

One · the engagement

An evening
on the cliffs

Heisler Park, Laguna Beach · 22 October 2025

The cove below Heisler Park
On the wall, with the bay behind
Bird of paradise
Under the palms
In the planting

Palms, and
an hour of
flat sun

Laguna Beach · Orange County

The gazebo at Heisler Park above the sea
In the gazebo
In the roots of the fig
The ring
Down on the sand, with the sun going
Above the beach

Nine months
of not being
strangers

An engagement session is not a warm-up for a portfolio. It is an hour in which two people find out what it is like to be photographed by me, and I find out how they stand, where they laugh, and which one of them needs to be left alone for a minute.

By July none of that had to be worked out again. The first look in the courtyard took four minutes and none of them were spent on instructions.

How I work
Pelicans, and the sun on the water
The last of it
On the way back, in black and white
Two · the wedding

A courtyard,
and one fountain

Encore Event Center, San Diego · 25 July 2026

Palms over the bay, that morning
The marina from the balcony
The vow boxes, and the rings
The shoes
The bouquet, close
Kept in a glass box until she carried it
The dress
Lipstick
In the mirror
Dressed
With her sister
The arcaded courtyard set for the ceremony, with the fountain at its centre

Arches on
all four
sides

Encore Event Center · San Diego

Waiting by the fountain
Coming up behind him
Turning round
The first look, in the courtyard
Reading, before anybody else heard it
Private vows, at noon

Said twice.Once toeach other.

Photography & film
Under the trees
The shoes, on the damask
Against the painted cloth
The two of them, on it
The boutonnière
Under the arch of flowers
Him, halfway through
The kiss
Back down the aisle
The dog was at the ceremony
The veil, in the wind
In the trees
Under the arches
The first dance
The floor, from the door
The train, on the brick
Outside, under the palms
The room it was in
The cake
The courtyard, at the end of it
The team Laguna Beach & San Diego
Venue
Encore Event Center, San Diego
Photography
Stefano Casati
Engagement session
Heisler Park, Laguna Beach

Wedding photographs — Stefano Casati. The engagement session at Heisler Park was photographed for Loving Lens: photo Stefano Casati for Loving Lens.

Next commission

The dogs came
for the cocktail hour

The Catamaran Resort, on Mission Bay.

See this commissionAll selected work

Somewhere
like this?

Enquire