Forram & Ionut — Spectacle

As with most couples, at the start Forram and Ionut were two new faces to me. It was over the days we spent together — from the pre-wedding to the wedding itself — that I truly got to know them, their personalities, and the story they had to tell.

And what a story. She’s Indian, he’s Romanian and they live in London: two different backgrounds coming together in Rome. Not just any backdrop, but the exact point where two different traditions could finally touch.

A pre-wedding at dawn, when Rome belongs to you alone

We started early. Very early. A pre-wedding at dawn among Rome’s monuments, with the city still asleep and the streets almost empty. For a filmmaker, those first hours of the morning are hard to beat. The Colosseum, the historic corners everyone recognizes, and the two of them in the middle of it all: slow, romantic, unhurried.

There’s one moment I’m fond of: during a couple session at the Castello Brancaccio, they tasted gelato. A completely ordinary, very Italian thing, that turned into a series of tender, slightly goofy shots. Those are the small details you don’t plan, the ones that make you smile later in the edit.

The Indian ceremony: I was a spectator with a camera in my hands

And then the Indian ceremony, also at Castello Brancaccio. New customs, new gestures, people dressed in ways I’d never filmed before. At first there was a part of me that wondered “Am I doing everything right?”.

In just a few moments, I had to figure out what was essential to capture and what I could leave out in favor of other shots. And then, little by little, I let myself get personally drawn into everything that’s happening.

I felt like a spectator too, even with a camera in my hands. And it’s on days like this that the coordination with the second operator is everything: you split the work, and you bring home all of it.

Want the moment that stuck with me most? Before it all began, the mother-in-law took Ionut, made a mark on his forehead, pinched his nose, and placed nuts in his mouth. From there it was one gesture and ritual after another—and the entrance with the drums, what a sight.

The wedding day: magazine-worthy, but real

The next day, the wedding. And here everything shifts. Forram knew exactly what she wanted: where to stand, how, in which pose. She moved on her own, already camera-ready. For us—people who love to capture everything spontaneously—a bride like that is a gift: when a couple is a natural in front of the lens, we can slip in something more composed, more editorial—that magazine, cover-shoot feel. It doesn’t happen every time, but when it does, we switch gears and invite the posing too, if that’s what they want. With them, it felt effortless.

The vows: “I crossed all the oceans for you”

The vows came exactly as I expected them, true to who they are. Ionut took his lightly, with a smile. Forram, on the other hand, poured all her passion into hers—and, without knowing it, handed me some of the most beautiful cuts in the edit. She looked him straight in the eyes and kept saying she had crossed all the oceans for him.

Words that landed perfectly, the kind you don’t even need to touch in the edit.

They were the soul

In some stories the soul is an unexpected moment, a place, a rainfall. Here, the soul was the couple. Cheerful, eager, beautiful to watch, and their guests carried the same energy, some from Rome, some from far away. Especially the Indian guests brought a note all their own—elegance, and colors that lit up the celebration. There was a real sense of participation, the kind you feel in the room and don’t always find.

Two eyes on the same day

This story carries Francesco Silvaggio‘s signature too. He’s the one who introduced me to Forram and Ionut, and his is the photograph that opens this page. He believed in this wedding with a conviction that reached far—all the way to the pages of Vogue India, my first time in the magazine.

Francesco captured the wedding through photography, while I followed it through film. Two different ways of seeing the same day, and in this case, they worked beautifully together.