The wedding at Villa Richter definitely brings an extraordinary experience. Villa Richter stays in great location a few meters from Prague Castle, so there is an excellent view over the Prague roofs in its most beautiful form. You can enjoy the views of Prague during the wedding ceremony and even at the wedding reception. Therefore, whoever loves all the bridges and roofs of the hundred-towered Prague, he will also love Richter's villa.
View from Villa Richter: This is what it looked like in the morning when I arrived at the wedding, perhaps the first photo right after I ran up the Old Castle Stairs :-) In the foreground you can see the St. Wenceslas Vineyard.Wine can be one of the good reasons for someone to want a wedding in Villa Richter :-)
Amazing views over Prague from Villa Richter wedding venue
I just had to show you this here :-) At the end of the article you will find night photos that I took from Richter’s villa at the end of the wedding day.
Villa Richter’s Wedding Ceremony
The wedding ceremonies take place outside, the engaged couple have a view of Prague right in front of them, so it brings a really interesting experience. But what will photographers be interested in? From the point of cardinal directions, bride and groom are facing the open south-east side. Trees grow behind them, so if you do not meet sharp sunlight, it is a very good orientation towards the good light.
The outdoor wedding ceremony at Richter’s villa is oriented towards the open south-east open sky, at the back it is closed by shadow of tall trees.
Of course, it is worse to take pictures from the other side, if you want to take a picture of the ceremony behind the couple’s back. You probably don’t need many of such photos, but it is certain that you will definitely want at least one such photo, because you want photo with panorama of Prague. Without such a photo, the best that the place has to offer would be completely ignored. Personally, when shooting from behind, I carefully use the flash to illuminate the shadows of people, while not overexposing the Prague skyline. (In the same way, I used the flash before the start of the wedding ceremony when photographing floral details on the wedding gate, which are of course also oriented towards the wedding guests, so you must photograph them in backlight.)
Villa Richter wedding ceremony – when viewed from behind, you may need to use the flash carefully to help better equalize the correct exposure of the Prague skyline on the one hand and the bride, groom, wedding guests on the other.
A minor inconvenience may be the slope of the ground which struggles with slope of the horizon of Prague in the background. The photo may give the impression that it is taken at an angle. So what is the correct angle of the photo? I have more or less aligned the verticals of the buildings (eg the Old Town Bridge Tower), if they are correctly vertical, the photo is “correctly” tilted. But sometimes it may be better to prefer the optical result and to choose the compromise that is most pleasing to the human eye. Wedding photographers are not scientists who would have to do everything exactly according to rules, the goal of photographers is different.
Richter’s Villa Wedding: Some less experienced photographers may be nervously forged on the spot when taking pictures, so I remind you: inspect the ceremony site before the wedding ceremony so you can be more thoughtful about things and don’t forget to move away from the ceremonial place at the right time. You can capture an interesting complex with Prague Castle in the background (specifically with the Black Tower) from greater distance. After you take a picture of the view of Prague, you will have the second most important fact recorded in the photos: that the wedding ceremony took place near Prague Castle.
I photographed the wedding groups in natural light, with their back towards the green trees, facing people to the light (towards Prague). I write this because I know that a lot of people could succumb to the temptation to take pictures in the backlight, so that Prague is in the background of the photos. If you prefer nice Prague to ugly lit people, this is also the solution. Personally, however, I don’t think it would be a happy decision for many wedding groups.
Many things follow the direction of light. Personally, I was even such a bully that I let the newlyweds walk through the crowd twice after the wedding ceremony: for the first time, they left the wedding gate towards the shadows, so they were in an unfavorable light that would not please the photographer. But then I asked them for the second pass in the opposite direction. If nothing else, all people enjoyed blowing the bubbles, the newlyweds laughed more, and I was happier – because I took nicer photos for the groom and the bride.
In case of bad weather, wedding ceremonies are of course held in the villa.
Photographing the wedding day in Villa Richter
Sure, you can use flowers, etc. to photograph wedding details as usual. But why not to use the character of Villa Richter’s place and not to take pictures the way you can’t in other places. Here, not far from Richter’s villa, I found a wall with a view of the Lesser Town Church of St. Nicholas. Of course, you can play with settings of the aperture so the church in the background is either more out of focus (the shoes stand out more) or, conversely, more in focus (but make sure that the photo does not have completely different meaning – the shoes must play the main role here!).
The bride wanted to photograph her wedding dress on the green wall of the Piano Nobile restaurant, which is part of Villa Richter. My 183 centimeters height was almost not enough to hang the hanger hook. If you are smaller, you will need a chair :-)
Villa Richter’s indoor lounges have stunning wallpapers, elegant chandeliers, furniture and windows. They can be used for portraits set in a luxurious environment.
The bride’s and her father’s arrival from Richter’s villa. The reason why I like this photo is that you can see the grapevine, which is an integral part of Villa Richter. The wine barrels give to the photo perspective depth. But at the same time you can see Prague! I am very glad that at this moment I was not waiting at the place of the wedding ceremony, where all people were already, instead of that I ran to meet the arrival of the bride. Otherwise, I would miss the opportunity to capture this trio of wine & bride & Prague when she arrived.
And another “piano”, this time the Piano Terra restaurant, where a wedding reception was held at Richter’s villa. Capacity is up to 150 people.
The wedding dances took place in the non-traditional greenhouse of the Piano Nobile restaurant. Notice the amazing roof (with interesting night lighting). I have already shown you green hydroponics in one of the previous photos with the wedding dress. But let me point out one more thing: one whole wall is made up of mirrors, and even that can be used for interesting photographs. The only thing you must fight with is rather small space. Once the room was fulled by all the people, I had a hard time moving from one side to the other.
Where to take pictures of the bride and groom? I have already mentioned above that nice wedding portraits can be conveniently created right inside the Richter’s villa. However, you can comfortably take photos outside in the area of St. Wenceslas Vineyard or leave / go to nearby interesting places:
Prague Castle area (castle courtyards and St. Vitus Cathedral)
Royal Garden
Letna park
gardens under Prague Castle
Wallenstein Garden
Vojanovy sady
Cihelna Park (Vltava bank occupied by swans, Charles Bridge in the background)
One problem can be a lot of people in all these places, especially tourists. Maybe Letenske sady is an only exception, because people are more distracted on a large area, so there it is more or less calm place for the photo shoot. There is a well-known view from the Hanava Pavilion, where the Prague bridges over the Vltava are well visible.
Be careful about Cihelna Park, I don’t completely recommend it for a wedding photos. If you just want to run there during the wedding day, then pay particular attention to where you drag your wedding dress and what you step on. Swans and other birds presented here do not think at all about the purity of wedding dresses… :-)
For our wedding photographs, we used, among others, Queen Anne’s Summer Palace (Belvedere) in the Royal Garden.
The Belvedere is located just 200 meters in straight line distance from Villa Richter!
View of Prague Castle from below from Richter’s villa
A view from Richter’s villa on the wedding night… um, I should say rather at the end of the wedding day… because the wedding night is usually name for something else :-) Lights of Prague are magical too! (photographed from hand at 1/250 s)
And this is already from a tripod (just before we photographed the sparklers), more or less snapshot for saying goodbye. So see you next time, Villa Richter!
Villa Richter – Reviews and Opinions
So what do you think about wedding in Villa Richter and weddings in the center of Prague? Do you like it, or would you rather prefer a farm outside the city? Have you ever been to a wedding day or restaurant in Villa Richter? Did you enjoy the wine from the St. Wenceslas Vineyard? Don’t be shy to write it in a comment ;-)
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