Getting married in the Dolomites.

If you write to us without a place yet, chances are you will name one of these seven.

Seiser Alm, Pragser Wildsee and Seceda are the three that come up most in enquiries. Seiser Alm is wide and open, at its quietest early in the morning before the lifts start running. Pragser Wildsee is on postcards, in guidebooks and on Instagram, and it shows at the shore. A ceremony at the lake needs an early or a late hour.

Seceda is the ridge with the jagged rock towers from the well-known photos. From the cable car station it is about ten minutes uphill to the summit cross, and the famous view is right behind it. If you want to get closer to the towers, you carry on down the ridge on a narrow path with no railing.

Val Gardena, where Seceda sits, and Alta Badia next to it have their own villages, churches and roads into the mountains. It is quieter there than on the Seiser Alm, and the views are similar.

The Tre Cime are worth a trip of their own. The road up to the Rifugio Auronzo is a toll road, and in peak season access is regulated. Arrive early and the view is more likely to be yours.

Karersee lies in the west of the Dolomites with the Latemar behind it: a small lake in the forest, a few minutes from the car park, and busy for the same reason.

For photography and film these are seven very different places, from open ground to quiet forest. We know the way to many of them and will tell you plainly where the effort pays off and where somewhere closer gives you the same result.

On the Seiser Alm or at the Seceda cable car station there is often still snow when spring is well underway down in the valley. Green meadows and clear paths up here are only a safe bet from June.

Autumn reverses it: the larches below the ridgelines turn gold while the first snow is already back on top. For pictures it is one of the most beautiful stretches of the year, and one of the shortest. If you want both, a touch of snow in the picture and mild temperatures for your guests, you have a few weeks at most.

The best-known places in the Dolomites are famous for good reason, and you feel it in the car parks, the buses and the lifts. For a ceremony and for pictures that means early or late beats midday. We plan your timings with you so the view is yours and not shared with everyone who has just stepped off the lift.

Being flexible on the hour gets you further here than being flexible on the place alone.

Some access roads are restricted in peak season or only open to buses and cable cars, and the rules change from year to year. We tell you what we last knew. Check the current rules for your place yourselves before you plan around them.

A ceremony or reception at a specific spot in the Dolomites often needs a permit, from the municipality, a landowner or the operator of a mountain hut. We do not arrange that; it is down to you or your wedding planner. Our job is the pictures and the film.

Altitude costs time as well. Between the church, the reception and the place for your pictures, the mountains often add more minutes than the map promises: hairpin bends, car parks, a stretch on foot. When we go through the day with you a few weeks ahead, we make sure there is room for that.

The civil ceremony is handled by the municipality where you marry. The deadlines depend on where you are from, so ask early and nothing has to rush on the day.

In the mountains the weather can turn within the hour, sun to fog and back again. That is especially true above the treeline, where nothing breaks the wind. We look at the forecast with you the week before and keep the timings movable rather than defending a fixed plan.

Rain and fog are not a lost day. Some of our favourite pictures were made in bad weather. The mountains look different then, and often better. What you need is a second place to fall back on.

Book photos and film together and two of us come. We do not need to confer in the middle of the ceremony. In the Dolomites that means one of us keeps an eye on the time while the other looks for the light.

What that looks like is on the photography and film pages. You can also book either on its own.