Luciano do Vale

I grew up inside a family that lived and breathed photography and video. My father, my mother, and my older brother all worked in the business and I was the youngest, watching from the sidelines. Our house was full of boxes and boxes of film photographs my father had taken of us over the years, and shelves of old travel videos shot on cameras that would look hopelessly outdated today. Every weekend, my parents would head off to shoot a wedding, and I'd stay behind at my grandmother's house, waiting for them to come back with stories.

By the time I was 12, waiting wasn't enough anymore. I started tagging along, back then there was no battery-powered lighting, so my job was running cables, carrying lights and stands from room to room, chasing extension leads across venues. That's how my relationship with weddings really began.

At 17, I spent a year studying visual arts. At 18, I started working at my brother's wedding video company. By 19, I'd gone independent, working with a few well-known photography studios in my hometown. At 20, convinced this wasn't the path for me, I opened an ice cream shop instead. It didn't last by 22, I was back shooting weddings. There was no escaping it.

At 23, together with my now-wife, then my girlfriend, we opened Meaningful Love Photo in our home city, photographing weddings, birthdays, and celebrations of all kinds.

At 26, I moved to Ireland with one goal in mind: to build a career in wedding filmmaking. I spent that first stretch working as a second shooter alongside the team at Under the Veil, learning the rhythm, the expectations, and the craft of the Irish wedding industry from the inside. That experience shaped everything that came after and eventually gave me the confidence to open my own business.

Today, through Meaningful Love Films, I create cinematic, luxury wedding films for couples across Ireland who want their day told as a story, not just documented. It's a craft I didn't choose so much as grew into, one wedding, one camera, one generation at a time.

I grew up inside a family that lived and breathed photography and video. My father, my mother, and my older brother all worked in the business and I was the youngest, watching from the sidelines. Our house was full of boxes and boxes of film photographs my father had taken of us over the years, and shelves of old travel videos shot on cameras that would look hopelessly outdated today. Every weekend, my parents would head off to shoot a wedding, and I'd stay behind at my grandmother's house, waiting for them to come back with stories.

By the time I was 12, waiting wasn't enough anymore. I started tagging along, back then there was no battery-powered lighting, so my job was running cables, carrying lights and stands from room to room, chasing extension leads across venues. That's how my relationship with weddings really began.

At 17, I spent a year studying visual arts. At 18, I started working at my brother's wedding video company. By 19, I'd gone independent, working with a few well-known photography studios in my hometown. At 20, convinced this wasn't the path for me, I opened an ice cream shop instead. It didn't last by 22, I was back shooting weddings. There was no escaping it.

At 23, together with my now-wife, then my girlfriend, we opened Meaningful Love Photo in our home city, photographing weddings, birthdays, and celebrations of all kinds.

At 26, I moved to Ireland with one goal in mind: to build a career in wedding filmmaking. I spent that first stretch working as a second shooter alongside the team at Under the Veil, learning the rhythm, the expectations, and the craft of the Irish wedding industry from the inside. That experience shaped everything that came after and eventually gave me the confidence to open my own business.

Today, through Meaningful Love Films, I create cinematic, luxury wedding films for couples across Ireland who want their day told as a story, not just documented. It's a craft I didn't choose so much as grew into, one wedding, one camera, one generation at a time.