An Affordable
Way to Be King and Queen For a Day
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| Loket Castle |
Brides to be,
take heed! Indulge your inner princess with a castle wedding. You
can be a princess for a day and your fiancé can be your knight in
shining armor. To be sure, castle weddings are completely out of
reach of most commoners like us. To hold a castle wedding in the UK,
you'd have to be royalty—or a surviving member of the Beatles. But
there is hope! You can fulfill your castle wedding fantasy by
holding a castle wedding in the Czech Republic.
For the price
of a traditional wedding in your home country, you can have a grand
castle wedding in the Czech countryside. People traditionally spend
10-40,000 bucks on a wedding in The West. For that amount, you would
get a church, flowers, a dinner and a photographer. But what would
you do if you found out that you could spend a lot less than that to
have your wedding in a castle in grand style? You'd do it, right?
Let me tell you how.
Choosing a
Castle for Your Wedding
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| Červená Lhota |
As a wedding
photographer I have photographed weddings in several castles in the
Czech Republic. An obvious choice is Karlstejn Castle, the iconic
Czech castle everyone visits on their trip to Prague. But some of my
favorite castles are the ones nobody knows about, the ones sitting
stoically in the rolling hills of Bohemia, or perched on a rock amid
hundreds of miles of forest. The advantages of choosing a Czech
country castle are many. Firstly, the price can't be beat. Prices
for castle weddings outside of the Prague area drop dramatically.
But the best advantage of having a castle wedding in Czech is the
exclusive quality of having unique wedding images in a fairy tale
setting.
The most
popular castle in the Czech Republic by far is Karlstejn Castle
(1348), located just 45 minutes from Prague. King Charles IV, the
most famous king of Bohemia and namesake of the Charles Bridge in
Prague, had his countryside castle residence there. Nowadays, you
can easily arrange a castle wedding in Karlstejn. As the most
popular castle in Czech, it is best to contact them well in advance,
especially for summer weddings. To take all the pain out of the
process, I recommend hiring a professional wedding planner to help
with the planning and the paperwork. Ask for Thelma at
Prague
Wedding Planners. Tell her Craig Robinson sent you.
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| Karlstejn Castle |
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| Loket Castle |
If you like
your castles old and Gothic like I do, Loket Castle (12th
century) is just the ticket. Loket Castle stands majestically on a
hilltop near the spa town of Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad). Loket offers
several wedding packages at extremely reasonable prices, so you can
afford to be knight and princess for a day—and have plenty of
ducats left for a royal feast for your family and friends.
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| Červená Lhota Castle |
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| Červená Lhota Castle |
If ever there
was a picture perfect little castle, 14th century Červená
Lhota is the one. This salmon-colored castle rises up from a rocky
island in the middle of a lake. A stone bridge is the single entry
point to the castle. This charming little castle is located 20 km
northwest of Jindřichův Hradec in south Bohemia. Contact the castle
directly for wedding inquiries. In case of any language barriers,
let Thelma's team at Prague Wedding Planners be your voice.
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| Zbiroh Castle |
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| Zbiroh Castle |
Zbiroh Castle
(12th century) is a large, aristocratic, Romanesque / Gothic
castle located an hour's drive southwest of Prague. Its oldest point
is a ancient tower jutting out of a rock in the inner courtyard.
Various royal residents renovated the castle in various styles over
the years, so you can see elements of the Gothic nestled in amid
Renaissance facades and Art Nouveau era fountains and gardens. Artist
Alphonse Mucha lived in the castle for 20 years, and you can still
see traces of his presence on the walls and in the decorations.
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| Hrubá Skála |
For a real kick
in the aesthetics, Hrubá Skála (1353) can't be beat. Words can't do
it justice, but I'll try anyway: it's an imposing castle, built on a
rock, sticking out of a vast forest. Hrubá Skála is the
picture-perfect location for a romantic castle wedding in the Czech
Republic. You'll be treated to a royal atmosphere, surrounded by
stone walls and towers with a sweeping vista of Bohemian Paradise
(Český ráj), an area with more castles packed in per square mile
than most of Europe. There's even a hotel, spa, and wellness center
on the premises. Need I say more?
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| Hrubá Skála |
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I've
photographed weddings in dozens of castles and chateaux in the Czech
Republic, too many to list here. Just do a Google map search for
Czech Castles for the rich visual feast of castles in store for you.
Terezín, or Theriesenstadt to the Germans, started its life as a fortress built in 1780 by Habsburg emperor Joseph II, who named it after his mother Maria Theresa. What a guy. The Czech territory at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose main concern in those days was keeping Prussians out of their homes and gardens.
After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Terezín moldered away for a bit longer until the Nazis occupied the place and found a real dastardly use for it: a concentration camp for Jews and others deemed unworthy by 'the master race.' Unspeakable horrors took place here, including torture and death from horrible disease. Over 150,000 Jews were sent to Terezín, including 15,000 children. Nazis were real rat bastards.
I walked down the windswept path through the Jewish cemetery which contained mostly unmarked graves, adorned only with small gravestones with numbers and small pebbles and stones laid on them. I'm not sure why Jews lay stones on graves, and Google wasn't much help. It might have something to do with the fact that flowers don't grow in the desert, but don't quote me on that.
I continued over the outer moat trench through the main gate into the courtyard. A fancy villa stood out among rows of dilapidated brick barracks. The families of Nazi officers stayed there, and my guide informed me that they held a wedding for an officer there. During the concentration camp era. That officer must have found an extremely low maintenance bride, or they were truly living in an ivory tower, totally oblivious to the world. A Nazi wedding held in a concentration camp, formerly a military barracks named after an Austrian's mother. What a group of romantics.
Eventually I saw the gate with the infamous Nazi motto which is scrawled over every concentration camp in Europe: “Arbeit Macht Frei.” Work makes (one) free. The 'master race' were master liars as well: they even gussied up the nearby Jewish ghetto as a propaganda tool. 'See? We're treating the Jews just fine.' Only the children's home told the truth through its art and poetry, left behind by dead children. Children were secretly encouraged to express themselves and nurture creativity in a time of crisis and death. Their works were smuggled out of the camp in suitcases, and eventually found their way back to the ghetto to adorn the memorial. Those teachers were heroes.
Down in the basement of the ghetto museum is a small cafe/bistro which serves mostly inedible fast food to the tourists. I'm not sure there should be a snack bar on the site of Nazi atrocity, and I'm also pretty sure they shouldn't be serving hot dogs. What would the Jewish visitors think? But Czech is a porcine country, so why not. Wait. What? No beer at the bistro? In a beer country like Czechia? SWINE.
Recently I took Gabriela's portraits in Prague. It was her first trip to Europe and she wanted more than
photos from a selfie stick held at arm's length to remember her trip.
She wanted the full-on Prague portrait experience, and I was happy
to provide this service for her. Prague just can't be beat for the
sheer number of beautiful backdrops for portraits—you can chuck a
10 crown coin almost anywhere in Central Prague and get a good shot from the spot where it lands.
Instructor:
Students meet for a short introductory lecture, than proceed outdoors to photograph in various exciting locations in Prague. Each student will receive individual instruction and guidance during the workshop. After shooting, we review and critique the photos on a laptop. I have taught these courses for 5 years in Prague and 4 years in Berlin. My students have reported rapid improvement in a very short time.
Buddhas are everything and everywhere here. Back-lights and colored statues accentuated the mood of the evening, but what intrigues me most about my event gigs are the odd details. In a New Age/East-West modern cafe like this, one would expect maybe a massage or an exotic tea/elixir as a welcome. Instead, a caricature artist plunked his easel down and started drawing guests. Bushy beards grew to monstrous proportions and shy ladies with giant eyes peered out of his blank canvas.
Many of the familiar faces from the last Forum I covered
were present in 
