Monica Tarocco

Monica Tarocco's own homepage title tag sells her as a wedding photographer for "Lugano, Zürich, Bern, Switzerland," 3 cities in one line. Scroll to the footer of her packages page and she describes her territory differently: "Your Wedding and Elopement photographer in Ticino, Bern, Zurich and Lucern," her own spelling, 4 regions rather than 3 named cities. Neither line reads like a list of offices, and it isn't one. Her Impressum gives a single address, Via Camoghè 5 in Lugano, and nothing published anywhere on the site names a second base in Zurich, Bern or anywhere else.

The real shape of that territory shows up on the one page where she actually prices her work by location: family and dog photography. A 1-hour session runs CHF 500 almost everywhere in Switzerland, but a line under the price reads "Special price for Ticino locations: CHF 450." A 2-hour session is CHF 600, with the same Ticino discount bringing it to CHF 550. Ticino is priced as home ground. Everywhere else in the country, Zurich and Bern included, costs more, because getting there costs her something the Ticino sessions don't. Her wedding and elopement packages handle the same fact differently: all 3 list "Travel expenses in Switzerland included" as a line item rather than a surcharge, so a couple marrying in Zurich or Bern isn't billed extra for the distance the way a family shoot would be. Either way, the pattern answers the question her own marketing muddles: one working base in Lugano, willing to travel, not a photographer who keeps a foothold in 3 cantons at once.

She trained in fine art during her studies in Verona, Italy, before turning that into a photography career in Switzerland, and by her own account she's been shooting weddings for 15 years now. She calls her style documentary "combined with a fine art and creative touch," and says her real job on a wedding day is making people comfortable enough in front of the camera to forget it's there. She works alone, meaning she shoots every wedding herself and edits every gallery herself too; there's no second name on the packages page and no associate photographer mentioned anywhere on the site. Her FAQ rules out a studio in the usual sense: she shoots on location, working mostly with natural light because she says she simply prefers it, and keeps no fixed backdrop or lighting rig, though she'll bring portable lights to a client's home specifically for dog portraits.

Weddings share the site with a family-and-pet photography line and a portrait-drawing sideline, and the connection between all of it is a dog. Tarocco's dachshund Cipolla came into her life in 2016; in 2019 a herniated disc left the dog paralyzed in her back legs, a condition the site names as IVDD, common enough among dachshunds that Tarocco writes she was "one of many" affected. Fitted with wheels, Cipolla still gets photographed and has her own Instagram account. Tarocco started photographing pets around that time, and the site has since grown a second sideline: hand-drawn portraits in colored pencil or graphite, priced at CHF 300 and CHF 200, sized to a single A4 sheet, 20x30cm. None of that is padding around the wedding work. It's the same person running all of it from one inbox, so a couple who also wants a family session down the road, or a portrait of the dog who couldn't make it to the ceremony, is already emailing someone who does that too.

3 coverage lengths, and a price you only get by asking

The wedding and elopement side of the business breaks into 3 fixed packages, none of them priced on the page. "Eight" covers up to 8 hours of photoreportage. "I want it all" runs up to 12 hours, described as full-day coverage. The elopement package, named inconsistently as both "You and me" and "Only you and me" on the same page, covers up to 6 hours. The 2 wedding packages both include an in-person preliminary meeting, a location visit and a short couple shoot ahead of the day; the elopement package swaps that in-person visit for a video meeting and help researching a location instead, which suits a couple who might be booking from abroad without a scouting trip beforehand.

Every package delivers the same way: a preview slideshow set to music within 2 weeks of the shoot, then the full edited set on a USB with no watermark, plus a high-resolution web gallery she keeps live for 12 months. Her FAQ states the full wedding or elopement gallery typically takes about 2 months to arrive, against 2 to 3 weeks for a family, couple or pet session. That gap is the one place the site is honest about what it prices and what it doesn't: family sessions, dog portraits and the printed albums all carry a CHF figure on the page. A wedding or elopement doesn't, whatever length you pick.

Booking runs on a deposit, not a click

Getting to that figure means asking, and then waiting through a process the FAQ spells out plainly. She describes several meetings before a wedding or elopement, starting with a first one she calls non-binding, held in person where possible or over video call otherwise. A date only becomes hers to shoot, in her own words, once a client has paid a deposit and returned a signed contract; the initial conversation reserves nothing on its own. Her contact form promises a reply within 48 business hours. Couples marrying further afield than Switzerland get an answer too: her FAQ says she's willing to travel to nearby countries, naming Italy, Germany and France, or farther still, calling the different landscapes and ceremony traditions an enrichment for her own work rather than an inconvenience she charges extra to tolerate.

The album page, in CHF and centimetres

The album page is the other place actual figures survive contact with the site. Albums come in 2 sizes, 25x25cm or 30x30cm, bound in leather or cotton with a couple's names stamped on the cover, running from a minimum of 20 up to a maximum of 40 double pages with a matching protective box. Her own example pricing names a 25-double-page album at CHF 800 in the smaller size and CHF 850 in the larger one; a longer album costs more, though the page doesn't itemise the increment past that starting point.

The site itself runs in English, German and Italian, and her published testimonials back that up as more than a language switcher: 3 read in English, 1 in German, thanking her for how she captured "unser Hochzeitsfest," their wedding celebration. One of the English reviews describes a couple coordinating just 15 guests scattered across several countries for a small wedding, unsure beforehand what having a professional photographer there would even feel like. That's close to the exact shape of wedding this catalog's readers are usually planning, and it's the honest version of what Tarocco actually sells: a solo photographer working from one address in Lugano, priced and delivered the same way whether the wedding lands in Ticino or 2 cantons north, with the one number that matters most, what the day itself costs, arriving only after you've written in to ask for it.