SANTA!! OMG, Santa’s coming!!
Okay, that’s a lie. But what the hell, it feels like Christmas today, what with the awesomest wedding I have to share with you guys! I have been fit to BURST wanting to show it to you, and I know you will love love love it. First of all, it’s Alice in Wonderland inspired (!!). Secondly, it’s colourful and super fun and playful but at the same time really elegant and beautiful (I could go on all day about the décor alone, and don’t get me started on the dessert buffet!). And thirdly, the combination of an incredibly photogenic couple and the stylin’ talents of Ms Nikki Meyer, photographer extraordinaire, made these images some of the hardest for me to narrow down yet. Every one of them is so gorgeous, and so full of life and colour, that I wanted to include them all. Seriously, I could look at them all day. (And I would, except my boss might not like it.) So here’s my little not-Christmas gift to you all! It’s a pleasure. ;)

The lovely and aptly-named bride, Amore, was kind enough to tell us about the Big Day:
Sybrand and I met at school but we fell in love at church.  He is the lead singer in the church band and I literally went to church to watch him sing… AMAZING!  We then started working on a project together and on Valentine’s Day 2006, we had our first kiss with picnic on the beach… Three and a half years later, he took me on another beach picnic during our holiday to Uvongo (near Durban) and went down on one knee. First he told me in a lot of detail why he loved me, and then popped the question. 

 Now we live in a loft apartment in Tableview.  I am an interior designer (and part-time model/actress) and he is an audiologist (as well as a gospel musician who is busy recording now…so we will see how that goes!).  We are both very much in love with Cape Town and the beach, and therefore we couldn’t imagine our wedding anywhere else.  We needed that ‘urban’ feel!

The wedding was ‘Alice in Wonderland’ inspired.  I chose this theme because it gave me freedom with the colour palette, and basically anything that I like could somehow fit into the bigger picture. The venue (Lagoon Beach Hotel Brasserie) has a beautiful restaurant with a pool deck right next to the beach in Milnerton.  It already had bright citrus colour paintings on the walls and light wood chairs with green and orange seats.  I decided to keep these colours and add some more bright ones (pink, yellow, purple) as well as neutrals (black, white, pearly beige and grey). I really wanted the wedding to be full of surprises and for it to have a very fresh feel.  The venue is also modern in style and from the restaurant we could see the sunset over Table Mountain!  Beautiful and fresh.  Guests could also enjoy the deck later in the evening when they were hot from dancing.

My family and friends and I made everything ourselves, since our wedding planner left us three months before the wedding! I brought in the different playful elements from the movie in the decor and activities of the day.  Our invites were specially designed to look like playing cards – similar to the movie concept.  This card theme was also carried through to cards that our guests used to write special notes for us. We had bunnies and flamingos (on 2D designs), hearts everywhere, tea cups (for décor and during the meal), old books, roses, a magician during cocktail hour, and black and white stripes (Sybrand’s socks!). We asked the guests to dress fresh and ready for a tea party – each of them received a gift bag with popcorn, a key with their table assignment, a heart-shaped cookie and a mask. After our opening dance, our guests joined us on the dancefloor with their masks on! We also saved dessert as a ‘surprise in Wonderland’ and served a spread of waffles, ice creams, crème brulee and crepes with different topping choices.

I tried to make the wedding unique so that it felt different to any other wedding day that I have ever experienced (and different for our guests as well).  Everything came together exactly as I’d hoped, including Sybrand’s and my outfits (which added to the theme). The day really captured the feeling that I wanted to create and I loved how it felt with all our guests joining in and the strong presence of God bringing us all together.

My advice to future brides is to plan very well and put people in place to stress on the day (instead of you).  Every detail is worth it even if people tell you before that no-one will notice!  People notice when the detail is not there!

THANK YOU Amore and Sybrand for sharing this with us today! And another massive thank you to Cap Classique favourite Nikki Meyer for the photographs – go check out the full set on her blog!

Service providers:

Venue & catering: Lagoon Beach Hotel
Photography: Nikki Meyer
Florist & decor: Marietjie Brits, Retha Smit and Mare Stenekamp
Cake: Roelien Engelbrecht
Stationery: Emmerentia Strauss + Nicolas Burger
Bride’s dress: Lace Blossom
Bridesmaid’s dresses: YDE
Hair & makeup: Liezel van Zyl
DJ: Bertus Vermeulen