Who loves destination weddings? I’m sure I do! Marrying the person you love most, plus traveling to a place you adore–really, what’s not to love, right? Now you’ll be excited to know that today’s feature was held all the way in Cape Town, South Africa. The natural beauty of the place, with the bride’s stunning Monique Lhuillier gown, and the absolutely dreamy outdoor reception styling all melded together to become this beautiful, elegant, intimate wedding. Trust me, you’ll surely fall in love with John and Jenny’s big day. Go ahead and delight yourself with this set of photos taken by Andrea Kellan Photography! Don’t miss out on what the bride had to say about this whole affair too!
“My vision for my wedding was a whimsical, dreamy garden destination wedding. With our love for the outdoors, nature is a recurring theme in our lives, so we imagined being surrounded by trees and greenery.
Intimacy and warmth were a very important element for me. We wanted to keep the destination wedding relatively small with around 100 guests. By having the dinner under the stars lighted with lanterns and Edison bulbs, I think we achieved that intimacy.
It was also the first time most of our guests had set foot in Africa. So I wanted to bring in elements of a safari to the reception: lanterns, fairy lights, and a few gold safari animals on the tables.
Since it was an outdoor wedding, I just prayed hard the weather would cooperate! And we were so, so lucky that it turned out to be one of the warmest, most beautiful days of the month.”
“The element I was most particular about was the wedding destination. The wedding had to be in a beautiful place. That way we didn’t have to deal too much by way of décor. The place could speak for itself, and our guests could make a little holiday out of it as well.
When we were picking destinations, we had Zanzibar and Madagascar as top contenders. But people would have probably not attended if we had it in either! We finally picked South Africa, and I’m glad we did! Cape Town had the infrastructure and talented suppliers for putting together a great wedding in Africa.
The Cape Winelands of Stellenbosch, with its beautiful wine estates and vineyards, turned out to be a perfect venue. We really could not have picked a better place for a destination wedding.”
“My favorite moment at the wedding was definitely the wedding ceremony. It was important to me to have a meaningful ceremony. We said our own vows under the trees, and had asked our entourage to provide brief “blessings” or advice to wish us well in our married life. There were so many heartfelt, real moments, I could not stop crying. It was definitely the happiest few minutes of my life.”
“I remember just sitting at the head of the groom and bride table during dinner and thinking of how incredible it was to be in this beautiful place with all our family and friends. Everyone who was there made an enormous sacrifice to be there coming from all around the world: the Philippines, U.S., Thailand, Europe, South America, etc. It was a long way for everyone–for some guests 36 hours–to be at our wedding. They were there because they wanted to be there. And we really could not be more happy and grateful to the guests who were there.”
