One of the many highlights and most memorable moments was seeing our two families and all our friends coming together, just for us, and because of us. Sharing that moment, and experiencing the genuine excitement they had (seeing us tie the knot, knowing our histories), meant so much to us. Many of them came from far places in South Africa, and some even from as far as Australia.
The ceremony was also a big highlight for us, as that was the moment when months and months of planning and excitement became real; in that single moment when we stood there next to each other in the front of the chapel. The short message that the Pastor preached was also very special and very relevant for where we were emotionally in the week before the wedding. As Jesus is our main focus, we not only knew He was with us, but we could tangibly feel His covering coming over us, and even touching some of our guests. Before the wedding, we specifically prayed for hearts to be changed, and for our marriage to be an example of what God can do in our lives, and what can be achieved because of His love.
One of the other memorable things about our wedding was how much it rained that day, the week before the wedding, and even the floods afterwards. It rained softly that whole day, but stopped just before I walked into the chapel, and continued again softly after all the formalities of our reception. It was as if the heavens stopped for a moment and waited for us, just to get married.
Our whole wedding was planned as an outside forest-themed wedding, but our reception area literally became a dam three days before the wedding, and yes, I cried!! The whole ‘picture’ in my mind of my dream wedding had to change in a matter of two days. Everything had to move from the forest, to the chapel for the ceremony, and a marquee tent for the reception, and boy did we improvise with so many things and ideas. Everyone kept telling me that rain on your wedding day is a blessing, and although all our planning had to change because of it, I decided afterwards that we will remember the many blessings that poured down on us during that time… blessings that will surely last us a lifetime.
I also asked this question to my husband and he said that for him, it was the moment I walked into the chapel. He said it was the most precious moment he could ever ask for, a moment forever engraved in not only his mind, but in his soul and spirit. Aaahhh, how sweet is that!
Yes, we had an awesome two-part honeymoon. We left for Durban two days after the wedding to get on the MSC Orchestra cruise ship, where we also spent a day, in the middle of the cruise, on Pomene Island in Mozambique. It was a first for both of us, but definitely not a last. After 5 days of swaying back and forth, eating till we couldn't anymore, and then eating some more, we headed home for a week. We officially moved in together during that week, and then packed our bags again to head to Jeffreys Bay, to continue our honeymoon for another almost 2 weeks with the family.
I wanted a timeless look, especially with my hair. For the make-up I wanted a darker, smokey-eye as it goes very well with bigger eyes. Melissa Minne who did my hair and make-up really is the best and she stayed so calm and collected, even though it was raining and the fact that we were pressed for time.
I decided on a dress that would also allow me to get on a horse, as this was how I planned to enter the ceremony in the forest. I love horses and therefore tried to incorporate a horse-fairytale-forest theme into everything. So, after I found my beautiful dress, I asked the awesome ladies from ChiqWawa Bridal House to modify my dress to also fit this theme. We added some diamanté everywhere on the bottom part of the dress and added butterflies on the top part to look like the butterflies flew over my shoulder. My sister found a beautiful hair piece at Lovisa that also had butterflies in it, and it just added that finer detail to the rest of the look. For my wedding shoes, I obviously had to wear cowboy boots seeing as I wanted to get on a horse, so I found these awesome sparkly white boots on Amazon. They were a bit expensive, but so worth it.
Hair & Make up: Melissa Minne Bridal
Dress: Helen Fontaine dress from ChiqWawa Bridal House
Shoes / Boots: Wild West Boot Store through Amazon
Nails: Hannelie Theron
Bridal Gown: So Smitten
Lingerie: Everything & Wedding and La Senza from Edgars
Jewellery: Earrings and Hair Piece from Lovisa
We got married at God’s Gift Events – a hidden away, forest-like gem almost in the city, close to Pretoria East. It had everything we wanted, the forest-feel ceremony area, the outside reception area with all the fairy lights between the trees (although the rain kept us from using both of these), and they also allowed us to bring the horses we so love.
As it is so close to everything, our guests could stay over at any of the guest houses in the area, although many of them could just go home.
I didn’t make any drastic changes to my normal routine. I used my normal Isabella Garcia skin products, just tried to watch what I ate and tried to drink more water than usual. Me and hubby aimed to exercise 3 times a week (other than our horse riding exercise), but most of my cardio was being so busy with work and all the wedding planning that it helped keep my mind off of eating (well most of the time). We did however buy teeth whitening kits from ‘Brilliant White Advanced Teeth Whitening’. I also went for laser hair removal sessions at Glo Laser & Beauty and did my permanent eyebrow touch-up at BrowGinering a month or so before the wedding.
We had a horse-fairytale-forest theme, so we wanted to incorporate this into everything. Our colours were mint green and rose gold (green has always been my favourite colour).
My husband folded 550 origami hummingbirds all by himself (yes, he’s awesome like that), which we wanted to hang between the trees for our ceremony, but due to the rain, we obviously couldn’t use them.
Our table names were different horse breeds and we tried to add the butterflies to some of the décor as well. Our tables had mint green serviettes and were made up with eucalyptus greenery, geometrics, and white roses with fairy lights in consol jars. As flowers are so expensive, we decided to go with artificial roses, and they looked so real that I don’t think anyone even noticed. This helped us not having to stress about keeping flowers alive and fresh. We also had light letters that spelled ‘LOVE’, and placed them at the back of the dance floor, which gave a very romantic look and feel.
We hired a black Friesian, Alto from Elegancia Carriages that I was supposed to ride to the forest-ceremony, but due to the weather conditions we could only take a few pictures with him. Lindsay Butler, who is also our friend, brought her two beautiful horses, Hector & Stevie for our couple photoshoot, who gave us the most beautiful wedding photos that we will surely enlarge as a memory of this day.
Serviettes & Pallet Backdrop Hire: Eucaluptus
Geometrics Hire: Hand Creations
Ceremony Friesian: Elegancia Carriages
Photoshoot Horses: Lindsay Butler
Light Letters: Lampyridae Lights
As we got married in December, and everything was going to be outside, we thought it was likely to be very hot, so full suits seemed a bit much in the summer heat. My husband wore the additional waistcoat and jacket, but his groomsmen only wore black shirts, shoes and pants, which they got from Edgars and Woolworths. We ordered the groomsmen’s mint green ties from So Smitten (together with the three little groomsmen’s mint green bow ties and suspenders). My husband’s mint green tie was bought from Twill (as he stated, he needed to have a little more flair than the others off course).
The look and idea came from Pinterest, our wedding ideas provider
Pastor Erik van Rhyn from Empower Church (our church where we also met), who we’ve known for a few years, did us the honour of pronouncing us husband and wife.
My sister is an amazing (and I believe the best) photographer, but as she had to be by my side during the wedding and had to feature in our photos, she only took some of our couple photos, many of them with Lindsay Butler’s beautiful horses. We therefore also used Him&Her Pictures on a recommendation as our wedding photographer, who has a very clean, airy and light style to their photos, which we thought would be perfect for our wedding.
Our video was shot by KingdomPixels. They seemed very excited about editing our video, so we are really looking forward to experiencing our wedding all over again once they are done with it.
I am quite the perfectionist, so I did most of the planning myself, with the help of my husband, my mother and two bridesmaid-sisters of course. We made a mean team!! My mother’s friend from primary school, Lydia Laurens, who also happens to be an event coordinator, did all of the setup work on the day of our wedding. She did such an amazing job and we are so thankful for all that she has done to make our fairy-tale theme come alive.
We were very fortunate to have everything close, so we didn’t really have to drive anywhere while on the venue premises. We therefore only hired the stunning Friesian horse from Elegancia Carriages who I was supposed to ride on, to the ceremony. Thinking back, we should have probably made a rowboat booking too, as we were blessed abundantly with so much rain
The owner of the venue did the catering, when a last minute (a few days out) controversy arose, that eventually concluded with the original caterers being fired. She stepped up to the plate (no pun intended), and prepared some stunning dishes, including our favourite chocolate mousse for dessert.
We decided not to have the traditional wedding cake, as we didn’t want to give up our chocolate mousse for dessert, so we kept all our guests entertained with mint green doughnuts from Elsa’s Bakery in Menlo Park, while we did our photoshoot.
Our ‘guest book’ had a section where our guests had to draw ‘my favourite thing/part about this day’ and judging by the many doughnut pictures we received, they were a great success.
We tried to go as paperless as possible, so we had a digital wedding invite website, designed by my very talented sister, Lizelle Cronjé. She designed all our wedding stationery; welcome board, menu, guest book message, table names and placements, our honey jar stickers, you name it, she designed it. She even made ‘Garth & Melissa’ colouring pictures for the kiddies table. How blessed am I to have someone like her!
My dad used his connections at Floran Foto, who did our printing at very affordable prices.
Both of us like dancing, but we never really had any practice dancing together before, so we thought it best to go for a couple of dance lessons. Faron Tait from Beverley Hammond Dance School choreographed a beautiful first dance for us, with a few lifts and turns that seemed to impress our guests as they cheered while we were doing them.
While we attended our dance lessons, we also asked Faron if he could come and give our guests a line-dancing lesson as part of our cowboy-horse-theme entertainment for the reception. This was such a great icebreaker and all our guests had so much fun.
Our DJ from AMA Promotions were included in our venue package and made sure all our guests’ own song choices, together with our very own ‘thought out playlist’ was adhered to and enjoyed.
