Can you believe it’s Friday already?!  We’ve been so busy with the Design Indaba Kids Workshop, the week just flew past. Nonetheless, I am happy it’s Friday because I get to share this lovely wedding with you. I felt like this treasure was my little secret. Well now the secret’s out, and I am so happy to introduce  Charlene Schreuder to our readers.

As you can tell I am very impressed with her, the reason being that this is her first wedding here in South Africa. Charlene worked abroad for 10 years (It was love that finally brought her back here ). I think Charlene will be a great choice, if you’re still looking for a photographer. She not just very talented but she also has such a bubbly personality. Always great to have a photographer that makes you feel at ease!

So back to today’s wedding. The lovely couple came all the way from Portugal to get married here in South Africa. We are just crazy about the whimsicality of their wedding. It makes you feel happy! Especially with the hot weather we are experiencing at the moment. Don’t you also just want to sit with your feet in a pool? Anyway, we hope this gives you a good start to the weekend. See you at Design Indaba!

Tell us your love story?

Luis and I met in 2005 while working as Photographers for a Cruiseline company. He was already on Fboard when I joined the ship and we hit it off almost immediately, we just got on really well like we’d know each other for ages. Then, one fateful night in the Crew Bar… it was “Disco Night” and the dance floor was packed. We were dancing together, I was drinking a beer and Luis pulled one of his famous moves, accidentally smacked the end of my beer bottle into my mouth… and broke one of my front teeth. In half.No… really.In half. It hadn’t been my first beer of the night, so I was surprisingly un-fazed, and in the end the worst part was that I had to wait a week to get it fixed…

Please describe the proposal.

We had been talking about marriage for a while, so the proposal itself wasn’t a complete surprise, but he had me choose the engagement ring without knowing it, which I thought was quite sneaky! And clever. A good friend of mine worked in the Fine Jewellery Boutique on board and when work was slow I would hang out with him in the shop and try on all the fancy-pants jewellery just for fun. One day he was all “Dahling, we just got a stunning shipment of Sapphire rings in, you must try them all on!” Luis knew that Sapphire is my favourite stone and that I have no love for diamonds and had obviously prepped my friend… So I tried them all on and picked my favourite and then went back to work and didn’t think any more of it. And then there it was when he proposed a few weeks later!

What was the highlight/s of your wedding day?

The ceremony, definitely! It was performed by a very close friend of mine which meant a lot, plus he’s also hilariously funny and wouldn’t tell us beforehand everything that he had planned, so his speech was a beautiful surprise.

Any advice for brides-to-be?

Just relax! I had to tell myself that a load of times… and ask for help if you need it, that’s what friends are for.

Where did you get most of your ideas and inspiration from?

Internet! I love the internet! I discovered loads of wedding blogs and sites, who knew how many there were out there? Grey Loves Weddings, Green Wedding Shoes, Junebug Weddings, Once Wed, Etsy… the list goes on! And lucky for me The Pretty Blog had just launched the same time I was getting into the planning, which was a massive source of info too. I also got loads of ideas from other photographers blogs, blogs that I had been visiting regularly for ages but this time I was looking at them from a brides perspective rather than as a photographer and I started to pay closer attention to the details.

What was the biggest obstacle/s you had to overcome while organising your dream wedding?

My biggest obstacle was myself, I know that sounds a bit silly, but I’m a procrastinator with my head in the clouds so I had to make an effort to keep things simple and easy so it wouldn’t be the inevitable last minute freak-out that has been the majority of my life. It worked out pretty stress free in the end, even my mom was impressed.  It was also pretty tough to plan a wedding in South Africa while living in Portugal… thank goodness for the internet!

Were any of your family members or friends involved in the wedding and what were their contributions?

Our wedding wouldn’t have happened without our friends and family! My mom made our cake, Luis’s mom sewed the flags for the ceremony and one of our closest friends was our photographer AND my make-up artist. My dad made the candles for our reception and another friend worked her “boere-meisie” connections to get us pincushion proteas when there were practically none left in the country. Yet another friend brought my shoes over from England with her to spare the risk of the SA postal service and (as mentioned above) one of my favourite people in all the world was our officiant.

Did your wedding preparations include any DIY projects?

Practically the entire wedding besides the venue and catering was DIY. I made the bouquets, did the flower arranging for the reception, designed and printed the stationary and did my own hair. Luis was in charge of everything music and entertainment related.

How did your wedding reflect your personalities?

We wanted to keep it simple, casual and unpretentious. All we wanted was to celebrate our love with the people closest to us, and then eat good food, drink too much and have a party. Which is exactly how it went, it was wonderful!

What are you looking forward to now that you are married? What’s next for you as a couple?

Luis is Portuguese so we are currently living in Portugal and starting up our own wedding photography business there. The wedding industry is very different there compared to Cape Town, the general trend is still quite traditional, so we hope to shake up a few feathers and spread the contemporary-wedding love. We look forward to the challenge! •

Please describe your wedding dress. What made you “fall in love” with the dress?

I wanted simple, light, flowing… this turned out to be quite a challenge when wedding dress shopping in Portugal.95% of brides there have a super formal church wedding in a massive meringue dress and high heels, which is so not me. After what felt like 100 boutiques all with the same enormous dresses and the same control-freak sales assistants who thought I was out. of. my. mind. for not wanting to wear heels, I started searching online and found what I wanted.

Dress: Vestidus

Food: Jonkershuis Groot Constantia

Photographer: Charlene Photography

Shoes: http: Kadam Shoes

Venue: Groot Constantia