You guys! After all of my wedding update posts here and here, this one brings me so much excitement! As some of you may know, we have had to postpone our wedding 3 times already, which has been mentally exhausting. Trying to line up all of the suppliers, sending out new save the dates, getting excited and then feeling let down again, it has been a bunch of crazy corona-coaster of emotions planning a wedding in 2020. We still don’t know what will happen with this pandemic in 2021, and while we hope and pray that we can have our big wedding celebration soon, we decided that we wanted to get our life together “started” in a way, so on our 10 year anniversary we flew to Cape Town and had a legal mini-mony (that is a new word for Corona brides, meaning a small ceremony ;)) and it was the best decision that we could have made! Think about it like this- you get to marry your human not once but twice, and isn’t that awesome!?
We went back and forth about this because as we are still having the big wedding next year, we did not want to take away from any magic of our big day. We of course have not had the big ceremony yet so I cannot 100% say that it will not take away anything, however, honestly I cannot imagine how it would. We had the perfect day with our mini ceremony, and it just got me even more excited about the celebration in 2021 with all of our family and friends. I highly recommend this to all COVID-19 brides because it made both us feel so special, we had the best time and we got excited for the next chapter and journey of this wedding and our life together 🙂
We did not have a lot of time to plan this, so we left things pretty simple but I added small touches for us to still celebrate the day. We each just had one witness on each side and their partner join us, and it worked out nicely that one of my bridesmaids was able to join us and witness on my side, and then one of Steve’s friends actually lives in Cape Town so he witnessed on Steve’s side. Of course, I had a special outfit planned and you can read all about it over here. I also decided to include all of the elements of “something old, something blue, something borrowed, something blue” because I am quite a superstitious person and this also gave me a reason to pick out a whole new set of goodies from the original ones that I had planned. As an on-the-day decision, I also decided to get my make-up and hair professionally done, and so glad that I did. While I could have probably done it myself, it gave me time to relax and enjoy the afternoon, and honestly, the make-up artist did a much better job than I could have.
We did not want to rent a venue, so instead we looked for a gorgeous Air BnB where we could have the ceremony. We wanted a lovely view as we wanted to do the ceremony outside, and I found this gem of a place in Camps Bay- it is the last road in the area, so there are no houses above you, and it opened up on this AMAZING view of the 12 Apostles Mountains. We chose it for its beautiful deck and the views, but the house was actually lovely inside as well and it only cost us R1000 a night! We decided that we would not be adding any extra flowers to the ceremony because honestly the place already had so much gorgeous natural scenery. The little garden right in front of us, the mountains and the sea behind us, what more did you need?
We decided to do just a short ceremony before signing the papers, and it turned out to be a lot more emotional than either of us have anticipated. We didn’t want to make this too much of a big deal, as this was more about us getting legally married rather than the full ceremony with vows and prayers, as we really do want our families to be there when we say those important words to each other. However even the short ceremony and the legal “I Dos” turned out to be a very emotional and beautiful moment.
After the ceremony, we popped some champagne with our friends and had a delicious dinner to celebrate. A very special touch came from our venue, Cavalli Estate, who made an exception and catered an “at home” meal for us to enjoy. It was delicious, and it was such a special touch (it was delivered to us ready-to-heat with all of the instructions). My bridesmaid Josie also got us a gorgeous little cake from Tessa’s Bakery, which was delicious. We spent the evening laughing, eating and having the best time with our friends. If our celebration next year is even 1/10th of what we experienced on this evening than its more than I can imagine! We stayed on in Cape Town for another week enjoying a little mini moon in the Western Cape.
It is difficult to express how perfect the day turned out and the emotions that I felt, especially after the ride that 2020 has been. I think it is so easy to get lost in the whole commotion of the wedding- the décor, the dress, the guest list and so on. However, the most important thing that you are actually doing is marrying your person, and it is easy to sometimes forget that! The day is about celebrating your love for each other, not how many tiers there are on a wedding cake. I definitely let the stress of the admin of the big wedding get to me, and looking back, I wish that I have kept my focus on the marriage part of the day the most. Now I get to marry my person 3 times instead of once thanks to corona, and I think that it’s awesome! We had this amazing, intimate day and next year I get to look forward to doing it again but with our closest family and friends by our side. And the 3rd time? Well, the story of the planning of the Ukrainian portion of the wedding is a post on its own, so let us just leave it at that 😉
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