Wedding Wednesday: Our Wedding Story – Part One [Episode 60]

After a little over a year of hosting the Wedding Wednesday podcast, I realised I’d never shared my wedding story! So, join me and my special guest (my husband, Glen) as we share our wedding story. In this episode we talked about our theme and colours, how difficult it was to find a wedding venue, the decor and flowers, our budget and how we planned our wedding together. Part two is out next week!

Something I shared is that a great way to save money is to use one thing for multiple purposes. And this got me thinking that I haven’t shared my own wedding story, because this is exactly what I did!

For context: We got married in 2015 while we were still living in Cape Town, South Africa. So it was 8 years ago and in a different country, so some of the things (like our budget and venue) will be really different to what’s possible in the Northern Hemisphere. 

We had our ceremony at our church, followed by speeches and an incredible cake table (with all the cakes made by our friend who was on Masterchef) and then 110 of those guests went over to a different venue for the reception, dinner and party time. 

Wedding theme / colours

Most asked question, so we’ll start here. 

THEME: woodlands

COLOURS: blush pink and champagne gold

It was Autumn and we wanted to reflect that. And as a lover of pink, I needed to have pink!

Venue

We spent a lot of time looking for a wedding venue. We didn’t have access to the wedding venue finder that weddingsonline couples can use, so we had to do it the old fashioned way and Google ‘wedding venues’ and then scour through the websites to find information about capacity and prices. 

We wanted:

• A venue that could accommodate around 100 / 120 guests
• Something within a 45 minute drive of the ceremony venue (which was right around the corner from most of our guests)
• Exclusive use of the venue, with no other events happening on site
• I really wanted one or two long banquet style tables
• Bonus: pretty gardens for photos

We found: Langverwacht

Here’s the link to the weddingsonline Wedding Venue Finder so you don’t have to go through the stress that we did!

Decor and flowers

To go with the autumnal theme, we incorporated lots of gold leaves into the decor. So we collected autumn leaves, spray painted them gold and then hung them on clear strings as a ceremony backdrop. 

The first thing we bought for the wedding was a gold leaf headpiece which set the tone for the look and feel of our wedding. 

Michelle asked: What did you do with your wedding flowers afterwards?

We actually didn’t have any wedding flowers. 

The bouquets were eucalyptus leaves with long pink ribbons tying them together. 

Centrepieces were a mix of candles, little deer toys spray painted gold and then the best part: little forest trees. 

The inspiration for the trees: we’d attended a friend’s wedding about a month before ours and they had stolen our idea to have animal figurines spray painted and laid out on the tables. So while we were at this wedding, I was panicking and thinking of what we could do instead. So we kept the animals, but we added something we hadn’t originally planned for: the trees!

These trees lined the tables, so it felt like you were in a forest when you walked in. And then we gave them to our guests as wedding favours too. So we had no flowers to clean up!

The planning

I was a wedding coordinator at the time, so I took the lead, but we planned everything together!

We got engaged in September 2014 and married on 1st May 2015 so we had about 8 months to plan everything. 

A wedding planning day each week – we started by planning together on specific days, because we didn’t want our wedding to take over. 

We made all the decisions together. 

Glen’s non-negotiable: a plated meal. He just wanted everybody to be served a meal and not have to queue up at the buffet. 

Emma asked: What was your budget?

It was about R100,000 which is the equivalent of about €5000. It’s hard to compare because the cost of living is so different in SA and this was 8 years ago. I’d say R100,000 at the time was about the same as 5 – 10 months salary. 

Part two – next week:

Outfits, entertainment and food choices, our wedding hacks and the things we’d change!