Lei and Dijon

About the couple

Dijon and I have been together for 9 years. We met in Cape Town, I was an art student waitressing in my spare time and Dijon was a student, whilst also managing a restaurant. One day a fellow waitress asked me to stay for drinks with her and some friends after work. Dijon was one of the friends...we started talking and the rest as they say is history. We moved overseas together for 5 years to the Channel islands and back again....but have been together ever since that first day.

Throughout the time we have spent together, Dijon always said that he didn't want to get married until he was 30. True to his word he ended up proposing down on one knee after his 30th birthday party. We had had a fanastic evening with our friends that night. Dijon had stood up to thank everyone for being there and in his nervous state forget to mention me! He of course felt dreadful, and later on in the evening stood up again in front of everyone and pronounced his undying love to me....later on in the privacy of our own home he got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife.

When we started planning and discussing our wedding, the most important thing we kept on coming back to was that no matter what happened or what we did, the MOST important part of the day was saying the vows...a detail that a lot of people forget as they get so carried away with the details and decor. Dijon took the relaxed groom approach and pretty much let me plan most of the smaller details with our wedding planner, although he tries to claim he was the one behind the scenes making it all happen! Our wedding reflected our different personalities 100% and I don't think either one of us would change a thing!

The wedding location

What we both wanted was a relaxed and casual wedding, one that reflected our personalities and we knew we had to get married in Franschoek, in the Cape winelands. It has always been a special place for us and we go there often for weekends, so it made sense to make this our venue. One weekend whilst there with friends we decided to visit The Brasserie as a possible option and once there knew it was absolutely perfect for our day....after that all the details of the day seemed to come together.

Our venue, The Brasserie is actually an old barn that they use as a restaurant and have jazz evenings there in the summer. It is surrounded by the most beautiful mountains and vineyards, but the venue itself had a rustic quality that we loved. As a designer I love combining new and old things together so it made sense for both of us to get married here. We both wanted to have our ceremony in nature rather than a church and after seeing the beautiful lawn and old oak trees at the back of the barn we knew we would be saying our vows there. Funnily enough though, 1 week before the wedding, they built a pool in the exact place we were going to have the service without telling us. Luckily for us, we chose another tree and the chaos was averted!

The wedding theme

We didn't really have a theme as such and our wedding was a mix of different colours and textures, more eclectic then anything else, although black and white was a strong element. I love hat band ribbons and we used these to wrap around the vases, and hang the place cards on. We also used locally designed and printed fabrics from LULA fabrics to bring pattern and texture onto the tables. Dijon and I hate uniformity and so we wanted the flowers and vases on the tables to all be differrent heights and designs. We wanted people to feel relaxed and for the atmosphere to not be too stiff, and I truly think the decor reflected this. Candle lights all over the venue together with the playful fairy lights also helped to create the soft ambience. My bouquet was a King protea, a flower native to SA. Its not a common flower for weddings, and its VERY heavy, but I have always loved them, especially their strong sculptural form. Special care was taken though when I had to throw it!

Our friends and I are all big foodies, and with Dijon's family being Italian it was very important that the food was excellent. We didn't want the menu to be overly fussy, but to combine good quality ingredients and flavours. For starters we had a herb salad with roasted butternut, beetroot and feta with homemade bread. Mains were either smoked trout (a dish Franschoek is famous for) with salse verde or butterflied lamb. Dessert was a selection of mini italian desserts served up on an old wine cask board.

We had DJ Rene the frenchman play together with 3 band members, including a saxophonist. They certainly know how to get people dancing and play African drums and percussion into the music creating a truly African/ South American salsa experience.

The budget

Haha, the budget! Our wedding planner really helped at keeping everything in check and ensuring that we spent the money on the things that were the most important to us, which was the food, the drinks and the music. I work as a buyer so am good at negotiating prices which we did non stop!

The wedding attire

I had the dress made for me. I spent a long time looking through magazines and on websites, and kept on coming back to the same sort of designs. When I met with my designer she knew instantly how to pull it all together and sketched it right there and then. At our second fitting we trialled the black belt and it just seemed to pull the dress together. I was very close to my gran who has unfortuantely passed away and we used a necklace of hers to make the clasp on my dress - so that a part of her was with me on the day! My designer also made the silk flower for my hair and incorporated some of the diamante in this too.

I wanted the flower girls to be able to run around and play and thus didn't want them to have overly fussy dresses. The girls are all very much into fairies and so we thought we would truly let them be fairies on the day...they loved it and had such fun wearing the wings!

I had 7 bridesmaids: my 2 sisters in a deep purple and my 5 best friends in cute little black cocktail dresses. I found the belts for their dresses a few weeks before the wedding whilst I was in Vietnam on business. They are made from all different leathers in slate greys up to black and realy pulled their dresses together. They were all such different shapes and heights and thus we went with a dress that looked great on all of them.

The ceremony

We hired the bedoiun as we wanted our guests to be able to enjoy the beautiful view of the vineyards and mountains. It is also very hot in December in this region and thus we felt it would be much cooler and more ambient having the wedding outside and close to nature.

There was a gentle breeze blowing all night which made dancing perfect. During the ceremony however, the breeze was blowing all the vases hanging from the tree and at some point I thought I was going to be knocked out by them!

We had a spiritual ceremony rather than a religious one which lent itself to where we were having the ceremony. We had our friends do a reading from captain corelli's mandolin and our mothers lit candles as symbolism for the joining of our two families.

Our ceremony was incredibly intimate, and we actually sat facing our guests- which was amazing as we could take the time to look around and absorb what was going on. Our guests sat in a semi circle aorund us on white benches and could all see our faces rather than our backs!

The guests

we had 125 people at the wedding...they all had such a ball and we had lots of people phoning us the next day to thank us. There was such good energy on the night and so much love in the air...no one could stop dancing and the atmosphere was simply electric.

We had the invites and placecards printed ourselves. A friend of ours is a fabulous designer and he did the unique designs for us.

The vendors

We chose people that we felt a connection with and that are certainly the very best at what they do. It was important for us to feel like we were not just another wedding. All of the people we chose we felt really GOT us and did an even better job than what we asked for. Our wedding planner, Gail, did a great job at advising us on the best people to go to etc.

The experience

The most important thing is to just enjoy the process. So many people let the details stress them out, but the planning is such fun! As long as you keep your focus on the fact that the day is about saying your vows, then the rest will fall into place. So many brides fear that things won't go according to plan and I can pretty much guarantee that this is true- not everything will go according to plan on the day but not only will you not really notice but you certainly won't care as it truly is the very best day of your life.

One of the things we found the hardest was putting our guest list together. We both have such large families and so many friends and it was very hard trying to decide who we could exclude. We didn't want our wedding to be too big so we made some hard decisions.

If I had to go back and do it all again I think I would try and relax as much as possible on the day. I was so nervous and as a result missed so much that was going on. As soon as I arrived at the ceremony though I felt amazing and enjoyed every second of the wedding.

We had gone up to Franshoek a few days before the wedding and each spent time with our friends. I would definitely recommend this to anyone getting married. It felt amazing having such quality time with the special people in our lives.

Most memorable moments

Definitely the first time we saw each other walking down the aisle and realising that this was actually happening...the whole night felt very surreal but we kept stopping and telling each other that this was our wedding day!

Related Information

•  Cape Town Weddings
•  Cape Town Real Weddings
•  Cape Town Wedding Specials
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•  Cape Town Wedding Planners