Fabulous Indian Wedding in Marbella Part One

It seems such a long time ago in a cooler April that we planned and styled the fabulous Indian Wedding of the utterly charming Shamir and beautiful fun Jigna.

We are now delighted to receive the most amazing photos from Nani de Perez who beautiful documented all the events leading up to the big day.  

We have so many wonderful images we are going to share them over two blog posts starting with the Welcome Evening, Sangeet, and pre-wedding Garba party with plenty of spectacular outfits, dancing and, deep sigh, many pairs of fabulous shoes and very sparkly jewellery!

When I first spoke with Jigna and Shamir they were already underway with their wedding plans, they had booked the venue, two stunning villas located just near Villa Padierna hotel, and were looking at various suppliers to help them put together all their wedding details.  

We were first hired to oversee the decoration but as my relationship with Jigna developed she decided to hire us to oversee the wedding planning and organisation as well. Jigna and Shamir are based in the States and Canada and they had hit what I call the planning wall, it was becoming difficult for them to finalise all the suppliers and put an cohesive itinerary into place and this wedding did need on site management to see it through smoothly as well.

After one pre wedding visit to do food tastings, hair and make up and meet with the suppliers everything else was finally put into place for a 4 day wedding extravaganza!

The first day was spent having a pre-wedding photo shoot in the charming old town of Marbella and down on the beach.  Then it was back to the villa to welcome the first of their guests with a cocktail and canapes by the pool serenaded by a jazz duo.  

Luckily this was due to finish quite early as having been keeping an eye on a rather dark cloud, the heavens decided to open so the amazing Fiestasol catering team, quickly whipped in the dessert buffet inside of the villa and everything else had pretty much wrapped up allowing the last of the evening to continue whilst it poured outside.

The next morning the sun was out and Jigna was up early for her Mendhi, resplendent in a gorgeous pink and gold Indian outfit.  We decorated the conservatory of the villa with the same colours and created lots of areas for the girls to have their henna art.  This day was more relaxed with a casual brunch and a family BBQ and I think the younger ones headed down to Puerto Banus for some partying!

The following day was the pre-wedding Garba party accompanied with plenty of drumming and dancing in the marquee, it was a fabulous evening starting with a beautiful Indian dance by Shamir's sister, we were quite entranced by the whole evening and thoroughly enjoyed watching the events.  

Tomorrow we will share the amazing culmination of these days of celebrating with the actual wedding day, we cannot wait to share these photos with you!

Our thanks as always to our brilliant team of suppliers who helped us pull everything together including Nani de Perez for these photos and Fiestasol Catering for their rather fabulous Indian food.

Wedding Celebrations at the Castillo de Santa Catalina, Malaga

Here we are at the beginning of 2015 and already busy planning our weddings for this coming year but are still receiving wonderful photos of our 2014 weddings to share with you.

Lea and Marouen's wedding at the end of September, is one of my favourites from 2014 and they were such a charming, sweet and delightful couple to work with. 

I remember meeting with Lea in Malaga at the beginning of last year and Jess driving Lea around Andalucia as they looked at venues, finally settling on the beautiful Castillo de Santa Catalina for their wedding and the Cortijo Sabila for the pre-wedding paella pool party and base for their wedding preparations.

As their wedding day approached though we were really excited but also frantically checking the weather on every possible available weather app known to mankind as a storm of gigantic proportions had been predicted hitting Malaga around 6pm just as their ceremony was about to start.  I think I was introduced to weather apps I did not know existed this day!

We, as wedding planners, and knowing the huge amount of rain that can literally pour from Spanish skies had sadly resorted to going with plan B to play safe but instead after much consulting, toing and froing and a rather large and elaborate floral arch being moved from inside the venue to outside via a lift and a flight of stairs, plus a little bit of stress, and last minute parasols being hired in, we decided to risk it and continue with plan A.

In the end not one drop of rain reached us as the storm raged out over the sea and a beautiful and fabulous wedding was underway.  We were so lucky but I have never seen so many eyes looking up to the skies and surveying the looming clouds!
  
The girls got ready at the Cortijo Sabila where they were well and truly looked after by the one of the greatest hosts I know, Yvonne.  Jess was totally in love with Lea's dress and having palpitations over her beautiful Jimmy Choo shoes!   Then the girls left and travelled down to Malaga to the stunning Castillo where Lea and Marouen's beautiful ceremony was conducted on the roof terrace of the Castillo de Santa Catalina by the lovely Natasha.   

We created a floral arch which we think looked lovely despite being moved and broken down to fit into the lift and quickly reassembled!   The aisle on the roof terrace was lined with blossom trees and blush petals and a welcome table was set up displaying the Order of Service booklets we designed, antique pink parasols, personalised fans and confetti.

The cocktail area set in the Castillo's ruins really did not need much decoration as it is so beautiful but we set up a fun area for bling rings and hats and created a lovely table seating plan with different frames set onto a wooden board.

As the evening progressed we have never seen so much dancing under the fairy lights, it was fabulous, the celebrations were well and truly underway.  There was a wonderful flamenco display followed by a delicious meal and a lot of dancing away into the early hours with Tristan the DJ.

The wedding theme was blush and golds, we decorated the venue with lots of lanterns and a large fairy light display hanging down the walls of the venue.  The tables were beautifully sparkly with our gold sequin table runners, blush, pink and peach floral arrangements set into vintage style gold pots surrounded with gold tealights, the whole effect was beautiful and stylish.

Lea and Marouen provided each guest with some very pretty favors of chocolates decorated with blush flowers and a little bag of sugar almonds which were set off perfectly on each place setting which we had styled with our gold charger plates and tied each napkin with a blush ribbon.

Jess and Rocio organised the whole day beautifully and the wedding cake was created by the venue and finished with some lovely gold glitter heart cake topper decorations ordered by Lea as she knew she could not have a wedding without my love of gold glitter!

We hope you enjoy these photos of such a beautiful wedding at the Castillo de Santa Catalina, we have lots of weddings there again this coming year so we are sure this will help many of our couples envisage their own weddings here.

Our thanks to Jess and Rocio for being such fabulous planners, the venue, Joseba Sandoval from Romance Weddings for such wonderful images, Yvonne at the Cortijo Sabila, Natasha the celebrant, Tristan the DJ and of course our congratulations to Lea and Marouen x