Real Wedding at Constantia Uitsig {Lourie & Andre}

If I’ve said it once here on SouthBound Bride, I must have said it a hundred times – your wedding is something you should do YOUR way. It’s your party (and an expensive one at that) and the whole day should be an expression and celebration of your relationship. For most couples, that still means following a traditional structure, but for others, it’s a chance to pick and choose what works for them and create a unique atmosphere that best suits their personalities. Lourie and Andre are one of those couples – they threw out the wedding ‘rule book’ and did things exactly the way they wanted, to create an intimate ceremony, a chilled out reception at phenomenal Cape winelands restaurant Constantia Uitsig, and a general vibe that was totally ‘them’. There are so many wonderful unique touches here: the sweet white and yellow colour scheme, the fun couple shoot, the vegetable centrepieces (I die for these centrepieces, they are so unique!). The amazing Lauren Kriedemann was there to capture everything on film, and has done so in glorious colour and style. I always think that no two of her weddings look alike, and it’s especially true in this case, as Lourie and Andre’s wedding has to go down as one of the most fun and different I’ve featured. LOVE IT!

From the lovely Lourie:
Andre and I met at a weekly poker game with a group of our mutual friends. It wasn’t long after that when he asked me out on our first date (a classic dinner and a movie).
Our proposal story: It was Andre’s birthday and I gave him tickets for a Sauvignon Wine Festival at the Vineyard Hotel in Claremont. One of my favourite restaurants, Myoga, is at the hotel, so I was none the wiser when Andre told me that he had made us a supper reservation for after the festival. After the fifth course I noticed the waiter walking toward us with a cake made to look like a Tiffany box with a diamond ring in it. (I love special cakes!) I couldn’t understand why there was a cake in front of me when we were out celebrating Andre’s birthday. I looked up as he pushed the real diamond ring towards me and asked me if I would marry him and the rest is history!

From the beginning, we said that we wanted the day to feel like a boozy lunch on a wine farm with friends. It was therefore a necessity that the wedding was on one of Cape Town’s great wine farms, Constantia Uitsig. It gave us the best of both worlds – it was in town and close for the guests and with its beautiful views of vineyards and the Constantia Valley Mountains it also gave us the feeling of being out in the winelands.
The day started with early morning photos of us and the bridal party, followed by a small intimate signing ceremony with our family and closest friends. The rest of our guests arrived later in the morning to join us for a relaxing late morning/early afternoon champagne and canapés followed by a delicious three course meal.

To complement the relaxed feeling we were after we had very few formalities. There was only the cutting of the cake (a seven-layered lemon cake that Andre insisted we have the minute we got engaged) early into the pre-drinks so that it could be shared at pre-drinks and followed by only a few short speeches during the day. In terms of the décor, we chose yellow and white as our colour theme with natural and rustic flowers.

I loved the fact that wedding day, while completely non-traditional, suited our personalities perfectly. It was a celebration of our friendship. The fact that we could get married under a tree with just our family and a handful of our closest friends there to witness it was exactly as I had planned. There was throughout a natural and comfortable atmosphere, which resulted in the fun and quirky photos for the day. I thoroughly enjoyed spending the day laughing and drinking wine with our friends.

My advice for future brides would be to have fun and make the day fit who you are. The most important parts for me were making sure that the day best represented us as a couple and to have a good photographer to capture the special moments of the day. Resources that helped me were different wedding and photographers’ blogs, such as The Pretty Blog.

Congratulations, Lourie and Andre, and thanks so much for sharing your day with us! And thanks to SBB favourite Lauren – you can check out her blog for even more delicious pictures.