Real Wedding: Louisa and Eitzaz

Louisa and Eitzaz had a romantic vintage inspired garden wedding. This wedding is a DIY dream come true with so many personal details tucked into the celebration. Not only was the wedding stunning but also totally unique.

”My love of everything vintage inspired my vintage garden wedding.  I also wanted a wedding that wasn’t scripted or predictable and one that had hidden surprises for my guests to enjoy. I spent a lot of months researching on the net and scouting charity shops for interesting ideas and bargains.

Eitzaz and I are both doctors. We studied at Wits university where we met and fell in love, so it was only natural for us to want to have our wedding close by and we also had our wedding photos taken on Wits campus.  We got married at the Braamfontein church, which is just outside of the campus.  It is a lovely ornate old church, high ceilings, with long aisle and gold and stain glass windows

The cauliflower symbolized the first bunch of flowers Eitzaz bought me, as I had told him I don’t eat flowers, hinting that I preferred chocolate. He then brought me a little cauliflower disguised as a bouquet. This was a daring and different idea to pull off well but the amazing Lucille at Casa De Flores was excited to create the cauliflower bouquet and also the buttonhole which Eitzaz wore. She also made a lavender buttonhole for each guest as they entered the church. These were beautiful and everyone was impressed.

For the wedding invitation I decided on a wedding wheel found on the internet and adapted it to my needs. I set my heart on a picture of a big tree, as our venue had a big tree in the middle of the garden where our guests would be seated. The birds were fun to work with and I decided to carry it through to the rest of the wedding decor and stationery.  I then sewed the invitation bags with my trusty sewing machine and added the lace trim.  We wanted to give our guests something to do and create a talking point so we attached a crossword to our menu that guests could fill in about our families and us.  The first guest who completed it would get a prize.

Again using the big tree as inspiration, I designed the mailbox and decoupage our surname onto the front. I bought tons of blue, green and mustard coloured bottles and vases from bud sized to large ones.  I mixed the colours around and used quite a few on each table.  I didn’t want traditional flowers like roses or bouquets that were too structured so we had very loose bunches to mimic the effect of freshly picked flowers. A birdcage decorated with flowers also had the table number attached to it.

I designed the piñatas to the same theme as the stationery and décor. We used them instead of the traditional garter and bouquet toss. The cake topper was made by my talented sister

Our wedding was non alcoholic as my groom is Muslim.  So we decided to have lots of smoothies, milkshakes, non alcoholic cocktails and shooters.  This was a real hit with the guests and the combinations of drinks were out of this world.  The barman also dressed up according to theme and wore suspenders and hats.  They were awesome and the drinks were amazing.

Beacuse Eitzaz is Pakistani, hubbly bubbly is something we like to indulge in from time to time, so we had a hubbly bubbly lounge set up under a terrace in the garden.  I found an old Bowling bag at the Hospice shops and filled it with all the hubbly bubbly flavours, coals and foil. I left the bowls balls in the bag to give a nostalgic feel.

I was a DIY bride and in my spare time I tried to make as much as I could. All the tablecloths edged with lace, cupcake flags, swizzle sticks, straw tags, bottle tags, the Mr and Mrs signs for the chair backs as well as the ‘Let them eat cake’ were handmade.
Juke box: I didn’t want the conventional DJ, so i opted for a juke box, which was so much fun, our guests had a lot of fun selecting and playing the tracks they wanted. We made the song books on the table that they could have an easy guide to what songs to choose, it also included some fun ideas about juke box etiquette.
Photobooth: We didn’t really want to have to take posed pictures with all our guests. So we hired ‘ We love Pictures’ to design a photobooth for us. They were such awesome sports and also developed the pictures on the same day. Which were pegged around the big tree and our guests could go and get their picture from the tree to take home.
Bar service: Eitzaz and my cultures are both quite food loving and generous. We had a family style approach to the food. By having bowls and portions of food being served at the table that could be passed around as you would do at home and the guest could have their fill. This worked very well.
Groom serenading: Eitzaz also surprised me and had been taking secret guitar lessons for a few months before the wedding. By no means is he musical but he serenaded me as part of his wedding speech with his own rendition of the song from the movie the Wedding Singer, by Adam Sandler, ‘I want to grow old with you’, it was too gorgeous and had all the guests crying and laughing, me too. He is quite the character – it was the most romantic and magical day.

Louisa, thanks so much for sharing your beautiful day with us. Congratulations to both of you.

Photographer:  Ben Viljoen

Venue:  Shepstone Gardens

Photobooth:  Travis/Maike – 012 343 9341 / 084 524 7322

Invitations:  Lisa van der Merwe  0832927795

Pinata’s:  Marianne 0824572276

Decor:  Lucille Ribeiro  0829284849

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