Remember when we were able to do things like go on getaways to Spain (and, er, leave the house)? Until we’re able to get back at it, let us invite you on a quick virtual getaway to sunny Malaga, for the beautiful Jewish wedding of Kimi and Richard.
This one really is a stunner – Kimi and Richard took full advantage of the rustic forest garden vibes of their venue, complete with the most exquisite outdoor chuppah featuring birch poles, white flowers, and greenery.
We’re also obsessed with the bride’s Enzoani gown, which she found at wonderful Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor Ann Louise Bridal in London. The minute Kimi stepped inside the shop and met with owner Cheryll, she knew Ann Louise was the place for her – and we’re not surprised to hear that she was super impressed with the selection and service throughout her dress fitting process.
Now over to Kimi, who’ll fill you in on the rest…
How We Met
Kimi, the bride: We met when we were 16 as I was on FZY tour with lots of his friends and the Essex boys’ and North London girls’ worlds collided! We were friends for years, regularly speaking and catching up but on a purely friendship level.
However, 9 years after meeting and a couple of years without seeing each other, a big group of 30 of us from North London and Essex all attended a music festival in Malta where Richard and I spent the whole weekend inseparable and the rest is history! We had loads of mutual friends, had met each other parents’ years earlier and everything just clicked.
A Wedding in Spain
We got married in Malaga, Spain. My family has a home 30 mins from Malaga so I spent every summer growing up in Spain and always knew I wanted to get married there. It was also the first place Richard and I went on holiday as a couple and the last place we holidayed a week before getting engaged.
Having a wedding abroad meant we could make a full weekend out of it rather than just one day. We had a welcome party and a ‘morning after’ post wedding party to make the most out of all our friends and family being with us in Spain. We visited A LOT of venues but once we found Hacienda del Alamo in Malaga we both instantly fell in love with it. The traditional Spanish manor house had lots of different rooms, each full of character.
The hacienda itself was set on big grounds with different areas which worked really well for each section of the wedding. The chuppah and reception was in a forest like space while the dinner and dancing was in a glasshouse making sure everyone still felt they were outside in the sunshine just with some added aircon!
Throughout the wedding the glasshouse was an ever changing vibe starting with bright sunshine, to sunset, to candlelit mood lighting and finishing with flashing party lights. We finished the wedding with an after party in the ‘club room’ inside the hacienda that went on until 4am.
Planning Perfection
We attended 11 weddings in 2019 so it was really important to make sure our wedding was ‘very us’. Personalised touches were essential, especially because we realised after attending so many weddings that you rarely get to spend so much time with the bride and groom.
We wanted to make sure everyone knew how much we appreciated them flying out to Spain to celebrate with us. We had a very rustic theme with lots of dark wood, greenery and candles which matched our venue perfectly. We used Sunshine Weddings as our wedding planner who I spoke to everyday in the year leading up the wedding, Scott also met up with us a few times before the wedding and he made everything feel better whenever I felt stressed!
Invitation
We went for a Paperless Post invite with a link to our wedding website. Being abroad and hosting 3 different events over the weekend there was a lot of information we had to get across to all our guests. We made sure our invite and website matched the green forest vibe of the wedding. Doing it online also meant it was easy to track who could attend and dietary requirements etc.
Hair + Makeup
My makeup artist was Liza Mayne who I found on every Marbella wedding blog and website! Liza and her assistant Lottie were amazing. I was very emotional and there were lots of tears throughout the day yet all of our makeup was still perfect and had not moved when we were finished at 4am! One of my bridesmaids has even booked Liza for her wedding this summer because she was so happy with the result!
I had trouble finding a hairdresser in Spain who was either free that day or did the style I was looking for. I actually found Brooke in the craziest way… my mum’s friend was getting her hair done in London and while chatting to the hairdresser found out she was due to move to Spain a few weeks later. So she gave me her number and I had my trial in London before she moved and I loved her so much, we are still in touch!
An Enzoani Dress
I found my dress at the wonderful Ann Louise Bridal in Eastcote. I went to a couple of other shops but the moment I met Cheryl at her beautiful shop I had a good feeling. I tried on all different styles but then showed Cheryl some dresses I had saved on Instagram. Not realising every dress I had saved was by the same designer, she pulled out a few that she felt would be perfect and she was right!
My dress was by Enzoani and the second I put it on and did the whole curtain reveal my mum, sisters and bridesmaids said ‘wow’. My best friend also cried which is a rarity so I thought it must be the one! I wanted something fitted, lacey and light with a long statement train. I wore the same veil my two sisters had worn which was really special.
Accessories
I have always worn different hair accessories throughout my life, I wear hairbands or clips in my hair most days so I knew I had to have something in my hair. I wasn’t keen on a tiara or anything too glitzy so when I found the two pearl slides online I thought this is something a little bit different but still felt like me.
I wasn’t sure up until the day if I would wear them but when I put them in and put my dress on I felt like it worked for the look I wanted. In terms of jewellery I wanted to go really simple. I wore a single diamond pendant necklace that Richard had made for me from his late grandma’s earings as my wedding present.
Shoes
I always promised I wouldn’t wear shoes at my wedding, I never find any shoes comfortable and I always feel like they ruin my night. However I knew bare foot would only work on a beach so I ended up wearing some Asos flat sandals for the majority of night.
I did however wear some Steve Madden platform heels for the Chuppah, just to make sure my dress looked the best it could. They came off as soon as I walked back down the aisle!
The handsome groom
Richard got his suit from Suit Supply, he never wears suits unless we go to a wedding so I always love to see him in one. We didn’t want go black tie as we felt we wanted a more chilled, casual vibe so he went for navy suit to match his best men and ushers all in navy chinos.
Bridesmaids
My three bridesmaids wore beautiful dresses from Ghost. I wanted a neutral or green colour to match my colour scheme but couldn’t find what I was looking for but I then came across the Ghost dresses in a taupe colour and the girls all looked incredible in them, so I was sold!
The satin sheen on the dresses looked beautiful in the sunshine and looked a different tone in every photo I have seen. I also had 5 page boys who wore little outfits from Next.
Chuppah
Because our chuppah was in the middle of a forest garden, I knew I wanted the design to match the surroundings and also knew I didn’t want it to be too much. We went for birch poles to match the trees around us and flowers across the top of the chuppah that matched our green and white bouquets.
My brief to our florist was ‘go green, white and wild’.
Ceremony
At a couple of previous weddings we had been to last year, the rabbi had asked the bride and groom to individually send him a few sentences about how they feel for the other, we absolutely loved this idea so decided to do the same at ours. It was the emotional part for both of us and made the ceremony feel a lot more personal.
Our music choice
We flew over Creation DJ Live… Creation had done both my sisters’ weddings 10 years earlier so I always had them in my mind but because we wanted a more relaxed vibe we felt DJ live instead of the full band was perfect for our wedding.
Music is really important to us, especially as we ‘re met’ at a music festival so we were careful about the key songs we used. Our entrance and last song was ‘Freed From Desire’ by Gala which was the song that reminded us of the festival 4 years earlier and our first dance was the acoustic version of ‘Show me Love’ by Robin S.
The main thing for us was that everyone partied as hard as they could and Creation definitely helped us with that!
Flowers
We used Berta from Unique by Roberto Silvosa who was just amazing. We skype called a few times where we went through my mood boards and then went to meet her a couple of times before the wedding. The room setting is always something I notice so it was really key for our décor to match exactly what I had envisioned.
As the venue was surrounded by green foliage and trees, we felt it was best for our bouquets, buttonholes and table centres to match, all white and green! We also went for 6 hanging halos from the ceiling covered in greenery and dropped tea lights and a huge 6-foot halo as the centre piece above the middle of the dance floor.
We wanted to bring the outside inside! A lot of candles on each table were essential and we had some lanterns lit by our top table too. Berta really did bring my vision to life!
Videographer
For our video we used Garry and Bianca at Infin8 Images who flew over from Ibiza.Our best friends had used them the summer before and we were in love with their video so really wanted to have them capture our day too.
We were able to meet our videographers before the wedding so they could get a feel for us as a couple. They were a pleasure to have with us on the day and we absolutely love our wedding video. I have actually watched it everyday since receiving it.. and our mums have watched it twice a day!!
Food and cake
With both of us being huge foodies, we knew everyone was expecting good food at the wedding. Our venue worked exclusively with Alabardero Catering who worked with us closely to make sure all of requests were met.
We were both too distracted to eat anything on the day but people are still talking about our reception food as we had 15 different canapes, 3 food stations including a bread station, a vegetable patch and a Paella station plus a self-serve beer and sangria station which all our guests loved!
My big request was to have pizza served at midnight which you can imagine went down a treat!
Favours
Again, wanting to make sure our wedding felt personal we had a few little personalised elements. We had personalised tissues for the chuppah that each had a 3d sunflower stone on to represent the sunflower fields where we got engaged.
We provided mini shot bottles of mojito (my favourite cocktail) with our monogram sticker on each. We left little welcome packs for guests staying in our wedding hotel and finally for all my girlfriends I placed a pair of flipflops on their chairs, each with a tied tag reading their name and a personal message to each of them – one of my friends had done this at their wedding and I thought it was a really special touch.
SPEECHES
Everyone who knows me will know there was no way I wasn’t going to do a speech! I wanted to do more than just a few words at the end, after all I had way too much to say! So I had the last word of the day just before our first dance.
My dad is a toastmaster so he introduced Richard and I into the room and my mum did the welcome speech, it was her turn as my dad had done both my sister’s weddings! I also wanted to incorporate some of our closest friends so had them as our witnesses, a toast to Israel and I had one friend as my Man of honour who was our MC for the day.
Honeymoon
We went to Japan for our honeymoon 3 months after the wedding. We absolutely love Japanese food which was the main reason we chose there. We researched lots of websites and blogs and booked everything ourselves in the end. It was an amazing 2 weeks full of lots of food, culture, cooking courses and colour!
Advice to couples currently planning their wedding
Planning a wedding can be really stressful and very overwhelming so I have two bits of advice;
1. At the end of the day remember what the wedding is truly about, it’s about celebrating the love between two people and no amount of flowers, food or music can change the real meaning behind the day so when you are stressing over which colour the table numbers should be, don’t lose sight of what it is all really about.
2. Everyone told us to take 5 mins away from the crowd to look at the party, and take it all in. My biggest regret of the day is that we forgot to do this, we were too immersed in all the dancing, so I now make sure I tell everyone else to do this!
What ‘Smashing The Glass’ Did For Us
I regularly used the group for vendor recommendations. I found Hebrewear, our kippot supplier, photographer and shtick all from the group!
KIMI & RICHARD’S LITTLE WHITE BOOK
Videography – Infin8 Images
Kippot – Hebrewear {offers 10% discount to all members of Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club}
Wedding planner – Sunshine Weddings
Venue – Hacienda del Alamo
Bride’s dress – Enzoani found at Ann Louise Bridal
Bride’s shoes – Asos and Steve Madden
Groom’s attire – Suit Supply
Bridesmaids – Ghost
Hair + Makeup – Liza Mayne
Flowers – Unique by Roberto Silvosa
DJ – Creation DJ Live
Catering – Alabardero Catering
Invitation – Paperless Post
Toastmaster – Howard Marco
Smash Glass Pouch – Smashing The Glass Etsy Shop {or join Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club and get one for free!}
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How I wish we could be doing it all over again it is such a delightful memory every thing was so perfect and wonderful as a grandma to have been able to be there my love to you all xxx