Love, Life, New Beginnings

Sometimes life is truly unpredictable. No, let me rephrase this: life is unpredictable! Who thought that I will finally quit my corporate job, marry, and start a new chapter in my life all over sudden. Let me reassure you, I did not think of those options myself. But they happened. And as quite often in life, the stars seemed to have aligned for it all to happen in a serendipitous sequence of moments. 2019 was the year of closing chapters, but also opening new ones. And 2020 started with the best new chapter in my life: marrying the person I love.

In today’s post I want to focus on this wonderful new chapter. I am typing these words exactly one month after my wedding day. And I am as happy as I can be. Believe me if I tell you I never saw myself getting married – you know like really doing the thing, organizing something nice for close friends and family, all that goes with such a special moment in life. But then as I said it before, life is unpredictable. I met that one person and suddenly everything was different. I wanted to get married and even very much so. And I could not be happier with my decision today.

My aim here is to share with you all a very important moment in my life. However, I do not like to get too personal here on the blog. Mostly because I also want to respect other people’s desire for privacy. And in this case I will stick to my stance. So even though I will share with you a few details and pictures of my wedding, I will not talk so much about my partner, our love story, the guests and so forth. But I will tell and show you quite a bit of a this very beautiful day.

We decided to get married in Copenhagen, Denmark beginning of January. We chose Copenhagen because of two reasons: First of all it is very simple and not bureaucratic to get married in Denmark if you come from different countries (in our case we are from Austria and Brazil). Secondly, we both love Copenhagen, Danish design and have a connection to the Danish capital. So it felt like a perfect match to celebrate our love in Copenhagen.

Our wedding was more on the intimate side – we invited about 20 close friends and family members to celebrate our day with us in Copenhagen. After a beautiful ceremony at the Copenhagen City Hall, we cheered with some bubbles at the SP34 hotel. Later we invited our guests to a wedding lunch in one of my dream locations in Copenhagen: the GRO Spiseri restaurant.

GRO Spiseri is a wonderful organic restaurant in a greenhouse on top of a building in central Copenhagen. It is surrounded by a rooftop garden where they grow their own veggies, herbs, fruits and even produce their own honey and eggs. We booked the greenhouse for our guests to have an unforgettable experience with us – one that was also framed by my love for plants and greenery as you can assume. They served us an excellent 3-course organic lunch made with local ingredient and accompanying wines as well as a Denmark inspired wedding cake.

Another aspect that you can guess is a certain idea that I had for the table setting. Together with my partner we discussed what we both would like as our wedding table. The decision was simple as we both love a natural styling and have a soft spot for Danish design. We decided to stick to neutral colors and match the ambiance of the lovely greenhouse. The mix & match tableware was accompanied with grey linen table runners and striped linen napkins from Linen Texture, additionally we selected pieces from Danish design brand Georg Jensen with the famous Koppel pitcher for water, stylish Cobra candleholders, Bernadotte vases for the table and one Alfredo glass vase for the side table all of which were filled with dried flowers, eucalyptus and some Craspedia as color dots.

Another wish of mine was to add little hints and details highlighting our various backgrounds. The Brazilian vibes were set with the most traditional wedding detail from Brazil – the ‘bem casado’ cakes. These little handmade cakes are beautifully wrapped and served at the end as well as gifted to all guests as a little memento from the wedding. ‘Bem casado’ means well married and should bring love and prosperity to the newly weds. My partner was responsible for this task as a native Brazilian and did quite a job to order handmade bem casados all the way from his native town of Porto Alegre in southern Brazil. The cakes were made by local pâtissier Fernanda Beltrame (in case you ever need perfect bem casados) and wrapped according to our wishes in soft beige tones with dried flowers. Also a big OBRIGADO to my partner’s brother for bringing two boxes of little cakes from Brazil to Europe!

When I learned about the bem casado tradition, I had an instant idea now to include something special from Serbia, where my family originates. I asked my all-time favorite Serbian ceramicist Ana Savic of anaeskeramik to make a set of wabi sabi plates where we could place a bem casado and offer it as a gift to our guests. Moreover, I asked her to include our names, the date and location of the wedding on the bottom of each plate. I think this is a wonderful way to have a ‘well married’ set of something Brazilian and something Serbian. Just like us as a couple.

The aforementioned linen for the table comes from Moscow, Russia, where my partner currently works and lives. And I also felt the need to include something Austrian of course – as I was born and raised in Austria. My choice was simple yet delicious: the original Mozart chocolate balls from the Fürst confectionary in Salzburg for every guest. Also we added a few bottles of excellent sparkling wine from my partner’s region in Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul. We opted for great sparkling wines from the Casa Valduga winery.

All these details set the tone for a relaxed and very happy lunch with our guests. Imagine a bunch of happy, smiling people from Brazil, France, Austria, Serbia, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark speaking all kinds of languages. But for this day only one language was needed to understand each other: the language of love. We were truly happy to see all our guests get so well along even though many of them did not know each other and/or did not speak the language of each other.

After lunch all our guests were granted some time to relax and freshen up before joining us for yet another stylish occasion to celebrate our love: a dinner at Cofoco, a landmark restaurant in the Danish capital. A six-course dinner with accompanying wines were waiting for our guests, as well as good talks and laughters.

I would not be able to share all of this beautiful details with you if it wasn’t for our excellent wedding photographer Alex Mart who spent the entire day with us taking photos and immortalizing this wonderful occasion. If you ever look for a great, fun and talented wedding photographer, do get in touch with Alex. I really loved his work and spending the day with him!

Also I would like to thank my dear friends Christina and Ben who helped me all along the way to prepare this special day. Christina was basically my wedding planner dealing with all details and administrative stuff, from choosing the florist to answering emails and decorating the table. Ben’s impeccable taste for styling was very helpful for our table setting as he worked with Christina on decorating the Gro Spiseri restaurant for our guests and us. Thank you guys, you rock! Also I want to thank all our wonderful guests for making this day truly special – these people traveled from as far as Brazil and other European countries to celebrate our love! Muito obrigado, thank you, hvala, danke, grazie, tak and merci to all of you!

Last but not least I want to thank my partner and now husband for being the most wonderful human being – his love makes me smile and fly high. You make me the happiest person on earth, Cleber! Te amo.

Love is love! Enjoy my friends!

Photography by Alex Mart

 

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