Celebrating our first anniversary

I’m floating on cloud 9 as I write this. Here’s why, today marks 366 days of being married to my best friend. Yep, Maurice and I are celebrating our first wedding anniversary today – 2 November.

This may be a cliché, however I’m going to say it anyway – marriage is hard work! Marriage is also a beautiful journey of discovery. Who would have thought that our first year of matrimony would be dominated by a global pandemic. What a way to start our journey. Nevertheless, we’ve made it work.

To celebrate, I thought that I would (finally) post a few never before seen photos from our wedding day. Yes, I know it’s super late, however these pics will always be iconic to me.

Breaking tradition

Our venue was Chelaya Country Lodge in Somerset West. Together with our family and friends, we booked out the entire lodge for the weekend. Yep, we celebrated for the entire weekend and it was epic!

On the morning of our wedding day, Maurice and I had breakfast with our family and friends. Yes, I know that goes against all wedding rules, but we were all about breaking tradition. The day was blessed by spending time with our loved ones and the love of God.

After breakfast I spent some time on my own walking through the garden. I sat at the spot we were to be married and prayed. That’s when the tears started. My heart was filled with so much blessings and gratitude. I then headed over to the honeymoon apartment, took an hour long bath and cried some more.

The Ceremony

Instead of walking down the aisle, I walked around a pond. My wedding entrance song was the Louis Armstrong version of La Vie en Rose. I was accompanied by my dad on one arm and my daughter on the other. It was perfect. What made it even more magical were the ducks that swam in the pond next to me, guiding me to my husband to be.

I told Maurice that he’d better shed tears when he saw me walking towards him. That didn’t take much doing, we were pretty much both in tears by the time I got to him.

Another thing that set our wedding apart was the decision not to have bridesmaids & groomsmen. This proved quite interesting when I needed to use the bathroom. My sweet Maurice performed his first husbandly duty by lifting my dress while I took a tinkle just before the reception. We had a good laugh about it when we realized it was the first time we were alone on our wedding day.

Maurice and I also opted not to have a main table. I’ve always found the idea of a main table quite awkward. Almost like being put on display. We wanted to share a meal with our loved ones, family style. We basically entered the venue to John Legend’s A Good Night, found two empty seats next to each other and enjoyed the celebration.

The perfect wedding?

Did everything go off perfectly? Hell no! I wish we had hired a videographer – we missed out on the moment the ducks accompanied me around the pond. We opted for an unplugged wedding, so no one could capture this moment. We forgot to put our wedding souvenirs on the tables and the Moët Maurice and I had been keeping for months for a moment alone during our wedding, went missing (we found it the next day). Despite this, we had the perfect day. Also, the BOKKE won the world cup on our wedding day!! We were worried that if the Bokke lost, it would dampen spirits. Thank you Bokke for making our wedding day extra special!

All in all, our wedding was perfectly imperfect in every way!

I’m going to be sharing a few behind the scenes pics on my Instagram stories and I’ll create highlights as well.

Enjoy the pics