This is it! I’m finally showing the pictures of my sister’s forest wedding! It’s always hard to make a selection of the pictures I receive, it’s even harder when you’re emotionally connected to them. So just this once, I split the reportage into two parts; this is part one, part two will be released this very afternoon! Now, about this wedding… so many things to say! I think I got involved in the planning and design more than for my own wedding, which makes the “wedding blues” (the thing you feel when your wedding’s over and there’s no wedding related stuff to care about anymore, some of you may know!) even harder. Actually, I was pretty sure that night that I would end up going to bed at 11pm: when everything was finally going well without my help, I thought “ok, mission accomplished” and then suddenly realized how tired I was! But fortunately, coffee exists, and helped me make it through the night! Anyway, nothing of this matters, as my greatest reward was to see Cynthia & Arnaud stressless, enjoying their day just the way I wished they would. All those pictures were taken by Mait Jüriado, who kindly came to France to shoot this wedding.

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The wedding took place on August 31, at the Soultzerkopf, in the East of France. I really like to hear cute stories from the couples I feature. I love this particular anecdote, that happened a few weeks before Cynthia & Arnaud actually started dating. From the bride:

10 years ago I went to England for an internship. In my first days I had to concentrate really hard to understand everybody. So when my line manager introduced me to Arnaud, I actually thought he said something like “Alnoud” and just added it to the list of the unusual names I heard there. The following weeks, every time I ran into him I said “hello” and he replied the same. Until the day we met again at the canteen/work restaurant. He came over and astonished me by talking in a perfect french. Which I complimented him about (in french, thought it would be nice). And to which he responded a bit stunned “Well, yes, I am french!?”… World class champion, even more when you know that Arnaud was famous for his strong french accent…

Name one thing you regret…

Arnaud decided to have a tailor-made suit for the occasion. During our first visit to the tailor—months before the wedding—we got all excited, choosing between hundreds of different fabrics and discussing the best cut. But then, over the weeks, it was a lot of trying on, and even a few days before we left for the wedding there were still considerable alterations to make. Most of them were taken care of and the suit looked great as it was but there were still some details needed to be fixed and we didn’t have the time for it. So the whole tailor-made experience was disappointing for us, Arnaud regrets he didn’t go for a standard suit in a trendy shop. And we would have saved some stress and money as well!

… And one thing you’re really happy about/ proud of.

We were so glad to see that all our closest friends and family arranged to travel to the far end of a deep forest to attend our wedding. And if getting married wasn’t something really important to us until a few months ago, we are so happy we did it. It’s just the perfect occasion to have everybody we love around us. Why have we waited so long???

And it was such a luxury not to have to worry about a thing. Everything was under control, but not our control! We really appreciated our friend Paul designing us the best invitations we could imagine and it was absolutely fantastic to have Joana deal with every detail of the organization (with Marcio not far away – yes, the same Marcio that designs super high-level websites can also draw super high-level signs). We only realized afterwards all the huge work she had done. The day of the wedding we had zero stuff to worry about and fully enjoyed each moment… Priceless! So we definitely did very little for our wedding, and well, we can totally live with that!

But if we haven’t done a thing, what could we possibly be proud of? And that’s it actually. We are so proud we had someone WILLING to do all of these crazy beautiful things for us. That’s definitely something to brag about. THANK YOU! It was pure awesomeness.

To be continued… (To hold on until then, you can check the photographer Mait’s brand new website.)