Hello friends! It’s been a while, I know, but I haven’t forgotten about you. And I actually have here something you may enjoy a lot; a very beautiful wedding, one of the most personal I’ve seen. Szerdi and Andy are both wedding photographers, so I guess they had the opportunity to know what they wanted their own wedding to look like. And from the country they decided to get married in to the decor, everything was thought of carefully. They got married in Mozambique next to the sea, and their ceremony took place in the woodland nearby. I really love all the purple details, the monkey in Andy’s pocket during the whole time, the sand cameras and Land Rovers on the tables, and the overall laid back feel of their day! Photography by Tyrone Bradley out of South Africa.
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The wedding took place in Ponta Malongane on the Southern tip of Mozambique on the 23 June 2012. The couple pics were taken at the nearby town Ponta D’Ouro. From the bride:
We decided to get married in our neighbouring country of Mozambique (we are South African) as it is a country close to our hearts – we have been there close to 10 times over the 7 years we had been together. The logistics of a Mozambican wedding were tricky as transporting our 40 guests and all our décor and booze on beach sand roads was quite an adventure. We had to take up pretty much EVERYTHING we needed so became quite creative in our need to be self sufficient.
Everyone seems to think destination weddings are hellishly expensive, and while maybe the travel can be, our actual wedding was kept on a VERY tight budget!
Andy and I are wedding photographers which means we have seen a LOT of weddings. When we were planning our own wedding we wanted to make it as personal and intimately special as possible. We didn’t hire a wedding photographer, we hired Tyrone Bradley, an event, motoring and people photographer working with Red Bull and itswhatiminto. Tyrone was so awesome and we learnt so much from him and we really could not have asked for a more incredible guy! He even stayed and jammed with us till the end of the reception!
Name one thing you regret…
At one point some of our guests started leaving and I got quite sad they were leaving so early! Except it turned out to already be close to 3am and there I was thinking it hadn’t hit 10pm yet! As cheesey as it is, and everyone says it, the day and night really DO fly by!
Most of our guests stayed for a long weekend and left to go back home on the Sunday and we took a 10 hour hungover drive on beachsand roads to our mini moon location. If I could do one thing over, I would have had everyone and ourselves stay for the Sunday night as well so we could have some post wedding down time with everyone we love instead of rushing off on honeymoon.
… And one thing you’re really happy about/ proud of.
When it came to our own wedding pics, 2 things were important to us, having our photos in Ponta D’Ouro (about a 40 minute round trip from the wedding venue in Ponta Malongane) and to not be away from our friends and family for too long after the ceremony. The best option then was to do our pics the day before and boy are we glad we did! There was no rushing, no guilt about missing out on our reception, and best of all it created so much excitement for the day before the wedding as well! We did first look pics where our parents led us to each other. It was so good to include them and honestly, I would highly recommend this to any couple interested!
Andy and I were both very hands on and we crafted and made pretty much ALL our decor! I hand sewed the bunting, my gran, mom, Andy’s mom and I knitted all the placemats. (which I have now sewn into a big blanket) We collected all the jars (we are recycling nuts though so that wasn’t hard), and we really tried to make all our other decor be meaningful to us as a couple. We had little Landy toys (in case you hadn’t noticed, we are a bit Land Rover obsessed) We used our collection of old cameras we have accumulated over the years and put photos of us over the years in the jars. We also had little jars of speckled eggs, our favourite naughty treat! I also have an amazing crafting sister in law (and brides-lady) who crocheted tons of flowers we used all over the place. As taking flowers over the border was a bit of a problem, we vied for beautiful dried lavender which was super easy to transport in boxes!
We had amazing day of co-ordinators the Love Bucket, they are amazing and also organise Mozambique weddings! I would highly recommend a day of co-ordinator, they made things far less stressful!
A good friend did our make up and I did my and the brides-ladies hair. All the dresses were bought on sale and accessorised from Mr Price (a cheap local chain store)! My dress was ordered from a vintage US website ModCloth as was Andy’s waistcoat, everything else was picked up at local shops.
Our reception became the most rocking dance party all with a little help from our itunes and a PA system. We made our own playlists to have parent friendly hits from the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s, some Classic rock, radio hits, and as the night progressed, the music turned heavier and darker to resemble Andy and my’s fave heavy rock! That way everyone got some shoe squeaking time without paying a DJ Most of the guys ended up shirtless and Andy ended up crowd surfing and just having the most amazing time possible.
People seem to think these days that weddings on average cost R80-100 000, (8000-10000 USD) but ours came up to the princely sum of R30 000 (2500 USD).
The word of the photographer.
If you ask me, Szerdi and Andrew took a big chance getting me to shoot their wedding. I’m not wedding photographer material, far too anxious and selfish when taking pictures. You get what I see or what I think you should see. Double chins and flabby arms don’t even register if the narrative is honest but their gambling spirit is what made their wedding so damn perfect. Having the wedding in an undeveloped third world country where most services aren’t provided meant taking care of every last detail themselves. The result was a stripped down to essentials wedding that reflected their personalities playfully and honestly. It was a beautiful affair.
