What are Weddings really about? This is a very important question that should be carefully analyzed by couples before beginning their planning journey. As a Wedding Planner and basing myself on my personal opinion, a Wedding should be a celebration of the Love of a couple and for that matter it should be able to transmit their souls, their history, secrets and traditions.
So far I can tell you that I have been lucky with my couples, because most of them come to me with that exact same spirit and the whole wedding day ends up adding so much to everyone present in it. For that matter, I was very inspired to write on my journal, about the beautiful wedding of Erika and Natalie. Both living in New York City and with a very strong free spirit.
They have reached me with already a venue in mind and also with the exact type of wedding that they wanted, a very intimate one with only 24 guests. The venue in mind was Monserrate Palace, which instantly made my heart race.. my favorite Sintra palace. This beautiful palace was chosen carefully by both of them, having in mind the idea to take their special guests to a stunning historical place to celebrate their love. Their main idea to celebrate this day with the closest friends and family, was to also provide them with an unforgettable day in Portugal, full of Sintra’s enchantment and amazing food. That being said, for the reception both Erika and Natalie, chose to have the very famous worldwide chef Sergi Arola and his well known Michelin star restaurant, the Lab, privatizing it for their day and keeping up the guests experience in a very high rate I must say.
Apart from all these experiences lived on this day, there was still another very special one. A Pink Bride! When working on the event design with Erika, she told me that she wanted to have the most trendy colors for her Wedding day, as you would expect from a true New Yorker! Well, you can already imagine, how that sounds to a Wedding Planner that loves to be creative, it sounded like heaven to me. We worked out a very different palette color for their day, with a lot of pink in it and I was so excited over her amazing choices of flowers and designs. That said, things got even better when Erika, announced me that she brought a pink dress. I was going insanely crazy, like the rest of the vendors that were planed to work with me on that day. When we saw her in that pink dress, ready to meet her Natalie, there was not one single person that wouldn’t have tears on their eyes. This is what weddings are really about, to feel the love, to feel the couples emotions and to live and experience a day that says so much about them! Please, don’t you ever forget that..
With all this luckily for me, the brides accepted my suggestion of photographer for their day, Ricardo Catarro, which brought together all the beautiful moments of this day and who managed to portray the profile and charisma of our brides so well. Ending my sharing with this, I leave you with the beautiful photographs so you can understand what I'm talking about and I hope you appreciate them as much as I do.
Thank you to everyone involved!
Warm regards,
Petra Simōes
Wedding Planner & Event Design : Apoema Events
Photographer : Ricardo Catarro
Venues: Penha Longa Resort and Palácio de Monserrate
Restaurant: Lab
Hairstylist: Mara Entretranças
Makeup Artist: Vera Mordido
Floral Design: GreenPic’k
Violinist: Vivaldi Eventos
Decor & Rentals: BC Planning
Celebrant: Sam Gardner