2

Jun

2020

Morna and Joe’s ‘Fresh, Crisp and Clean’ Stunning Wedding in Croatia

With summer holidays abroad still not on the cards for us in the UK, today I thought I would bring the summer holiday to you with this stunning wedding from Croatia. Morna and Joe fell in love with Croatia, so decided it was the perfect place for their destination wedding. They wanted to keep the decor, ‘fresh, crisp and clean’ and fill the day with laughter, love and an elegant colour palette of white and blue. The whole day looks wonderful – an amazing location, beautiful venue, all planned to perfection by Promessi Weddings and Events with gorgeous photos by Nina Anić 

Our wedding was filled with lots of fun and love, spent with amazing friends and family on the most beautiful location. Everyone came away saying they had so much fun, and that was exactly what we wanted.

Morna and Joe were married on 26th August 2018 a St Marak Courtyard in Hvar, Croatia for the ceremony and Il Bonj Les Bains beach club for the reception. ‘We knew we wanted to get married abroad and did a lot of research online, we fell in love with Croatia, and especially Hvar. I found Promessi wedding planners online who provided lots of helpful information about locations in Croatia. We went out there and met with Ivana and knew straight away that Hvar was the perfect place for our wedding. It is such a beautiful island, somewhere we knew all of our friends and family would fall in love with. We had 80 guests. We visited in June 2017 and had everything finalised within 12 months, our wedding planner was great with helping us to keep on track with getting this organised when we needed to.’

How they met 
We met through a mutual friend 6 years before we got married and we’ve now been together 7 and a half years.

The proposal
Joe is usually very ‘larger than life’ so I expected him to do something a bit out there when he proposed. Instead he put a tshirt on our daughter saying ‘Just say yes mummy’, so when I went to get her out of her cot I was completely shocked and turned around to Joe behind me on one knee. It was very personal and perfect!

How did you allocate your budget?
We had a rough idea of what we wanted to spend and we pretty much kept to that. We chose things based on what would make the day more memorable or fun, rather than things would look lovely as we felt that the venue and the island were more than beautiful enough.

Where did you splurge and where did you save?
We splurged on our hotel room, the penthouse suite. It was definitely worth it as it meant my bridal party could all get ready together very comfortably, and it had the most stunning views for our pictures. We also went for a free bar as people had travelled to be with us, that we didn’t want anyone worrying about having to pay for their drinks. We also decided on a videographer, which wasn’t in the budget originally, but we managed to secure a great guy at a price we were happy to pay so we went for it, we felt it was so important to be able to watch this in years to come!
We saved on some of the decorations. For example I order a load of plastic White Wisteria from ebay and took it out there. We hung it up from the ceiling in the venue and it was stunning, looked just like real flowers! We also started with a vision of having large floral candelabra centrepieces on each of the tables but this was culled with the ‘will this make our guests have more fun’ question. I instead reused the bridesmaid bouquets for them.

How did you choose your photographer?
Our wedding planner sent us 3 options with different styles and prices, and we researched their portfolios, it was quite easy to see who our favourite was. We had a video call and we know this was the right person.

The dress
My wedding dress was by Zavana Bridal and I got it from the best wedding dress shop I have ever been to, the girls were amazing – Chloe Jane Bridalwear in Howden, East Yorkshire. My accessories were minimal and very simple and the dress didn’t need anything else. I treated myself to some Valentino sandals.

The suit and bridesmaids
We had 9 groomsmen, they had navy trousers and waitcoasts, white shirts, with tan shoes/ belts and pale blue ties. I had 4 bridesmaids and they were in long pale blue gowns

Theme or colour scheme
I wanted to keep everything ‘fresh, crisp and clean’ looking. The bridal party were all in pale blue, white tones, and the décor was very much white, glass and candlelight.

Flowers
My flowers were beautiful! I had all white flowers – Spray Rose, Garden rose, Ranunculus and David Austin rose for the main bouquet, then some greenery and true Blue eucalyptus. The bridemaids had the same, just smaller, and they all had long satin ribbons.

Decoration
We kept it all very simple and the venues were stunning. For the ceremony we had 2 large vases with flowers on pillars as a ceremony arch which we later moved behind the Top table for the reception.
At the meal we had some thank you/ menu cards at each place, with some mirrored love hearts sprinkled and the guest names were laser cut mirrored perspex.
For the party we had lots of fairy lights and white wisteria hanging – this was all that was needed!

Food 
Goat cheese and pear salad to start, with steak and veg for the main. We didn’t have a dessert and instead had an ice cream cart for guests to help themselves to.

Wedding cake
We chose not to have a cake, with it being abroad we started everything later and we just see how we could fit this in – another way we saved some money and it definitely wasn’t missed.

Entertainment
We had the Junglecats as our band and DJ, we supplied the DJ with a playlist which worked really well. We also had a lady there to do face glitter which the guests loved!

Who supplied the stationery?
AmysAvenueUk – on Etsy

Where did you go on your honeymoon?
We didn’t have a honeymoon straight after the wedding as we had 3 other abroad weddings in the same year as ours. But we went to Mykonos on our 1 year wedding anniversary which was classed as our honeymoon

Personal touches
The Thank You note on all the tables was very important to us as we really wanted everyone to know how much we appreciated them being there with us on the day

Special moments or highlights
Walking from the ceremony to the reception through the streets of Hvar, just us 2 as a newly married couple and everyone we passed wishing us well – it was really special. At the party we somehow ended up getting on the mic and singing a Ja Rule song, then lots of our guests decided to get on there too to sing other songs, it was so much fun!

Advice for other couples?
When you look back your wedding day, what do you want to say about it, how do you want to feel – and then plan around that to help focus on what to do, have and where to spend your money. Also, don’t sweat the small stuff beforehand, on the day it all falls into place and comes together beautifully.

Biggest surprise 
Just how perfectly it all went and how relaxed I was! Since so much planning goes into the day, I didn’t want to worry about things going to plan. But I didn’t worry and they did all go perfectly to plan, better than I could ever have imagined. Oh and I also found out a few weeks later that I got pregnant on our wedding day which made it even more special!

 

 

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Comments

    Aliança

    Hi, I’m from Brazil and I’m loving the blog and pronounced the royal weddings they publish here, I loved this Croatian wedding, the magnificent church and the bride’s dress and shoes are very beautiful, I especially liked her cement ring.

    Congratulations Crisp and Clean

    Reply

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