Jolien and Kjell's Unique Safari Wedding in South Africa by Kim Raaf

Some weddings I get sent are your typical day wedding, some are more elaborate weekend weddings, while other are pure experiences, today’s wedding is certainly the latter! If you love animals and you love the open air then today’s safari wedding in South Africa is going to be right up your street. Jolien and Kjell LOVE safari’s so when it came to planning their wedding, they knew exactly what they wanted, minimal guests, minimal fuss, BIG experience! The result is this Awesome day filled with so many amazing animals, Kim Raaf must have been in her element, what an fantastic wedding to photograph! As for the guests they really lucked out, can you imagine a better wedding!!

It was a warm, intimate and unique experience, which felt exactly like we wanted it.

Jolien and Kjell were married on 2nd January 2025 at Aquila Private Game Reserve, Touws River, South Africa. ‘We both love South Africa and didn’t want a “big wedding” where you feel obliged to invite person X, because person Y is already coming. The actual choice for Aquila was a little less romantic – we had searched for a Private Game Reserve that allows you to organise weddings at their premises because of our love for safaris and Aquila was the only one where it was possible – even on our small scale. We had 8 guests (on top of the 2 of us) and it took around 14 months to plan.’

How they met
We met during our studies in university. We have been together for almost 9 years (28/4/2017)

The proposal
It fits the South African theme. We did our internship together at a Primary School near the township of Masiphumelele near Cape Town. During our first visit back to the school after our internship, I proposed there in the garden of the school.

How did you allocate your budget?
We were lucky enough that my parents “sponsored” our wedding. I won’t say we really had a blank cheque, but they were on board with our plans and we were lucky enough to receive a lot of freedom from them.

How did you choose your photographer?
Kim was suggested to us by our wedding planner, as one of many photographers. She stood out as she made a special package tailored to our wedding.

The dress and suit
Figen Bruidsmode (Deinze, Belgium), the shoes & accessories were bought online

The suit was quite the challenge… I didn’t really know what I wanted and even after several stores, we hadn’t found anything that remotely met my expectations. In the end, we ended up buying a ton of suits online and from the moment I saw the suit I would eventually wear, I knew it was the right one.

All guests, the bridesmaid and my man of honour wore what they wanted.

Theme or colour scheme
We had a couple of things that were themed in “Harry Potter”, as you can see from the cake for example, but no hard theme.

Flowers
Dry flowers, no particular type

Decoration
Same, mainly the flowers and no special decoration except for the table, the surroundings were all we needed.

Food
We ate a South African braai.

Wedding cake
The wedding cake was also a bit of a challenge, because we couldn’t do everything we wanted. For all wedding cake bakers, Aquila was at least an hour drive away, so it had to be something that could survive the trip.

Entertainment
We didn’t really have entertainment, apart from a playlist we composed.

Who supplied the stationery?
Jolien created the wedding invitations and menu herself in Harry Potter theme.

Where did you go on your honeymoon?
We didn’t go on a “real honeymoon”. As our entire wedding was already a trip itself and, together with our best friends, we spent a total of 3,5 weeks in South Africa around the wedding.

Special moments
In general, it was just amazing to celebrate our love for each other with the people we love most, in our favourite country in the world, surrounded by nature and animals. It’s difficult to pinpoint an exact highlight, because the day was full of it. One of our favourite moments was for sure as well the “game drive” we had to make our wedding pics, even more amazing than we could’ve imagined.

Advice for other couples
Do whatever YOU really want to do. If you’d like to throw a party for 200 guests, do that. We wanted to have an intimate experience with the people we love most, and we enjoyed every single bit of the day. You only marry once and you should do whatever you want as a couple, it’s your wedding, not the one of your friends, family or whomever, do what you really want to.

Biggest surprise
How much we actually enjoyed the day. We often heard from friends that they felt overwhelmed, or had to say hi to so many people, that there was no time left to enjoy the day. We did 100% enjoy our day, mainly because we chose a small group of guests on purpose.