Real {South African} Wedding Inspiration by Kiekie Photography

This stunning South African wedding was featured in our Fall/Winter 2011 Print Edition.  We are such fans of culture and always make an effort to provide wedding inspiration from across the globe. These pretty pictures were taken by our good friend Schantel of Kiekie Photography out of South Africa. She’s a sweetheart and we can’t wait to meet her once we hit South African soil later this year.  The fun-hearted couple, Kopano and Motlatsi are so adorable together.  We love Kopano’s simple but chic natural hairdo and the fresh clean color palette.  Meet the couple.

From the bride on how they met…

I arrived at UCT excited about being in a totally different city far from family and familiar environments and ready to create my own new world. But moments after my parents drove away and left me in that little room by myself I started doubting if this new adventure was going to be all that I thought it would be. Little did I know that it would turn out to be even better than that! That I would not date all the bad boys (like I hoped) but would fall in love with a kind, gentle boy from Soweto who I would quickly and helplessly fall madly in love with and eventually marry.

I think when you are in high school and ‘trapped’ by the confines of your parents’ four walls and roof, you imagine for yourself a university life where each day is a roller coaster ride and your life is like the script to the latest hollywood movie. But strangely, even though there was a little bit of that at UCT, what I yearned for most (now that I’d managed to get myself as far away from home as possible) was for some sort of normality. So when this gentle/quiet/ordinary guy asked me to get on a taxi with him and go listen to some jazz at the waterfront, I felt like I was being invited to get onto a spaceship to the moon. I remember telling my friends, ‘he feels like home!:) and he really did feel like home, and that’s what was most attractive. There were no witty lines, no pretenses, I could be my strange self and what was most amazing about it, he found odd, peculiar me, fascinating:)

Kopano’s Advise to Brides…

 Make a point of enjoying every minute of it. Not everything will go according to plan, but don’t fret, have fun, you’ve spent too much time planning this day to stress over a missing table number, so dance, sing, laugh, go mad. very few people get to be celebrated like this again until their funerals. So enjoy being surrounded by all the people you love and forget about the details. Oh, and don’t hug any short people too tightly, you’ll get make-up on your bossom:)

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Text by Chioma Obii-Obioha

“He feels like home!” That’s exactly what Kopano Matlwa said about Motlatsi Mabaso, the man she fell in love with during their college years in the University of Cape Town. Today, that lovestruck young woman is a medical doctor and author working in Pretoria and her sweetheart is a chemical engineer working in Johannesburg. When Kopano met Motlatsi, she was excited about her college experience, the opportunity to create new adventures apart from her family, and the chance that she would “date all the bad boys like [she] hoped.” “Instead,” she said, “[I] would fall in love with a kind, gentle boy from Soweto who I would quickly and helplessly fall madly in love with and eventually marry.” Motlatsi would show Kopano that kind, gentle men stand head and shoulders above bad boys every day. He gave Kopano what she needed – a familiar feeling and a sense of the home that she surprisingly missed. “He really did feel like home, and that’s what was most attractive. There were no witty lines, no pretenses. I could be my strange self and what was most amazing about it, he found odd, peculiar me fascinating.” The couple would date for four years, throughout their time in the university. Then, they would have to be apart for a little while: Kopano still had two years left in medical school and Motlatsi had to move back to Johannesburg for work. In 2010, they would be reunited for what they hoped would be the final time. Unfortunately, they were dealt another blow when they found out that Motlatsi’s company was sending him to the United Kingdom. Kopano was completely devastated at this shocking turn of events. “The night before he left we were on the phone and I was in tears again over why the universe was keeping two people who were so madly in love apart. He told me he couldn’t bear to see me so miserable and said he was coming over. It was 1 AM, my parents were asleep and it was crazy that he was coming out that late. It was a 45-minute drive. I ran out into the driveway as soon as I heard his car pull up and there he was on one knee. It was beautiful and knowing that it was really going to happen, got us through that next patch of distance.” Kopano and Motlatsi scheduled their wedding ceremony for the next year, and began to plan their big day. Kopano decided not to utilize the services of a wedding planner because “[she] wanted to enjoy and cherish every part” of the process even though she had never had any prior experience. Luckily, three of her colleagues and friends at the hospital were going through the same process. So, they became each other’s allies. “All we talked about in the theatre, on ward rounds, on calls, at lunch was weddings. We carried wedding magazines around wherever we went, swapped pictures, and shared ideas until we couldn’t bear to see a piece of glitter or a ribbon again.” Those meetings clearly worked because Kopano was able to execute the wedding beautifully with lots of help and support from her family. Wanting her guests to feel “special, precious and unique like they were going to the Oscars [or having] the best day of their lives,” Kopano chose the absolutely captivating Chez Charlene in Pretoria as the wedding venue. She incorporated white and gold into major components of the decor, wanting to give all guests a certain air of opulence and luxury. The chair and table covers were an elegant white, while the white plates were trimmed in gold. The tables were decorated with an assortment of white flowers with spectacular bouquets of white flowers arranged in tall, thin vases as centerpieces. This was understated elegance redefined! Kopano looked like a mythical Greek goddess in her Grecian wedding dress and hair gorgeously pulled up in an up-do. Motlatsi complemented her perfectly in his two-piece suit. The bride’s shoes and the bridesmaids gowns were a dazzling hue of golden champagne. All material accessories aside, the couple wore the most beautiful accessories of all – the satisfied wide smiles of people who could not wait to start the rest of their lives together forever. Every moment between them, from the moment they first saw each other to their first dance, was full of absolute joy, happiness and radiant love. No wedding, no matter how luxurious, is complete without those elements that this couple had in abundance! Even though their wedding was definitely important, Kopano shared that the honeymoon was the real priority for them. “We planned, booked and paid for that first before we did anything else because we knew that was the one thing that was exclusively ours. Most brides will tell you that a wedding is not your own; especially where we come from, a wedding is about the marriage of two families, which is a beautiful thing, until you try planning it and catering to everyone’s likes and dislikes. It was wonderful and we were touched by how much everyone wanted to share in this new chapter of our lives, but we also quickly grew extremely exhausted and that’s why we wanted to make sure that before the energy, money, and excitement ran out, our tickets to Zanzibar were booked.” With so much love and comfort in each other’s arms during the wedding festivities, there is no doubt that Kopano and Motlatsi have succeeded in creating a love that is exclusively theirs.[/tab]
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