Beautiful bride Mari married the love of her life in the picturesque hills not far from Madrid. The couple had a wonderful combination of traditions, romantic love story and the reason why Mari chose her dress will melt your heart!

How did you meet your lovely groom?

We met at a New Year’s Eve party in Berlin back in 2012 and became friends. A year later, Juan got offered a job in Berlin and when he came back, he asked me out on a date. 

Tell us your romantic engagement…

I had a surprise birthday trip for Juan to a little beach house in Barcelona, and he surprised me back with an engagement! By the beach, sunset, fairy lights.. a perfect setting. 

Marriage to you means…

To us, marriage means binding our lives together and becoming a family. His family becomes mine and my family becomes his. Tackling every obstacle together and becoming a whole orange 🍊 (it’s a saying in Spain, “my half-orange” means my other half) 

How did you choose your wedding location?

We chose Juan’s hometown, Madrid, as our wedding location. Madrid is full of beautiful outdoor locations and we really enjoyed visiting all the different venues. We quite easily found our top three and chose Finca El Gasco. Everything about this place was perfect and we fell in love with the venue. 

Describe your beautiful Mews dress…

My dress was Aston from Rime Arodaky. I saw Rime’s collection for the first time a couple of years ago and from them on, I knew my dress was going to be one of hers. Aston had cherry blossoms everywhere on the dress which was perfect as this is a Japanese flower and I was also born in cherry blossom season. 

What were your inspirations? Did you have a particular aesthetic in mind?

As our venue was on top of a mountain and had so much greenery around, we wanted to keep the same tone for our decorations so our colour theme was sage green. Also, we wanted to bind Spanish and Japanese culture as much as possible.

How did you personalise the décor?

As the wedding was in Spain, we wanted to find a way to introduce Japan in our décor. I decided to make a curtain of origami cranes as the bird is a symbol of celebration and long lives in Japan. With some help from my friends, we made 250 cranes as a backdrop of our ceremony. Juan and I also folded green cranes to act as place cards for all the guests at the dinner table. 

How did you find the preparations and lead-up to the big event?

Covid came in our way and that meant one year of postponement. We had to halt our preparations and as a result, lost some of the excitement and motivation to plan which we initially enjoyed so much. It was difficult to restart planning not knowing if we’d have to postpone again… 

Did you use a wedding planner & stylist?

In Spain, a planner is assigned to you by the venue. She gave us three options each for a florist and catering, also suggested DJs, lighting, printing companies and basically whatever we needed. It was very helpful as we don’t live in Madrid and it made everything easier.