September at home is still warm during the day but the evenings are getting cooler. I always feel a bit low when summers are passing by. I am not a big fan of autumn, its colours, the splendid leaves. No bother. Even if I never liked the end of summer, now I was counting the days till the departure to Santorini. The season was packed with amazing events, superb dream weddings of which I will continue to upload, I promise. I just finished a wedding in Budapest, it was late in the evening on Saturday, it was pouring down with rain and Zsófi, the wedding planner picked me up and we headed to Vienna to catch an early morning plane. We didn’t want to risk to be late as the border had been closed down a day before due to the situation with the immigrants. We arrived, rented a car, packed out, after some final preparations for the next day we met up with Stella and Ulf in a small bar.
We can see all these pictures in guidebooks and postcards, too. I was a bit worried that Santorini will turn out to be one of those places, like the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, where you arrive with great expectations and then realize that you are just one tiny person in the middle of a crowded touristy place and then it just loses its charm. But it never did. I stepped outside and the panoramic view unfolded in front of my eyes with some chill-out music coming from a bar nearby. My anxiousness turned into a peace of mind and I knew that everything will go smoothly the next day. Stella and Ulf live in Switzerland and they wanted a small wedding. They kept talking about it and I could feel straight away that we were on the same wavelength, we both agreed that everything should go smoothly. I love these intimate weddings. Actually, the couple doesn’t have too much to worry about either. They don’t need to act or to fit in because they are only surrounded by people who are the most important. A wedding planner keeps track on things during the day, controlling from the background, integrating and making sure that everything goes sleekly.
Before the ceremony, Stella and Ulf were preparing separately and they only saw each other at the scene. At meeting they were cuddling for so long that we all were fighting back our tears. After Intimate vows, congratulations and a small snack we left for the photo shoot in the afternoon. We went to the most beautiful places of Santorini. Quite unconventionally, I did not have the chance to explore the area previously, nor had a trial, so I had to see the situation, the lights, the angles there and then. Only photographers can understand this thrill. And in the meantime, moving from one spot to the other, we were talking away. Listening to them I found myself in the middle of a romance: how they met, then Ulf’s confession, after a several-month-long motorcycle tour, that he can’t live without Stella. Their engagement took place exactly one year after the day they first met, and on the same day a year later they had their wedding. We were taking pictures, strolling around and welcomed the applause and congratulations of the passers-by. The next thing we noticed was that the sun went down. Then they had dinner at a fancy restaurant but this again was all about the family. Later we popped into the kebab shop on the corner that became our favourite local hangout place, we were chatting and drinking away with a big smile on our faces. So that’s the way a wedding in Santorini goes.
Wedding planner: Pintér Zsófia
