Bridesmaids

All of my beautiful bridesmaids from left to right:

Samantha, Jenna, Jasmine, Cassie, Anabelle and Rachel

Goodness gracious, I cannot begin to describe how much I love these ladies.  My wedding day would not have been complete without my beautiful bridesmaids.  You may recognise a few friendly faces from my bridal shower post and I’m so excited to share their gorgeous smiles again.  Each one of these girls add such a tremendous amount of happiness to my life and I am so grateful life brought us together.

When last I asked what blog post you’d like to see next on Instagram, I had so many requests to share a little about my bridesmaids and I couldn’t be happier to oblige.  These girls were unbelievably supportive, so helpful and super excited for Ryan and I to get married and that meant absolutely everything to me.

Our beautiful venue, Bona Dea Private Estate, had such a beautiful house for us to stay in so we had all arrived on the Thursday before the wedding which was the day we did our rehearsal at the church, followed by a rehearsal dinner overlooking the Hemel en Aarde Valley.  The day before the wedding, we spent time at the beach and that evening, I sat on the deck overlooking the pool and the valley as the sunset, drinking tea and chatting away.  That moment in time was one of the single most valuable moments of my whole life.  That evening, we climbed on the bed together and laughed about first-date fails and the journey that brings two people together.  That evening they cleared out of my room but left it filled with the sweetest atmosphere of so much love.

On the morning of the wedding, they all came buzzing back into the room with huge smiles on their faces and the most genuine love pouring from their hearts.  The absolutely gorgeous Kari Stofberg arrived to do their hair and makeup.  You can find similar dressing robes to the ones I bought my bridesmaids and .

When it was time to get dressed, I started getting really emotional.  My sister helped me into my dress.  Samantha had worked a magical braid into my hair to hold my veil so that it wouldn’t slip out during the ceremony.  Both Sam and my sister inserted my veil but you can see I was trying to hold it together in that picture!  I managed to hold back the tears until my dad walked in, but then it was game over.

The bridesmaid dresses were made by Ivy Grootboom and the RawB dressmakers.  I gave them a very difficult task because 3 of my girls don’t even live in South Africa.  Anabelle flew out for my bridal shower (can you believe it!) so she was able to have a final fitting in person.  Cassie and Rachel hadn’t even seen their dresses until I had mailed the final product to them but they still needed final alterations.  Luckily, it all came together in the end and I think the dresses came out beautifully.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post all about my bridesmaids.  If you haven’t already seen our wedding photos, you can view them here.  I also documented the making of my wedding dress for you to watch here.  It was so wonderful to create that video.  There are so many emotions and so many special memories in that video so I hope you enjoy it.  Thank you so much to my list of suppliers.  I’ll leave them listed below.

Photographer: Danelle Stofberg
Makeup: Kari Stofberg  
Dressing robes: Woolworths (similar and
Bridesmaid dresses: RawB  (similar and )
Venue: Bona Dea Private Estate
Flowers: Fab Events