South Africa Timeless Wedding

Our #MZBride of the week is the stunning Kara Weigelt who got married in our Jona gown . Surrounded by their dearest and nearest, the couple held their wedding in South Africa!
In the following interview, Kara shares with us how she started planning her wedding journey and will give you her exclusive tips!

How did you start planning your wedding? What were the first steps?

We got engaged in the summer of 2020 during the height of the pandemic. Due to the uncertainty at the time, there wasn’t a ton of planning happening, so we were able to take a few months to really enjoy our engagement before all of the wedding planning began. 

Dean and I got engaged in Cape Town, South Africa in February 2020. Dean is originally from South Africa so we were there visiting his family and we both absolutely fell in love with the Western Cape. After coming home and excited to start wedding planning, we were quickly put into lock down for a global pandemic. This definitely made us feel a little hesitant on our plans to drag all of our family and friends across the world for our big day, but we are so thankful we did because everything ended up working out. 

We started by talking to Dean's friends and family that lived in South Africa to figure out the best places to get married and that is when we found MolenVliet in Stellenbosch. After that we found our Wedding Planner, Anne Mann, who really took care of everything and made the process so easy! 

The only other vendor we really tried to jump on early was our Videographers (Wild Oak) who are actually from Kansas. We have loved their work for so long so had to bring them along to capture wedding week.

How did you know your dress was ‘the one’? 

Oh goodness, I tried on so many dresses and felt so torn on several until I put on Mira Zwillinger's Jona gown. It was exactly what I was looking for - elegant & timeless. Also just so flattering - the matching veil really just set it over the top! 

How did you find working with the bridal store team?

I got my dress from Warren Barron Bridal in Dallas, TX and the whole process was great. The representative that was helping me that day actually picked this dress for me! 

3 advices you would give to all our future brides?

1. Soak it all up - all the memories big & small. You only (hopefully) plan your wedding once so just enjoy the process. At the end of it, you get to marry your best friend and celebrate with all your favorite people so it will all be worth it! 

2. If you can, get a wedding planner. This made such a big difference with us planning a wedding (especially across the world). We trusted that she knew the best vendors and would see our vision and run with it! Made our wedding planning process so much easier and our wedding was even better than what we could have dreamed of. 

3. Don't sweat the small stuff - everything will work out exactly how it is supposed to. 

What was your wedding theme? 

We didn't really set a wedding theme, but when we were planning we knew we wanted it to be elegant, timeless, neutral colors but also fun and comfortable! We wanted to have a blast at our wedding and wanted everyone else to as well.