Real bride: We got married, no music, not many guests, but it was the most beautiful thing

Sabina Motasem minimalist wedding dress

Many brides have had to post-pone their weddings, Hannah was one of the lucky ones who got married before lockdown.

It must have been such a rollercoaster of emotions in the lead up. We met Hannah shortly after we opened our Islington bridal boutique, 1.5 years ago when she fell in love with our Valetti dress in liquid gold. Weddings may be on pause at the moment, but 2021 will be a year of love, filled with so many weddings. We asked Hannah t share some of the most special moments. Photography by Matt Tyler

Your wedding was just before the lockdown? Can you tell us a little bit about the day, what happened, and how you felt? 

Yes! It was on Saturday the 21 March 2020. We originally planned a wedding of 90 guests with people coming from all over the world as I am Indonesian and Eoghan is Irish. A week before we decided that it was the responsible thing to do to downscale our wedding due to Covid-19, we then re-planned a wedding for immediate family and close friend only of about 20 people. Just days before the wedding our priest informed us that she needed to self-quarantine, many of our close family including Eoghan’s parents could not travel, and on the Friday the PM announced that restaurants were to close starting immediately, there goes our wedding reception. It was one of the most stressful week in my life having had to constantly re-plan things for our wedding. Luckily, our venue agreed to still conduct our ceremony with parents and two witnesses only and we found a new priest to be our celebrant. We got married that day, with no music, but it was easily the most beautiful thing we’ve ever experienced, with not many guests, but we could not feel more content. It was a sunny day with bright blue sky, my mom and my sister helped me walked in my dress, my dad walked me down the aisle, and there he was Eoghan waiting for me in happy tears with his best man and his sister on his side.

We had a small champagne reception with some more friends joining us. Our guests had to set tables for cake and canapes, open bottles of champagne and serve everybody. My best friend made me the most beautiful wedding cake. Fifteen of us, laughing and smiling, appreciating love and close ones.

Two days later, weddings are banned and complete lockdown happened. It hit us how lucky we were that we got to get married that day and even got to have the company of our close ones. Most importantly, we are extremely pleased that everybody who were there are safe and well.

Sabina Motasem minimalist wedding dress

I’d love to know how you styled your look for the day? How did you have your hair and do your make up? Can you share any pics? What did your other half wear?

I love the idea of a simple clean look, but still feel special and stay true to my personality. I found the perfect dress from Sabina, it’s plain gold dress but made of liquid silk material that make it shines and flows, with a beautiful low cut back. I decided to pair it with a blue cape to give a dramatic effect but in a modern and fresh way. I had a Hollywood wave hairdo and a natural look make up to go with it. Eoghan was wearing navy blue suits and we ordered an Indonesian blue batik tie to go with it. 

What are the special memories you have from that day? Can you share with us some special things that happened?

Happy tears! It’s a very rare thing to happen but that day we experienced that, It was really really special to get married that day considering all the things we were facing that week, against all odds.

Live Instagram story to the rescue! Eoghan’s sister broadcast our wedding on insta story so that our guests can see us getting married. We also had the longest ‘telegram’ messages sent from all the guest who couldn’t be there, it was really special to hear kind words from our guests on that day.

How much our guests did for us that day! They set tables, open bottles, serve canapes and drinks, did our cake, bring home-made petal confetti, saw on my cape, collect messages from other guests to read to us, brought wine, order take-away, everything that we supposed to provide for them, they did for us!

Sabina Motasem minimalist wedding dress

Tell us about some of what you’re planning for when we are no longer in lockdown?

We would want to get together with our friends and family who supposed to make it to the wedding and just give each other a hug and dance!

Do our honeymoon! We wanted to go to Chile, nature and nice wine!

What you are the things you’re most looking forward to?

I am really looking forward to go to Indonesia with my husband and also his family, to celebrate with my extended family and friends and to introduce my new family to the beautiful country I come from.

Sabina Motasem minimalist wedding dress

As a bride who has got married, do you have any helpful advice and tips for other brides in a similar position and are planning for weddings next year?

Planning a wedding can be overwhelming that you easily forget what the important things are. For us, all the non-essential parts of the wedding were taken away from us and it did upset us terribly initially. Once the wedding happened, we realized a party would have been nice but without one it was still the happiest day of our lives.

So don’t let the non-essential parts or the wedding planning stress you out that it takes away the excitement of being married to your loved one.

On a more practical note, there are so many details that goes into a wedding, I would suggest you...

Choose three most important things to you and be more flexible and easy going on other things, so it would scale down your stress level ;)

For us it was venue, wedding rings, and photographer, so those are the ones we took a long time researching before making a decision. The later especially, looking at our wedding pictures still make me smile each time and you would definitely want to reminisce your big day for a long time to come.

Sabina Motasem minimalist wedding dress

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April 30, 2020 by Sabina Ali


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