Sanne + Raoul by Yulia Longo

Our styles are quite minimalistic, and we love natural colour tones

Tell us a little about yourselves, what you do, what you love…

We are Raoul (34 years old) and Sanne (28 years old), we have been together for almost 10 years and live in Amsterdam with our 2 fluffy British shorthair cats.

Raoul is originally from the beautiful island of Aruba and moved to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, when he was 23 to continue his studies in graphic design. He has freelanced within the creative industry for several years and is currently working as a graphic designer for an Amsterdam-based agency.

Sanne is from a small town in the south of the Netherlands and moved to Amsterdam when she was 18 to follow her dream of studying fashion. Since graduating, she has worked as a buyer for a luxury department store and travelled the world as an account manager, but has recently gone back to buying as this is where her true passion lies.

As you can probably tell from our backgrounds, we have a shared passion for the creative industry and have always connected over our love for fashion, art and photography. Another shared passion is food: we love exploring the city’s countless restaurants, but also enjoy spending evenings at home together with a home-made meal. Raoul is an amazing cook, and his specialty is Neapolitan pizza, made from scratch and baked in his professional oven. Raoul’s passion for cooking is the main reason our friends love to invite themselves over to our place, so we regularly spend our evenings chatting, laughing, playing games, while enjoying lovely food and natural wines with our friends.

How/where/when did you meet – and what were your first impressions?

We actually met through Instagram in July 2015. We found each other through a mutual friend, started chatting and quickly found out that we got along well and had many similarities. Though Raoul grew up on Aruba, he visited the area where Sanne is from yearly, as his mother grew up there, too. Therefore, we had a lot of shared childhood memories and similar values.

After texting for a few weeks, Raoul visited his family in the south and decided to ask Sanne on a date. Sanne was only 17 years old at the time and was extremely shy and dreading going on a date, but during the date, Raoul made her feel extremely comfortable, and they immediately felt that same connection they had over text and talked for hours.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out at that time, as we lived 2.5 hours apart and were at different stages of life (Sanne finishing secondary school, Raoul in university). A year later, Sanne moved to Amsterdam and just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something special between them. In the meantime, Raoul was having the same feelings, but was afraid Sanne wouldn’t want him to reach out.

In the end, Sanne decided to come up with an excuse to reach out to Raoul: a hoodie that he gave to her, which she still had. When they reconnected in September 2016, they felt that same spark and haven’t left each other’s side ever since.

What styling and visual elements worked best for you? (could be things, the florals, particular hire products or your marquee, etc., something the stylist created or simply just the scenic beauty of your location or the existing design of your venue).

The beauty of the venue was a very important starting point for any visual element we ended up choosing. The Masseria is such a beautiful, intimate space, and we wanted to respect its beauty. The venue is covered in stunning grape vines and surrounded by an olive grove, so we wanted to make sure that any decoration would incorporate the beauty of these natural elements, rather than distract from it.

Our florals were the key visual element for us, and we spent a lot of time crafting a moodboard that felt right and reflected our styles. Our styles are quite minimalistic, and we love natural colour tones, so we went for a colour palette with a lot of greens but made sure to complement these with warmer tones to ensure enough contrast in the colour palette. A specific request to our florist was to minimise the amount of white flowers, as we didn’t want to go for the ‘classic wedding’ look and feel.

Another detail that worked well for us was the ‘vintage’ details. For example, we decided quite last minute to go with the black Thonet chairs instead of more neutral, brown wooden chairs, as we felt the black Thonet chairs added more contrast and gave the table setting the feeling of a cozy bistro. In addition, we asked our florist and planner to source stainless steel bowls and trays to stack and spread across the table to add to the vintage feeling.

What did you enjoy most about the planning process, and do you have any tips for couples starting their wedding planning journey?

What we enjoyed most was making sure this day was 100% ours. We were involved in almost every detail of the day, and even though that was a lot of work, it’s exactly what made this process so fun for us. We were in close contact with the wedding planner, and though she connected us with amazing vendors, we also didn’t shy away from proposing vendors that felt more in line with our vision.

We created moodboards for the florist and photographer, shared a concept with the videographer and created playlists for each part of the day, so vendors could get an idea of the atmosphere we were looking for. Even though that might seem intense, it really helped us envision our day and get our vendors excited about our vision. We really connected with our vendors and enjoyed being involved in their creative process. We really did not want this to feel like a typical wedding, but like an extended holiday that celebrated the love between Raoul and me. Our involvement helped our vendors understand this, and guests have commented on how intimate the day felt and how it reflected both of us.

Therefore, our tip would be: try to make the day yours. Take a moment to think about which details are important for you, and try to find elements that reflect you. Once you have decided, don’t be afraid to communicate this to your vendors. Don’t feel pressured to do things the traditional way – you and your guests will appreciate the details that genuinely reflect you.

Tell us about your vendors. Were there any standout suppliers you would like to make special mention of?

We would like to make a special mention of our florist, Caterina. When we first shared our moodboards with her, it felt like she immediately understood our vision. On the wedding day, we were amazed by what she did – we felt like she took our vision one step further, and the result was more beautiful than we imagined.

I let Caterina know that I didn’t want a traditional bridal bouquet and tried to explain that I wanted florals flowing from my arms. I explained I wanted green amaranthus incorporated, and sent her an example of a Jacquemus runway show where florals were flowing from a model’s arms. Caterina had never created something like this, but she did so well! The flowers were attached to a bendable strap that she draped around my arm. It was comfortable to wear and flowed beautifully in combination with my dress.

Also, we think it’s important to mention Masseria Narducci for the delicious food they supplied and the hard work of their amazing staff. We had an extensive antipasti buffet with live cooking elements, e.g. a live production of mozzarella and live cooking of traditional Italian Panzerotti. In addition, dinner was a logistical challenge for the venue as this was the first time that they were serving a full dinner in the courtyard. Not to mention, it was raining! They kept the quality of the food high, and the staff did everything to give our guests a wonderful experience.

Tell us about your main outfits, what was unique, and is there a story?

Ever since Raoul’s proposal, I dreamed of a Danielle Frankel wedding dress. Even though at the top end of my budget, I was amazed by her designs, and when I started trying on dresses, I always had Danielle Frankel in the back of my mind. After a few unsuccessful dress fittings, I decided to fly to London with my mother to try on Danielle Frankel dresses at Browns Bride. It was wonderful to share this special moment with my mother only, and even though the one dress I had in mind wasn’t the one, the last dress that I tried on was the perfect match. Going back to pick up the dress was an interesting challenge: I only travelled with hand luggage, and the team at Browns went out of their way to fold the dress as small as possible so I didn’t have to unpack it and could keep it safely packed until Italy.

Raoul found it difficult to find a suit as he didn’t think a classic, traditional suit would suit him. On a hunt for non-traditional suit brands online, I found out about a Kind of Guise, and we both fell in love with the brand. There was a specific blazer we liked, which had a shawl collar and a kimono-inspired cord closure. It was out of stock, so we patiently waited for a few months until a new tailoring collection dropped. The blazer was available in a beautiful linen that suited the Italian weather perfectly, and Raoul felt completely himself when trying it on. He didn’t want to make it too dressy by wearing a tie, so we looked for a different type of accessory, and eventually went for a brooch which matched beautifully with our minimalistic aesthetic and felt different and more special than a boutonniere.

Tell us about your wedding and engagement rings.

I personally don’t wear a lot of jewellery, and I’m not a huge fan of big diamonds or precious stones, so it was tough for Raoul to pick out an engagement ring that I would like. He did know that I loved the French brand Charlotte Chesnais and was dreaming of their unique rings, so he decided to go for an unusual engagement ring and chose the Charlotte Chesnais Initial Ring.

For our wedding rings, we browsed jewellery brands but couldn’t find anything that felt truly like us. We found a jewellery designer, Fleur Kassels, based in Rotterdam, whose work we really liked, and decided to visit her studio to look at her work. We asked her if we could work together on creating a custom-made set of rings, and ended up designing our rings with her. We decided our rings didn’t need to match perfectly – we just wanted rings that we would be happy to wear every day for the rest of our lives. Something timeless and slightly organic. I went for a ring in a wavy, organic shape with a very small diamond. Raoul went for a ring called the ‘Dynamic Duo’, which we thought was a fitting name for a wedding ring, and it’s a ring with 2 layers: one silver layer on the inside, and one gold layer on the outside. Both rings have a hammered effect, as we didn’t want them to be too shiny or polished.

What were one or two elements that were most important to you both that you were happy to spend a little more on? (food, photography, florals, the venue, your outfits?).

Outfit: As you know, we both work in the creative industry and are very involved with the fashion industry. That made us really motivated to find something unique that didn’t feel too much like a traditional wedding dress or suit. We never made the outfits part of our total wedding budget and saw the outfits as a different element. We both wanted to make sure every detail was right, from the outfit to the shoes and accessories, and wanted to be flexible in the budget to leave room to find something we would fall in love with.

Photography & Videography: Initially, we felt like we were spending a lot of money on photography and videography, but in the end, we realised that the photos and videos would be the only elements (besides our precious memories) that would last from this day – we will be looking back at our photos and videos for the rest of our lives. Therefore, we decided to go for the full package: coverage for the full day, a second photographer and videographer, drone shots, to make sure that we could capture our special day from each angle. Looking back, we are incredibly happy and grateful to have the opportunity to relive the day again and again. Weddings can be so overwhelming and the photos and videos really help us see all the beautiful details of the day, and even loads of moments that we missed out on while we were getting ready or taking couple portraits. There is nothing more special than seeing photos of your loved ones connecting and enjoying the day.

Was there a favourite moment (or two) that you will treasure always?

First of all, the first look was really special to us. We actually never planned to do a first look because we wanted the moment of walking down the aisle to have an element of surprise. However, since rain was expected on our wedding day, we had to rethink our planning for the day (e.g. the ceremony was moved to a different area, we got a stretch tent last minute). We didn’t exactly know when to expect rain as the weather was being very unpredictable, and as soon as it stopped raining in the afternoon, we wanted to make sure that we could at least take some pictures without the rain.Eventually, it was our videographer who convinced us to do a first look, and as nothing on the day was going as planned, we decided to just roll with it. The first look ended up being one of the most special moments of the day – it was so special to have a moment with just the two of us before all the madness started. It was so emotional and deeply personal, and looking back to this moment still moves us.

Secondly, we had a rain and thunderstorm! After the ceremony, we had about 1 hour until it would start to rain, so we decided to take this hour for some pictures. When we were taking pictures in the olive grove, it suddenly started to rain, and we ran inside the stretch tent to avoid the rain. All of our guests were already there and were enjoying their aperitivo. After a few minutes, it started to thunder, and the power actually went off! It was such a fun moment, as our guests didn’t mind the darkness and decided to embrace it and make it a cozy moment. I looked around, and some guests were relighting the candles that were blown out by the heavy winds, and everyone was chatting and having a great time, which made me grateful for a moment that otherwise might have made me feel stressed.

What does being married mean to you, and are there any special rituals you have that you would like to share?

We always like to say that being married didn’t change anything, as we already had such a strong relationship before that, full of unconditional love and security. If anything, being married was the cherry on the cake for us – something we wanted to do to celebrate our love and confirm to each other that we are wholeheartedly choosing each other.

Even though marriage didn’t change anything in our relationship, I do think it has made us more aware that what we have is very special and unique, and it should be cherished. We very often have these moments of sudden realisation that we are each other’s husband and wife, and feel even more responsibility of keeping this marriage a true partnership by showing up for each other – in the happiest but also in the saddest of times. For both of us, our relationship (and now marriage) has always been a constant in our lives, a safe haven and a home, and I think being married has made us feel an even bigger responsibility to protect it.