Christopher & Arthur by Dean Maber

The wedding of Christopher & Arthur in South Africa as featured in Issue 17 …

Christopher & Arthur: We’re both professionals who live in London. Christopher is an architect and Arthur works as a commercial finance manager. We met through a dating app in 2015 and immediately hit it off.

What started out as an after-work drink turned into dinner and a late-night stroll through Olympic Park. We discovered a mutual love of food and travel, and spent the next 12 months travelling all over Europe whenever we had the opportunity. Within a short space of time, we’d toured through Las Ramblas in Barcelona, the mountains of Corsica and the beaches of Montpellier, eaten pinchos in Bilbao and wandered the canals of Amsterdam. That passion for food and travel has underlined our relationship, as we have navigated through our family roots in South Africa, Spain and the UK, giving us an insight into our respective cultures and allowing us to better understand each other.

We decided to have our wedding in South Africa to allow our friends to come and experience the beauty of the Cape Winelands. We came across our venue, Bosjes Estate, by chance and it was love at first sight. A series of incredible buildings tied together by beautifully landscaped fynbos gardens and with a backdrop of the mountains of the Slanghoek Valley, it required very little additional styling, but Arthur’s stepmother, an interior designer in Johannesburg, provided a sympathetic decoration of the reception venues, bringing together the unique flowers and plants from the area into beautiful table displays.

We wanted to let our guests know how touched we were to have them there with us, so we turned our place cards into personal thank yous that included photos of us with each guest, along with a hand-written note.

In keeping with the smart-casual theme of the wedding, we wore chinos and blazers in a palette of navy and white, bow ties as a nod to Christopher’s British background and a fynbos boutonniere as a nod to Arthur’s South African roots.

After the ceremony, we moved from the chapel into the Estate’s tea garden, where we drank gin and tonics infused with berries and rosemary, then held the speeches outdoors, before the dinner. We also had the fortune of having a world-class sommelier at the wedding, and she arranged for us to perform a champagne sabrage with a sword and two bottles of Alvi’s Drift’s finest Cap Classique.

If you’re going to spend the rest of your lives together, being madly in love isn’t enough. It’s your friendship that will carry you through the best and worst of times, when you need more than good intentions and physical attraction. If you’re lucky, you get to marry your best friend and grow together on the same path. Life may pull you in different directions, but the important thing is to check in with each other regularly and make sure neither of you veers off the path, at least without you both taking the journey together.

Photography: Dean Maber | Christopher’s blazer: Massimo Dutti | Christopher’s shirt: TM Lewin | Christopher’s trousers & tie, Arthur’s attire & groomsmen’s ties: El Ganso | Christopher’s shoes: Hugo Boss | Arthur’s shoes: Russell & Bromley | Rings: Tiffany & Co | Venue & Catering:  Bosjes Estate | Celebrant: Tie The Knot Cape Town | Styling & Flora: Arthur’s stepmother, Marian Church | Cake: Cake Couture By Justine | Wine: Alvi’s Drift | Entertainment: TMN Entertainment