Kathryn + George by Sophia Theoktisto

I knew I didn’t want a classic, romantic Italian wedding aesthetic – I wanted colour and fun.

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

Kathryn: I’m a brand consultant working across luxury fashion, hospitality and design, and I’ve worked in PR and communications for the past 15 years. I genuinely love my job. For me, it’s always been about the storytelling, the activations and the whole 360-degree world you can build around a brand. In 2020, I founded interia hysteria, my own platform covering art, travel, interiors, cool people and interesting places to stay. It’s essentially all the places and things you’d actually recommend to your friends.

George: I work in music and tech at Beatport, and outside of work, music is still a huge part of my life. I DJ, make my own music, and I’m in the process of starting a record label, so there’s usually something music-related going on. Outside of that, I’m really into health and wellbeing – the gym, running and jiu-jitsu – and I love travelling. I think those are probably the three things that take up most of my life: music, keeping active and travelling with the people I love.

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

Kathryn: We met at Mare Street Market in London Fields in 2019. I was out with my friends Eve and Katie ( who both ended up being part of my bridesmaid gang) having drinks and a gossip when George approached us. He was with two friends, Arj, who was one of our witnesses at the wedding, and Tom, and somehow we all ended up hanging out together as a group. George told me he was a model and a Catholic, which still makes me laugh. I was working at Saint Laurent at the time and had worked in fashion for years, so him being a model wasn’t exactly news to me – and in a strange way, I think that’s probably why we got on. His friends worked in music and were DJs, so it was a very fun crowd, and they invited us backstage at XOYO afterwards, and the rest is history. George texted me the next morning, and I remember thinking, “Oh my God, he’s actually texted me!” We just kept talking from there and eventually arranged our first proper date at Gordon’s Wine Bar.

George: I actually wasn’t planning on staying out that night. Leyton Orient had just won the league, and I was living in Leytonstone, so one beer led to another, and before I knew it I was at Mare Street Market. That’s where I saw Kathryn. I remember locking eyes with her and instantly liking her, although she claims she has absolutely no memory of this! Eventually I took my chance, went over and said hello, and the rest is history. My first impression was that she was really stylish, but also very calming, easy to talk to and funny. We immediately got on and had a laugh together.

Wedding Day

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).

Kathryn: For me, the venue was incredibly special. Da Gelsomina is one of those places that locals on Capri will tell you is one of the best restaurants on the island. It’s been going since the 1930s and is still family-run, which I loved. The views are insane. Anacapri gets these incredible sunsets because you see the sun right until the very end, and we were so lucky with ours. I had been nervous about the idea of walking down a traditional aisle, so having the ceremony at the belvedere, surrounded by dramatic rocks, mountains and that view, felt much more like us. It also gave our guests a completely different experience of Capri, away from the glamorous town and designer shops. There was also a strange little coincidence that made it feel meant to be: Gelsomina means Jasmine in Italian, and our little flower girl is called Jasmine. She was born the year before the weekend we discovered the venue while scouting locations, so there were all these tiny things that made it feel right. I also have to give a huge shout-out to L.E. Projects for our tambourines. I knew I didn’t want a classic, romantic Italian wedding aesthetic – I wanted colour and fun. Orange is my favourite colour, hence the bridesmaid dresses, and the tambourines brought all of that together. Each one was individually hand-painted with ribbons tied onto it by the amazing Luca. They were completely unique and instantly made everything feel celebratory.

George: Kathryn definitely took the lead on the styling, but the locations were something we chose completely together. We visited all of the places ourselves and ultimately picked the ones where we fell in love with the environment rather than trying to create something from scratch. That was probably my favourite visual element of the wedding: the locations themselves. The landscape in Anacapri is so incredible that we didn’t need to overcomplicate it. I liked the simplicity of allowing the surroundings, the food and the atmosphere to do a lot of the work.

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

Kathryn: I work in PR, so for me the planning was genuinely the fun part. I had a ten-tab Excel spreadsheet going. George is a product manager, so naturally he JIRA’d our wedding. Between the two of us, it was quite the operation. We also had two amazing local wedding planners, Elena and Giusy, who knew everyone on the island and made all of the translations, negotiations and logistics so much smoother. For anyone planning a wedding abroad, I would definitely recommend working with someone local. There are so many little things you simply wouldn’t know otherwise. My other very practical tip for a destination wedding is to budget in the local currency and account for VAT, bank fees and exchange-rate fluctuations from the beginning. When you’re constantly transferring money abroad, those differences add up very quickly. One of my favourite things to create was our invitation. Instead of a traditional invite, I made a magazine. Everyone knows we love travelling, and we’re constantly being asked for recommendations, so it became a sort of Capri “brochure” for the weekend, with our favourite places, tips, restaurant numbers, taxi details and everything our guests might need. I loved making the whole experience start before everyone had even arrived.

George: I don’t think I enjoyed the planning process quite as much as Kathryn did! But I work in product and project management, so eventually she reverse-engineered my day job into the wedding planning. My biggest piece of advice is to get everything out of your head and into one place. Whether that’s a proper project-management tool or literally a piece of paper, have a shared list that you can both access and assign things to each other. Something else that helped us, because Kathryn and I work very differently, was setting aside a morning at the weekend to do wedding things together. We’d go somewhere nice, sit down over breakfast or coffee and work through everything we needed to do. It made the planning feel like something we were doing together rather than a never-ending list of admin.

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

Kathryn: The Scialapopolonfolk band! They absolutely made the wedding. They were worth every penny because that hour became one of the most joyful parts of the entire day. At one point we had practically the entire wedding in a huge conga line around the pool at sunset. Then we cut the cake with everyone singing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” as the sun was going down. I’ll never forget it. They created this incredible energy where nobody was sitting on the sidelines – everyone was part of it.

George: I have to shout out the legend that is DJ Gerry (TaliFreaks) — a true Capri Icon. We considered flying a DJ out for the wedding, but eventually thought, why do that when we could have someone who genuinely knows the island and could give our guests a taste of Capri? That was absolutely the right decision. He understood the environment, the crowd and the atmosphere, and brought something to the wedding that we couldn’t have recreated by bringing somebody over from London. He gave everyone a proper little piece of Capri.

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

Kathryn: I wore Danielle Frankel – a corset and skirt with the most beautiful veil. I was completely obsessed with the veil. The Browns Bride team in London were amazing and so helpful throughout the whole process. That was my something new. For my something old, I sourced a pair of vintage couture Dolce & Gabbana shoes. Miraculously, they were in my size, so I felt like I had no choice but to buy them. My bridesmaid Eve had married six months before us and wore a beautiful Christian Dior robe while getting ready for her wedding. She lent it to me for mine, so that became my something borrowed. We’ve decided it’s going to become a little friend group heirloom now and be passed on to the next bride. My something blue was my engagement ring, which is a beautiful aquamarine and diamond ring that George custom-designed with my bridesmaid Claudia.

George: For the Friday night, I wore a Sandro shirt that I actually found during one of our wedding-planning weekends. Towards the end of the day we’d moved on to shopping and found it in Selfridges. It had this pattern of interlocking circles all over it, and I immediately thought it was perfect – lots of circles joined together for a weekend where we were literally tying the knot. For the wedding itself, I wore a navy double-breasted Fursac suit. I knew from the beginning that I wanted navy and double-breasted, but I hadn’t chosen a particular designer. I went shopping in Marylebone one Saturday in January, found the Fursac suit and immediately knew it was the one. The details were particularly important to me. My tie and pocket square came from E. Marinella, the historic Neapolitan brand. A Neapolitan friend had recommended it to us and essentially told me, “This is what the real dons in Naples wear,” so obviously I was sold. We went to their shop in the Burlington Arcade in London and when I gave my name — George Elliott — the staff started laughing. I had absolutely no idea why and initially wondered if it was because of the famous author George Eliot. When they realised I wasn’t in on the joke, they asked if I knew who she was and then told me that she used to come to the building, which apparently once had a library upstairs and had been somewhere she would secretly meet her lover.

Tell us about your wedding and engagement rings.

Kathryn: To be completely honest, we totally forgot to buy wedding rings. We suddenly realised about a week before the wedding and went into a slight panic. Mine is literally from Missoma, which I actually love because there was absolutely no grand strategy behind it. My engagement ring, however, is incredibly special to me. It’s an aquamarine and diamond ring that George designed himself with the help of my bridesmaid Claudia, so there’s much more of a story behind that one.

George: The wedding rings somehow ended up right at the bottom of our list. After spending months organising everything else, we suddenly realised we actually needed rings! In the end, though, we both found something we liked. I went for a very simple five-millimetre gold band. The engagement ring had considerably more thought behind it. Before proposing, I took Kathryn to Antwerp — the diamond capital of Europe — partly thinking I’d come away with a much clearer idea of what kind of ring she wanted. Unfortunately, Kathryn managed to like an enormous variety of completely different rings, so I actually left Antwerp none the wiser. Eventually I had to admit defeat and tell her, “I can’t propose to you because I genuinely don’t know what ring you want.” References appeared fairly quickly after that! What I knew from those was that she loved the idea of three stones with a blue aquamarine in the centre. I then went to Hatton Garden with one of her best friends, Claudia, to work out the rest. There were still lots of decisions Kathryn hadn’t specified — the shape of the two diamonds either side, the setting, whether the band should be yellow gold or platinum — so those became the parts I could make my own. I loved that I could make something that was recognisably what Kathryn had dreamed of while still having enough freedom to create something for her myself.

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?).

Kathryn: Photography and videography, however, were really important to us. We were so happy with our darling photographer, Sophia Theo, who covered the whole weekend so beautifully and our video team, Groovy Octopus. For anyone having a destination wedding, I’d really recommend paying as much attention to the days around the wedding as the wedding day itself. Having those other moments documented was so worth it because the experience was much bigger than just one day. For our Sunday pool party, I also had customised beach towels made for every guest by a factory in China. At one point I was getting increasingly concerned because the shipment was stuck around the Strait of Hormuz and I became convinced our wedding towels were never going to make it to Capri. Thankfully, they arrived in time! I love that guests still send me photos of themselves using the towels on their holidays now. I also really loved our wedding guest book. We used the Assouline Capri book and invited guests to sign whichever page they wanted. I loved the idea of using an actual coffee-table book rather than a traditional guest book, because it’s something we’re genuinely happy to leave out in our home. It captures the place where we got married, but now it also has all these little messages and memories from the people who were there with us. It’s become a really lovely record of both Capri and our wedding weekend.

George: For me, it was the things that created an experience for everyone. The tambourines were definitely worth it because they were so much fun and became part of the party – they got everyone involved, up and dancing rather than just being something decorative. The villa for the Sunday pool party was another one. We really wanted the wedding to feel like a whole weekend together rather than everything building towards one day and then suddenly being over. Having somewhere where everyone could come back together on Sunday, swim, eat and spend another day with each other was really special.

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

Kathryn: Definitely the morning with my bridesmaids, flower girls and getting ready with my mum. It was so special, and I’ll never be able to thank those girls enough for everything they did to make me feel calm, happy and completely looked after. And cutting the cake. Looking back and seeing everyone we love singing to us while the sun was setting behind them …I’ll start crying thinking about it.

George: Mine was at sunset when the folk band were playing. We’d all been dancing around the pool and had just cut the cake when the band somehow managed to get all 85 of our wedding guests into one huge circle around us. It was dusk, with this beautiful orange sky behind everyone, and the whole circle was swaying from side to side. What I remember most clearly is looking around and realising I could actually see everybody’s face. Everywhere I turned, there was another person we loved looking back at us and smiling. There wasn’t another moment during the weekend where I could take everyone in like that. I just remember feeling completely overwhelmed by how much love there was around us and how grateful I was to have all of those people in one place, sharing that moment with my wife, Kathryn. I’ll never forget it. Another highlight came later in the night when I DJ’d three songs. The middle track was an early version of my own track “everyday”, which I’ve just released on my label, DiscOther Productions. People were dancing and having fun, so that was a great moment for me!

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

Kathryn: Being married is actually quite like being unmarried, to be honest! But I think what we’ve realised over the course of our relationship is that we really are best friends. I genuinely love spending time with George. I find him interesting, kind and smart, and I love our conversations, especially the ones where we’re talking about what’s next and dreaming up whatever we’re going to do with our lives. One thing we have definitely learnt since the wedding is that we always need to have a holiday booked. Does that count as a ritual? Otherwise we get depressed! We also never go to sleep angry. We have what we call our “sorry séance”, where if we’ve had an argument or one of us is annoyed, we have to talk it through and say sorry before we go to sleep. That one is non-negotiable.

George: Being married doesn’t feel worlds apart from how life felt before. Kathryn and I had already lived together for five years, and we’ve been best friends throughout our relationship, so our day-to-day life hasn’t suddenly changed. What is different is feeling the weight of the ring on my finger. It’s this small, constant reminder of the vows we made and the commitment we’ve made to each other — but also of making that commitment in front of all the people who travelled to be there with us. And yes, we do have one slightly strange ritual: the “sorry séance.” Over the years we’ve learnt that if we’ve had an argument, we need a way of drawing a line under it and getting ourselves back onto an equal footing. So one of us calls a sorry séance. We hold hands, move them three times to the left and three times to the right, and then take turns saying sorry. It is completely ridiculous, but somehow it works. It clears the air, makes us laugh and means we don’t carry an argument into the next day.