Sara + Brenno by Taylor & Porter - Together Journal

We wanted the wedding to be beautiful but also unfussy, eclectic, and playful–nothing too staid or serious.

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

Brenno grew up between Brazil and Washington, D.C. I grew up in the US, but my mom is from the Philippines, and my dad is from India… so our relationship is a bit of a cultural melting pot.

Throughout the wedding, we incorporated elements from both our backgrounds, including live Brazilian music at the welcome party and a traditional Filipino candle and veil ritual as part of our wedding ceremony.

Brenno works in tech, and I work in the live music industry, but we share many of the same passions: going to concerts and art museums, watching sports and movies, discovering new restaurants and music, and, most importantly, spending time with our adorable 3-year-old miniature schnauzer, Wolf.

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

We both moved to NYC in 2012 and met a few months later at a party thrown by our mutual friend, Dan (Brenno’s best friend from undergrad at Emory University and my friend from high school in Indianapolis). We traded numbers–and Spotify accounts–and got to know each other by sending each other songs we loved via the app. Thank you, Spotify, for kickstarting our relationship!

Sara – I was drawn to Brenno’s charm, magnetic personality, and sense of humour. Anyone who knows Brenno knows he has the rare ability to become immediate friends with every person he meets, and that made the start of our friendship–and later, relationship–feel effortless.

Brenno – I had never seen a girl who looked like Sara. From across the room, I was instantly taken by her beauty. Once we started to discuss our passions and interests, I realised is was not only beautiful but also extremely unique and intelligent.

When did you first realise that this was someone you’d like to spend the rest of your life with?

We started dating at a less-than-ideal time, shortly before Brenno moved back to Brazil for his job at the time. We ended up doing long distance for about 3 years until he moved back to NYC, and being apart was really challenging.

I’m not sure there was a singular moment when we realised that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, but once we were back together in the same place, it felt so easy and right, and each of us knew we didn’t ever want to be without the other.

Was there a proposal? Tell us a little about it…

Brenno proposed in July 2021 in the gardens of Villa Melzi in Bellagio, Lake Como. We went to Lake Como as one of our first big trips as a couple and fell in love with it, so coming full circle and getting engaged there years later was perfect. After the proposal, we took a boat around the lake and had a long alfresco lunch of pasta and wine before relaxing on our balcony in the evening and watching the sunset. As excited as we were to share the news with our friends and family, we waited to tell anyone until the next evening so we could soak it in just the two of us without any distractions.

Tell us about the vision you had for the mood and style of your wedding. (theme, key styling elements, florals, colour palettes etc.).

With most of our 120 wedding guests travelling from all over the world to England for the wedding, we wanted the time we spent together to be both fun and relaxing. We chose Babington House not only because of its romantic charm but also because it is the dreamiest adult getaway retreat. We took over the entire house’s 33 bedrooms for two nights, so it was more than just a venue–it was our group’s true home-away-from-home for the weekend.

We wanted the wedding to be beautiful but also unfussy, eclectic, and playful–nothing too staid or serious. We didn’t have a colour scheme or theme for the day and instead incorporated details that felt authentic to who we were. For dinner, I loved the idea of a classic garden marquee (a la Bill and Fleur Weasley), which is something Babington House typically doesn’t do, but they were so accommodating and pulled it off seamlessly.

The marquee was decorated with greenery and hanging rattan lampshades, while our tablescape featured colourful local spring flowers, tall amber candles in vintage-style candlesticks, tons of scattered tealights and our favourite mini Diptyque candles.

For the party, we wanted the space to feel like a vintage disco club, so we had dozens of mirrorballs of various sizes hung from the ceiling to make the entire room sparkle. We dubbed the room ‘Club S&B’, and the brilliant artist Natalia Bagniewska designed black bar menus, matches, and coasters, all with the ‘Club S&B’ branding.

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).

Brenno and I share a love for art and design–and when we began the wedding planning process, I was in the midst of a 1-year fellowship at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC–so it was a priority for us to make all the artistic elements on the day unique. We were lucky enough to get to work with a set of incredibly talented artists based out of the UK, whom we admire deeply and who brought our vision to life perfectly.

Rather than using standard place cards, we opted for custom tambourines that were hand-painted by the wonderful Cathy-Ann from Thistle Paper Co. with each guest’s name and placed at each seat at dinner. Everyone went wild, shaking the tambourines from the moment Brenno and I entered the marquee through to the end of the night. We’ve loved seeing how many people took them home as souvenirs and how many still use them today–they’re a favourite toy of many of our friends’ kids, and we’ve occasionally even seen them make a reappearance at parties in NYC.

Another amazing artist we collaborated with was Natalia Bagniewska, who designed our on-the-day stationery, including food & drink menus, escort cards, and bar signage. She took our terribly chaotic brief (no colour scheme, just a mood board) and designed elements that were beautiful and matched the setting seamlessly. A particular hit was the dinner menus. Babington’s food is centred around seasonal and local produce, some of which is grown on-site, and we wanted to highlight these special ingredients and where they were sourced from. Chef Dionas from Babington wrote up a synopsis of each dish, and Natalia incorporated the details into a gorgeous fold-out menu. We’re currently framing it to hang in our kitchen.

Last but not least, Frances Costelloe designed our wedding invitations, as well as custom tote bags as a welcome gift for our guests and custom matches as favours. The invitation set included a map of the Babington House property to help guests navigate, and the tote bags featured a custom drawing of the venue. It was a delight to see the bags pop up in so many of the photos that our friends and family sent us during their European travels after the wedding.

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

What got us through the stress of planning was leaning into the aspects that we each naturally gravitated to. I love to have a creative outlet and enjoy drawing, but rarely make time for those hobbies, so I used the opportunity to draw our Save the Dates and also designed our wedding website on Squarespace (https://www.saraandbrenno.com/), rather than using a template.

A shared love of music was the foundation for our relationship so we spent a lot of time curating music selections both in the lead-up to the wedding and for the wedding day itself. We put together a pre-wedding playlist for our wedding website and had many date nights when we would stay home and brainstorm songs for key moments of the wedding over a bottle of wine.

We loved seeing all the thought we put into this come to life on the day itself: the string quartet played a rendition of Brenno’s favourite artist Daft Punk’s Digital Love, as he walked into the ceremony, and a rendition of Arctic Monkeys’ Mardy Bum (my favourite version from their 2013 Glastonbury performance) during my entrance with my parents. We also chose Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out as our entrance to the marquee for our wedding dinner–neither of us will ever forget bouncing around to the song as all our friends and family shook their tambourines and sang along.

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

I worked in fashion as a buyer for 7 years, so I thought choosing my outfits would be a breeze, but having never considered what I wanted to wear for my wedding before getting engaged, it was trickier than expected. Once we decided to have a destination wedding in the UK, the only things I knew immediately were that I wanted to be intentional about choosing British designers for my outfits as a nod to our chosen location and also that I wanted to lean into the English countryside feel. However, after countless dress appointments, I struggled to find anything that felt right–and then I was lucky enough to visit The OWN Studio in London.

I decided to work with the amazingly talented Jess from The OWN Studio to design a bespoke wedding dress, and despite us collaborating on the process across the Atlantic Ocean, she fully understood my vision. My everyday style is modern, casual, and even a bit androgynous, but I wanted to go in a completely different direction for the wedding day with a dress that was feminine, romantic, with a vintage feel. We landed on a drop waist style with puff sleeves and layers of floaty organza for the skirt. It took Brenno completely by surprise!

In a similar vein, I wanted my other outfits to reflect the surroundings. For our welcome party, I chose a House of CB dress with a textured floral pattern that mirrored the Walled Garden where we had our welcome dinner, paired with a long organza scarf from The OWN Studio and a beaded bag from Shrimps. I fell head-over-heels in love with the sparkly silver Galvan London gown that I wore during our party; I think it matched the dozens of mirrorballs hanging in the bar perfectly.

Brenno’s outfit choices were luckily much more straightforward: our friend Vanessa, who works at Prada, helped him choose the perfect classic black Prada suit for the wedding day, and I picked out a cream double-breasted suit from Reiss for him to wear for the welcome party.

What was 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?).

For us, the venue was the foundational element that everything else revolved around. We loved that we could take over the entire property of Babington House and make use of all the different spaces throughout the wedding. We had our welcome party in the magical Walled Garden, which feels like its own hidden wonder despite being within the same grounds. On the wedding day, we truly used every space imaginable, so you felt like you were discovering a new room or part of the property at all times: we had our ceremony by the lakeside, our cocktail hour on the bar terrace, the dinner in a marquee, the band in the Orangery, and the DJ after-party in the main bar.

We wanted everyone to feel at home in the venue, and we realised we had accomplished it when our friends started sneaking upstairs to their rooms to change into pyjamas at around 2 or 3 am before coming back down to rejoin the party. A group of us stayed up dancing until sunrise, and it felt just like a house party… albeit in the most stunning house of all time!

After the venue, we really prioritised our photographer’s decision. We fell in love with Louise from Taylor & Porter’s work–she shoots on film and captures the most authentic moments, and was also a calming presence and a pleasure to have around over the two days.

Did anything happen on your wedding day that you laugh about in hindsight (even if it was stressful at the time)?

We brought our 3-year-old miniature schnauzer, Wolf, on his first international trip for the wedding, as neither of us could fathom celebrating our big day without him. As our ring bearer, we knew he’d be the cutest feature of our ceremony, but he also ended up being the most hilarious. After following Brenno down the aisle off-leash, he was supposed to be secured throughout the ceremony, but there was a bit of a mix-up. Instead, he proceeded to cause chaos: jumping all over my dress, chasing after staff members on the lawn, and disappearing into the woods (our friend had to retrieve him)… before deciding my veil was a comfy bed and curling up on the train for the balance of the ceremony. His antics broke up the seriousness of the ceremony with moments of pure laughter and joy that we will always remember.