As you know, we love sharing weddings from around the world, and today we're sharing a gorgeous celebration all the way from Warsaw.
Magdalena & Alex, are a London-based couple who brought their friends and family together with a simple, elegant, and chic soiree in the beautiful Polish capital.
Their romantic church ceremony and intimate reception were captured by Kasia & Jacek Siwko.
With her dapper son Joshua leading her up the aisle, Magdalena was a stunning bride, with effortless wavy tresses, a vintage style gown, and beautiful a peony bouquet.
Alex, who looked so excited to be marrying his love, was a cool groom in a suit from The Kooples.
With a stylish venue, gorgeous blooms, and twinkling candlelight, their reception was so intimate and atmospheric, but what makes this sweet wedding even more special, is that it looks like one of those ones that was just so wonderful to be a guest at too.
And those weddings are always pretty swell, don't you think?
Wedding Day Snapshot
Our Wedding
Our wedding was intimate, fun, simple and elegant.
We chose to have our ceremony at the Sw. Aleksander Church in Warsaw followed by a reception in a very romantic and chic restaurant Endorfina Foksal. Both places were pretty central located and only walking distance from each other.
Alex and I got engaged in February in 2014, it was a night with late night romantic pre- Valentine’s dinner.
We exchanged our little gifts (as on the 14th of February, I was travelling) and in my last box was the ring.
He did the whole thing, with Champagne and getting down on one knee – it was very much unexpected and so romantic.
And then the search started…
We knew we needed to wait with the wedding as we are living far away from our families and we had lots of discussions on where, how and what?
After months of short listing and budgeting we finally had our date, the 30th of May, time of peonies and green asparagus in Poland.
We planned our wedding from London without any wedding planner. It was a great fun and we learnt a lot about ourselves.
As we had lots of people coming to join us from all around the world we decided to have a couple gatherings/dinners before the big day.
Everyone could meet prior to the wedding day and also our guests had time to discover beautiful Warsaw.
The Attire
For my wedding style, I went with vintage, simple dress from The Boa Boutique in London.
My wedding gown was made out of four parts: the beautiful silk skirt with train, silk top, stunning French vintage lace jacket and sash with a bow at the back. I finished off my look with natural hair and makeup and a selection of vintage jewellery.
For my flowers, I am in love with peonies and roses so my bouquet was a mixture of white and pink peonies and roses and some green heads, tied with silk cuts off from my dress.
Getting Ready
As we don’t have the bridesmaid’s culture in Poland I had just my witness with me, my sister-Monika.
We achieved maximum enjoyment by checking into a very lovely hotel the day before the wedding.
We began the wedding morning with breakfast in the retro restaurant downstairs then we had a little walk and came back to my room for a long, relaxed session of beautifying.
We used the help of my friend and makeup artist. We both kept casual and comfortable in blue linen shirts.
The Ceremony
My brother and my son in front gave me away – I walked down the aisle to Mozart’s Divertimento as it’s a jolly but yet unusual piece.
Seeing each other was our favourite part of the day – though we also just loved seeing all of our friends and family in one place.
Walking down, I felt special but also that was the scariest part of the day, I could feel my legs shaking. But definitely it was the happiest moment in my life.
We had two readings in the church – my sister Monika read first and Alex’s brother Nick read the second religious reading. It was very emotional.
We had violin and organ music playing during mass. Our musical pieces are worth mentioning, as lots of our guests were complimenting afterwards.
Mozart “Ave Verum”, Ennio Morricone “The Mission Theme”, Schubert “Ave Maria and finally our Recessional song: Verdi “Grand March”.
The Photography
Our photographers were Kasia and Jacek Siwko. They both did a great job at blending perfectly into our day.
Their friendly, relaxed style really did help to put our guests, and us, at ease.
Their natural reportage style of photography really captured those important moments, which were great to look on afterwards.
We were also positively surprised as after midnight we were asked to take our seats and we saw our first pictures from getting ready to us as Mr & Mrs.
Let me just tell you that it wasn't just me who needed box of Kleenex.
It is a short picture show to fantastic music – I watched this every day for few months with a big grin on my face.
The Venue
The restaurant was our love at first sight… The garden spoke for itself, we could easily imagine this fantastic, organic garden in May and us taking the steps down to meet and greet our guests.
This very chic restaurant needed just simple flowers, lots of greenery and magical candles to create romantic atmosphere.
We kept the decorations to minimum, letting the beauty of the restaurant stand out more.
We had simple, romantic bouquet on the tables; few vases were displayed around rooms and a single flower on cocktail tables outside. Our colours were a mix of white, blush pink and lots of green.
The Music
Our DJ was really helpful he had lots of ideas, but we wanted our entertainment side to be as simple as possible without Polish style games and talk.
We started our reception with some calm, classic with jazzy twist music and we kept it this way throughout the dinner.
We gave him a list of songs we wanted him to play and mix throughout the night. A lot of them came from our guests as we asked for a song suggestion when they RSVPd.
We entered the reception to the “Chariots of Fire” theme song. It was great to be welcomed with petals and Champagne.
Our first dance track was Bruce Springsteen ‘Secret Garden' because this song followed us from the beginning, wherever we went we could hear it, plus the movie with this song is a bit special to us too.
We decided to dance on the terrace full of lighted candles and smell of love in the air …it was a very spontaneous and romantic moment.
It was also lovely to look into each others eyes and say ‘my husband/wife' for the first time.
The Refreshments
We started with a garden cocktail soon after the welcoming toast with Champagne.
Lots of different alcohol and soft drinks were available throughout the night, we also had cold and hot canapés.
Next, we had seated dinner with entry dish, starter and main course. Instead of having dessert served at the tables we let our guests to stand up and discover different types of dessert in our sweet buffet.
That was fantastic choice as after wonderful three speeches it was a right time to stand up and chat.
After midnight we also had BBQ with a wide selection of vegetables, meat and fish. That went very well too.
Our cake arrived outside on the terrace. It was a perfect cake with floral dressing and unexpected magical light…it was another moment to cherish as our son Joshua helped us cut the cake.
For favours we gave Polish and French flags lolly pops made in the sweet shop. We used labels and stamped with our names and date of our big day. It gave a little bit of colour and fun to the tables.
My son and I went shopping days before for kid’s goody boxes I wanted him to feel as much included as possible in this very special moment.
The three of us we were always referring to this moment as “our wedding”. ‘Tyger' and ‘Empik' shops were great to mix and match goodies for kids all age.
The Decor & Details
We definitely saved money on decorations and paper goods: we made a seating plan, guest book sign, photo booth suitcase, labels for favours and kids boxes and we also designed our own invitations.
Before planning our big day I looked through lots of wedding magazines and blogs, I liked the idea of different themes and beautiful decorations, but in the end I couldn’t picture us with rich decor, so we didn’t go with a specific theme for the day other than ‘simple and elegant', and it turned out just perfect and so us.
All flowers were by two fantastic florists Kania and Magda; they just knew exactly what I wanted; natural, little bit wild yet elegant looking flowers tied in with our pink and white colour scheme.
Our Favourite Moments
Seeing each other in the church but also all people that are important to us, talking to them, getting their sweet wishes and attention.
Speeches, very emotional but happy moments.
We took some time out together after the ceremony. We entered the reception a bit letter then our guests so we had little time to actually catch the breath and understand what actually happened.
We also had one little moment, during party, just two of us away from everyone.
The wedding night was so magical; full of love and good energy… we were just floating with love and madness happiness.
Isn't it lovely? I really like the decor in that dining room, and I love that Magdalena & Alex's vision of walking down the steps to greet their guests came true, that's just awesome!
Thanks so much to Jacek Siwko Photography, and of course Magdalena, Alex and lovely Joshua for sharing their day with us.
Be inspired by more very special real weddings.
