Marie & Marina – A Very Intimate, Private Outdoor Wedding

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These two brides decided on a very intimate wedding, just the two of them. They sang to one another instead of speaking vows and painted a rainbow to signify meaningful things in their lives.

Tell us about the love story, and the proposal.

We have been together for almost six years and got to know each other online. We then met up in person and immediately fell in love.

The proposal actually happened on our trip through the West. Little did we know, both of us had planned to propose to the other! And, both of us had an engagement ring with us at all times!

Marina was first to surprise me when we were watching the sunset over the Grand Canyon. It was just magical. Even though I had also planned to ask her to marry me, I was totally overwhelmed and didn’t know what to say other than YES, of course.

I then asked her a week later when we stayed at Lake Tahoe. These places definitely hold special memories for us.

Talk us through the decision to elope.

On the 20th of February 2020, we got married at a registry office with only a few people attending the ceremony. We planned on celebrating with family and friends in 2021. However, due to Covid restrictions in Germany, we couldn’t be sure to make it all possible. So after thinking about it repeatedly, we realized it didn’t make sense to us. We quickly decided that getting married or, in our case, having our beloved wedding speaker telling our love story, was something we wanted to do for our sakes.

Although we postponed our wedding celebration to 2022, we knew it’d also be so special and intimate to be by ourselves.

Getting married was something we didn’t want just to celebrate, but because we are madly in love and that for sure is something just between us. So the term elopement doesn’t fit entirely.

It was more like a very intimate and private wedding.

Talk us through the actual elopement.

Even though we knew it’d be just the two of us enjoying this day, we wanted to glow and make sure we looked our best, so we had the wonderful Isabelle Martens do our hair and make-up at our place. As time went on, we got more and more excited and started realizing that this extraordinary day is reaching its peak so soon. When putting our beautiful wedding dresses by Noni on, we felt like two teenagers who had just fallen in love all over again. Marina is so unbelievably beautiful, even without a wedding dress. But no one could have worn the dress better than her. She was the most stunning bride, my beautiful wife.

We then drove to our location, an alpaca farm, met with our wedding speaker Tina Forstmann, her husband, and our photographer Sylviane Brauer. We honestly couldn’t be more grateful for these two women. They made this day even more special and created the kind of small wedding we’d have hoped for. Two chairs, one table, a bouquet of flowers, a wooden rainbow, and our guitar were the only equipment we’d needed.

The ceremony then started as we walked down a small hill through the meadows. Tina and Sylviane were waiting for us to come and take a seat. Tina began to tell our love story. Which made us laugh so hard, cry at times, but overall made us smile with joy because she just found the perfect words to describe us and our love story. We walked down memory lane and were able to relive our story through her well-chosen words.

After a while, it was time for us to say our wedding vows. But, we had decided to do it a little differently. Instead of saying how much the other meant to us, we decided to play and sing a song together. It was so magical and gave us goosebumps, We felt so close to each other by just singing together and looking each other in the eyes.

Afterward, we painted our wooden rainbow in its original colors as the rainbow symbol was something we felt was more and more present in our everyday lives. We feel the need to be visible in order to create a better and open-minded place for all of those who cannot be out and proud yet. Our wedding speaker Tina also painted her nails colorfully so she could match a rainbow. We assigned each color to something meaningful in our lives and started painting the rainbow.

We had the property to ourselves when the ceremony was over, and Sylviane took so many photos of us. The alpacas seemed to realize that photos were taken. So they decided to come out of their shed and join us. She truly is one of a kind, catching every emotion and capturing it in a photo. We were so lucky to have found her.

We couldn’t have wished for a more special day and can only thank those few who made it as special as it was from the bottom of our hearts.

What does the future hold for you both?

We know it might sound corny, but we would love to be mummies one day soon, to have a house, a garden, and be healthy and happily married for the rest of our lives.