Glamorous Destination Wedding In Sintra Portugal

Oh Sintra, Portugal, you are definitely pretty. And today we will see why the most accomplished newlyweds flock to this promising region thanks to this glamorous destinationwedding.

Together with a family that lives all over the world, our pretty couple has chosen this pastel-colored city in the southwest of Portugal for its natural beauty and its excellent meeting place for all their guests. Choosing a place of impeccable beauty and ample outdoor space and hiring an experienced local planner seemed to plan your wedding from afar like a relative “piece of cake”. After all, the photos from the event from Passionate Photography are absolutely flawless.

But it was the modern wedding dress of the bride and her glamorous beauty look that has all the “heart eyes”. Wanting a dress designed in her beloved Australia that featured clean lines and beading to pay homage to her Vietnamese heritage, Tonia immediately fell in love with her from Made With Love – Striking for all brands.

Are you planning a wedding from afar? The bride Tonia was sweet enough to offer tons of tips for the destination (and local!) few. We particularly appreciate his mention to ensure that non-English speaking guests (or the language of the majority of guests) feel included on their wedding day.

Destination

When planning the wedding, we quickly agreed on the mood and mood of the day that we wanted to have. It should be warm, inclusive, devoted, relaxed, and surrounded by nature. Since we came from different cultural backgrounds, it was best to eliminate all celebrations and traditions. We wanted our guests to feel as little formal as possible.

We ventured on several options for the location from Bali to Ibiza, but in the end, we agreed on Portugal. It made sense, it’s a beautiful country with most of Mario’s family and friends there and incredible food and finally, the good weather was guaranteed. Portugal was very central for everyone.

The dress and the outfit

I had a pretty good picture of the kind of dress I wanted. It had to be chic, minimalist, and elegant. I always prefer comfort to be “dressed”, so I knew that my dress would not be a princess ball shirt or would contain a lot of lace. I wanted a dress from an Australian designer because Australia was one of the biggest parts of my life and where Mario and I met. As for the details of the dress, I considered it to be a straight line, a long mermaid tail, an open shoulder, and, most importantly, beads to emphasize my Vietnamese heritage.

I spent exactly a couple of weeks doing some research until I came across the Made With Love Bridal Sienna dress. I made an appointment and tried on her three dresses. But it wasn’t long before I decided that Sienna was the right one-I never once doubted. I felt absolutely so confident and beautiful the day I wore Sienna. The dress was complete with gold heels and pearl earrings. After our first dance, I changed into a white jumpsuit.

The outfit of Mario was made by an Australian tailor Ichu. Her look would have to match my dress, be chic and casual. We spent some time on the selection of colors and materials and decided on a navy sapphire jacket and light gray trousers with brown leather goods and shoes.

We also asked all our guests to dress in a chic, casual style in pastel and sapphire tones.

Place

After several months of searching and when we wanted to agree on a place, our wedding planner Sofia found a Quinta on Instagram that had a huge park in the middle of Sintra. Since we were in Sydney and could not see the place for ourselves, Mario’s father and Sofia went to inspect it, and they both came back and said: “This is what we were looking for.”Quinta da Penalva, unlike many other Quinta or villas, was a private estate with lush vegetation in the spirit of Sintra, and several different natural spaces throughout the property. The villa itself had this beautiful plant wall, two huge indoor and outdoor pools, and a small bar.

In the end, we divided the venue into three sections: down the hill near the pond, we had the ceremony, in which we felt complete peace and seclusion; after that, the guests were led by a hidden path to climb to the back lawn of the house and the outdoor pool for the reception with living room furniture, and dinner was organized at the front of the house with a view of the plant wall. There was no signage just so guests could walk around and explore the space. It was important for us to have different rooms so that guests could interact. We also had a projector set up to play a photo slideshow. The dance floor was right in front of the outdoor pool.

Flowers & Decor

Fortunately, when the place was chosen, Mario left the decoration tasks to me. We imagined the room to be more romantic, devoted, and relaxed as if you were on a summer date. For this theme, we have combined soft shades, delicate lighting, chandeliers, calligraphy, and gentle flowers.

The choice of colors of the subject was quite simple, I did not care so much about trends. Our hero’s color had to be sapphire or dusty sapphire in harmony with the color of the engagement ring – sapphire. We also wanted to add gold and silver tones to match Mario’s wedding ring. Finally, white splashed with flowers and other details to emphasize our astrological signs belonging to the same astrological birthstone – the moonstone.

Since the venue itself offered a lot of green colors, we wanted to use a simple white with dusty shades of sapphire to add more pop. The flowers used were collected by our wedding planner and consisted mainly of white roses, white lilies, and green, and for sapphire and gray accents we used Dusty Miller Flat and Brunia Berry. We also used sapphire accent flowers on centerpieces and large floor vases with a bushy configuration of white flowers. We have kept the flower decoration to an essential minimum number to give an extra wedding feeling.

Favorite moments

First, there was a special moment in our desires. The story back to this is that we both had this inner tradition of “high five” whenever our thoughts or decisions were suddenly the same and so we started to become very good friends as we noticed that we were constantly “high five”.

We wrote our vows separately and emailed them both to our celebrant for quick review. The only comment of our celebrant was “it’s crazy how similar you think”. Little did we know that both of us had written in our vows, “never stop drugging each other during mind–reading moments” – it was a real mind-reading moment.

Do you know how usually the best man or groom is after? Well, we had our groomsman after and on the run. One of the groomsmen – who is known for always getting lost-was very hungry just before the start of the ceremony and left the mansion to go to the city for a snack. He lost track of time and came back with a twenty-minute delay, when we were all looking for him. We laughed.

The best and last part of the day was after the local police arrived at the villa around 2:30 am and asked to close the music due to noise complaints, our DJs gladly agreed to continue in the villa around the indoor pool. We continued until 5 o’clock in the morning and in the end everyone jumped into the pool with the DJ!

Tips For other couples

Some tips on actual wedding day planning: 1) For destination weddings, we recommend keeping it small (50-100 guests) and planning a meeting before the wedding day so that everyone can catch up. 2) Have a clean and organized Pinterest board – it will really help your wedding planner! 3) Start by adding things that are really necessary as this can get really overwhelming with all the wedding ideas and plan around the theme and color. 4) we had an international wedding with families who do not speak English very well. We recommend that you translate the scripts as much as possible so that everyone feels included.