Jose Luis and I met in graduate school in 2007 and although it wasn’t a standard “storybook romance,” it was crazy and fun and full of travels all over the world. After graduating, we headed in different directions, Jose Luis to India and I to NY, unable to merge our career pursuits and our relationship. We stayed in touch though and after several years apart, we decided to give it another shot, embarking on a challenging, but lovely long distance relationship between NY and São Paulo.
After proposing and my transfer to Brazil, we started to think about the wedding and what we wanted: a lively Persian Spanish celebration filled with food, alcohol, and lots of dancing.
We chose Barcelona because it is where Jose Luis lived for many years and a perfect destination location for our international guests with delicious food and wine. When visiting venues, we fell in love with the Castell de Sant Marçal for it’s old world beauty, the stunning façade, and beautiful grounds. It was a true “this is the one” moment for both of us!
I stumbled upon Joy Thigpen’s portfolio very early and fell in love with her work instantly. I decided to hire her before I even had the venue and a date set. It felt a bit unorthodox but we really connected on our approach to style and design, and most importantly, the concept of creating understated elegance. With a sea of endless inspiration, Joy served as my anchor, pulling together my ideas into a cohesive vision, plan, and action, and steered me to excellent vendors, like Bryce Covey, for our photos.
After our site visit and plan in place, we moved onto the dress. Joy introduced me to the most charming dressmaker in Atlanta, Cheryl Taylor. Bursting with creativity, Cheryl was excited to do something totally different for me. Armed with inspiration of Spanish olive branches and jasmine vines, sample designs from Joy, and images of silhouettes I liked, she designed and created the most exquisite custom dress with hand painted silk screens and imported French lace. She ran with our concept independently, creating a matching hand stitched veil that took hours and hours to sew, as well as lingerie pieces and robe which I was able to use for a boudoir session. I looked forward to our creative and collaborative visits all together in Atlanta and highly recommend for other creative brides to design custom dresses – worth every penny!
The ceremony was held just before dusk in front of the castle. I loved looking out at our family and friends smiling up at us. My husband teared up during the ceremony, which moved me tremendously as he does not show emotions often.
