The last few weeks before the wedding were unbearable. I knew it would be stressful but nothing prepared me for this. I regretted about 7 million times a day that I accepted a big wedding… although I’m not sure if a smaller one would be that much less hassle tbh. I think the most frustrating thing was that I’d been working for months on this almost every day, and a week before the wedding nothing had been wrapped up yet. All that work and you never feel like you accomplish anything.

Wedding planning is stressy for everyone, but in our situation it was made even more complicated by a few things: that we decided to do it in less than 6 months since we got engaged, that we weren’t together for most of it so we had to cram everything we had to do together in the 5 days before the wedding that he was here, and that we were planning a multicultural wedding which made us question every single bit.

Croatian and English weddings shouldn’t be so different on paper, but they really are. We attended quite a few of the English weddings and while I like how they do the ceremony bit (all of them were more laid back than what we do here), honestly when it comes to reception they don’t hold a candle to how we do it. A three course dinner and then a disco, ending at midnight (the last English wedding we attended was over at 11pm straight), sometimes there’s not even a free bar.

In Croatia weddings last until the early hours of the morning, 5 am at least. It includes a 6 course dinner as well, spread out throughout the night. Open bar is non negotiable. And most of all, music and dancing, before the ceremony, after it, all the freaking time.

I spent the night before the wedding at my mother’s flat, while David stayed at mine, but in the morning he moved to the hotel where we later spent the night (or, well the early morning). For all the stress of the previous few days, when I woke up that morning I felt so perfectly zen. I knew it would be amazing, whatever happens. But I couldn’t even imagine how perfect it’d be!

I got ready at my mum’s place and then the limo picked us up and took us to the reception venue where we had organized a pre-wedding cocktail. In Croatian tradition guests usually gather at the groom’s house first, then they go to the bride’s house to pick her up, then to the church. It’d be very difficult to do something like that in our case, so we just decided to meet up at the museum.



It got lively there very soon! We had a band to kick things off with folk/drinking songs and pretty soon everyone was dancing. I had no idea how the English would react to things here, but they seemed to relax and go with the flow since the start. I think it surprised them to see me there too, as I suppose in England you traditionally don’t see the bride until the ceremony. Well, here it’s usually different, plus I’m no blushing bride I can tell you that. I wanted to be right there with our guests since the start and enjoy it all, and not tucked away somewhere like a delicate little flower.



After an hour and a half it was time to head to the church. We had organized little tourist trains to take our guests from the venue to the church, which everyone loved! The band went in there as well, and everyone was singing and getting pumped.



Now, in Croatian tradition when you have a wedding procession you normally have a flag bearer in the front. They stick the flag out of the car (or hang out with it, in our case), honk, stop traffic, sing, and are generally loud. As it happens, we had two flag bearers, one was my brother with the Croatian flag, and the other was David’s friend with the British one. After the flag cars came our wedding car, and the little trains were behind us. We had to drive through the centre of town, so there were many passerbys who were so amused and they cheered and waved at us. It made us feel like celebrities...



When we drove up to the church, which is incidentally in the most most tourist part of the city so there were a lot of people there, we realized we arrived ahead of time, and that the trains were still behind us as they were slower. That’s when my friend who drove one of the flag bearers turned the music all the way up in her car. We all got out of our cars and started dancing on this little square while the tourists all gaped. Because the song playing just happened to be Missy Elliott’s “Get Your Freak On”. I honestly think that was my favorite moment of the day. It was so spontaneous and awesome!



When the trains arrived and the band came with them, the real party kicked off. We also had a bottle of gin and a bottle of Jack doing the rounds, the flags waving, the band playing, people dancing and singing. Billions of tourists taking photos like we’re Wills and Kate. But the royal wedding had nothing on this!





When we finally reached the church, everyone went inside to get seated while David and I waited outside. (This is another difference, in our tradition bride and groom enter the church together, nobody hands you over. In recent years apparently more and more brides want to be handed over by their Dads, but it’s still a new thing and not every priest allows for it still.) I kept thinking to myself, Jesus how am I going to get serious now when I’m so hyped up and I just want to party? But I did somehow, and the ceremony was just lovely. It was done in both languages and we also had little booklets printed with translations so everyone could know what was going on.


After the church we went back to the museum.



We had a bit of a song and dance in the front and then got inside for the dinner. Our first dance was to “At Last” by Etta James, and it worked surprisingly well considering we literally had 2.5 minutes to practice before. After that the party kicked off and it was awesome. The band was great and everyone was dancing.



At one point David and his two best men did the speeches. Speeches are not a usual thing in our tradition, if someone does say something it’s usually a toast, short and sweet and let’s get back to eating, drinking and dancing. But I knew that speeches were important to the English so we had to incorporate them. Frankly I was quite worried about that while planning the wedding, there’s the language barrier plus any speech was bound to be too long and I didn’t want it to kill the party. David did his well though, he sprinkled it with bits of Croatian he learned, he spoke clearly and people liked it. His best men’s speech fell a bit flat but it was OK, we quickly moved on.


And then David surprised me by singing a song for me with the band! It was so lovely <3 he changed the words to Toto’s “Roseanna” and he was great! He looked like a rock star too I was so proud of him!


I threw the bouquet, which was caught by my brother's girlfriend. She jumped like a panther to get it, lol. David was throwing the garter, but after 3 failed attempts (as all the guys kept dodging it) he just turned around and stuck it on my brother's head, haha.

The party went on until 5 am. Not everyone made it, most of the English didn't, but I was impressed by a few of his mates who got slobbering drunk early on but still managed to stay on their feet (and dance all the time) until 5 am. 4:30 is when they rolled the wine goulash out, which is just what you need after a whole day of drinking and partying.

After we paid the band and packed up for the night, we went to our hotel room. It took us about 20 minutes to get me out of my dress - it had about 30 buttons on the back and David was a bit crosseyed and fumbling thanks to the wine. (I only had a couple of glasses of champagne, a couple of G&Ts and two glasses of wine throughout the whole day so I wasn't even drunk, except on love <3<3<3 The dress was so lovely but I am so glad I will never have to wear anything like that again.

The whole day was sweltering, it was above 30 degree Celsius (88 F) and as soon as I put my dress on in the morning I felt like taking it off, all the unbreathable material made me sweat like mad, not to mention layers of makeup. The makeup facade held well though, but my hair fell apart after like an hour. It was a loose bun and I was partying hard so I didn’t expect it to hold for very long, but still this was way too soon. So won’t be seeing that hair stylist again. But then again, it didn’t bother me at all on the day, and it still doesn’t bother me now, I mean messy hair at the end of the night means it was a good party, right?

So anyway, that was our amazing wedding. It went so much better than I even hoped for. Everyone was amazing, everyone was so happy for us, and we were feeding off positive energy - our smiles made our guests happy and our guests made us smile and dance with joy.

The next day we went for a brief but lovely honeymoon at a beautiful coastal town of Rovinj. But that’s another story : )